TNAG-1609-FCO40-22131-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1987 — Page 117

Speech by Hơn. G.

G. Barnes, JP, Secretary for

Lands & Works at Legislative Council on 11 November 1987

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AND WORKS :

A considerable part of your speech was directed to the goals of our future physical development, and its utmost importance was also reflected in the members' speeches to the Motion given last week which covered some long-term, medium-term and immediate issues related to its planning and implementation. I am very grateful for both comments and criticisms. Much of what has been said relates to important nitty-gritty, and if I do not specfically cover it today, I hope the members will not construe that it will be ignored. It certainly will not.

Members' replies show how clearly they appreciate the very real problems of planning development in a place which is at the same time so small and so dynamic. Planning is a very hard-worked word, because it has to cover major policies and detailed implementation, and it also has to cover both place and time. Up to the

Up to the '70s seventies our plans were largely small scale, concerned mainly with incremental development of the Urban Areas. With the adoption in the early seventies of the housing targets and territorial planning standards both the scale and the science of town planning was massively increased.

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No one would suggest that the planned few fowns are perfect. There have certainly been instances of 4.

inflexibility and insufficient coordination. We must continue to endeavour to improve on these, not least because they have given rise to considerable criticism, both in respect of the planning, which was specifically touched on by DeLai M. LAI last week in relation to effects on the environment, and to implementation, on one aspect of which, resumptions, Mr. Cheung Yan-lung and Mr. Tai Chin-wah also commented.

Nevertheless as you, Sir, pointed out in your speech, what we have achieved in the New Towns has shown

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up the deficiences of the Urban Areas, and as/emphasifed in several other debates in the last session, in the rural SC hinterlands - that is,, as Miss Dunn then described them,

the land between the New fowns and the Country parks. both cases this is partly because of a lack of investment, but it is equally because there has been no definition of the policy for the development of these areas, which would

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