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tices has been the zoning system. In the Shatin Valley, for example, a statutory outline plan limits permanent develop- ment to areas where government has provided drains and roads. A legitimate safeguard but only recently has the government begun to install these services, and then only in a small area. For years local landowners have been in a strait- jacket. As a result numerous illegal structures have been built and illegal businesses carried on. For them to exist, someone has to turn a blind eye, and for someone to turn a blind eye in Hongkong tea money is usually required.
Illegal dwellings and factories blotch the landscape at every turn and without an overall drive to house the squat- ters and abolish graft opportunities they will remain even when they are health hazards. Not far from Fanling station on the Kowloon-Canton line dozens of foul-smelling tan- neries line a roadway. From this collection of ramshackle huts a steady stream of waste flows into a waterway thus polluting one of the colony's reservoirs. The tanneries have been there for years. Yet most of them are illegal. Police, urban services officials, government administrators pass the* spot daily but no one appears to notice what is going on.
While rural tranquillity is illegally turned into a noxious nightmare, legitimate development in the new towns is hardly an inspiration.
Hongkong University's professor of architecture W. G. Gregory recently voiced his concern at the lack of environ- mental planning. "If towns are not designed both for func- tional efficiency and aesthetic pleasure, how can people be expected to show a civic consciousness and pride?" he asked. "It is no wonder they show their contempt by treating it all as one large rubbish dump... Granted (these new towns) may conform to broad land-use definitions, but where are the civic qualities, where are the parks, play- grounds and open spaces? A few scattered concrete cages, wired off to prevent children running into busy traffic streets do not meet the definition. Where are the civic centres, the pedestrian shopping precincts, the community and cultural centres?"
Graham Barnes, district officer for Tsuen Wan, the terri. tories' largest community, points out that it is easy to Health hazards are neglected: Waste from this illegal tannery pol-
lutes a reservoir.
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Rubbish and decay accumulate in an overcrowded city less than 10 years old.
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produce academic arguments, "but there are a hell of a lot of people to be housed as quickly as possible and there's only so much space." It is true that in terms of numbers the govern- ment has done a tremendous job of rehousing Hongkong's people; the failings at Tsuen Wan, however, are too great to overlook. A workers' town with factories soaring as high as 16 storeys, and jostling matchbox-like blocks of flats, it is a recreational and cultural desert. With no civic centre, no cultural meeting place, its seven cinemas offer the only form of entertainment.
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Strangely, with only 30 acres of open space scheduled for every 100,000 people Tsuen Wan will be little better off than many older over-crowded urban areas Europe and North America usually think in terms of 1,000 acres per 100,000. While factory building goes on apace and new flats are rising, other vital developments are wedged in the pipeline. In one district 20,000 people have moved into an estate and 40,000 are moving shortly into another nearby but no approval has yet been received to go ahead with construction of a recrea- tion area for them. In addition, Tsuen Wan has no proper centre for vocational and adult education, no proper sporting stadium, and suffers from a severe shortage of government medical facilities.
By 1972 Tsuen Wan will be more than an industrial city. It will be a container port for the $500 million Kwaichung terminal is sited there. By then the population will have swollen to more than 400,000. District officer Barnes, a 35-year-old Briton, is the administrative overseer of this mighty complex. His is the difficult task of balancing the views of the powerful rural committee with those of a rival group representing hawker associations, welfare societies and with the needs of the man in the resettlement block who can have no real voice under present conditions.
Barnes is conscious of the shortcomings and admits the communications gap. But like other enthusiastic young administrative officers in the territories some of whom have resigned in frustration - he is a prisoner of the system. And as long as the system stays the way it is the New Territories will remain in limbo.
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FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW
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