4. As services became more widespread and more expensive, as taxation became formalized and land administration more complex, the District Officer at first assumed wider executive functions. But it was not long before doctors, engineers, educators and others came on the scene from departments which had until then operated mainly in the urban areas. Since the second world war the great increase in government activity in the New Territories has led to the extension into the country of all the professional departments while the District Officer has shed his judicial and many of his executive functions. The importance of the political and co-ordinating functions of the District Officer has however remained and increased. These functions have changed with the spread of urban development and in Tsuen Wan the District Officer is now found operating in an industrial town of nearly a quarter of a million people.
5. In the urban areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon the administration developed along different lines with a functional distribution of work among the specialist departments. For efficiency and economy this still seems to be the best method of organization, for though the population of the urban areas had reached about three and a quarter million by the beginning of 1968 no part of the town is as much as an hour's trip from the centre. But politically there are disadvantages in this system. Specialists and experts of all sorts may not be familiar with local peculiarities in social or economic organization in an area where they may come to work for a limited time before moving on to tackle a similar technical problem elsewhere. The people of an urban district are con- fronted with a bewildering array of public services. Although a Public Enquiry Service was instituted in 1961 there was still no person or office which the residents could recognize as 'the government' in their district. There was no officer responsible for assessing the overall impact of government activities in the urban districts or for gathering opinion and judging popular feeling on local issues.
6. It was to meet the need for a government presence in the various urban districts that a decision was taken at the beginning of 1968 to appoint ten City District Officers. They are responsible to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and in terms of organization there is nothing more to the scheme than that the traditional function of his department to maintain liaison with Chinese organizations and society be considerably expanded. But there is a wider purpose behind it.
7. The City District Officers are political officers in the sense that District Officers in the New Territories, whom they in many ways
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