1957-1958 — Page 7

INTRODUCTION

THE average visitor to Hong Kong reacts with incredulity to the statement that a severe housing shortage exists. There can be few cities in the world where the pace, extent and intensity of building operations is greater: on all sides can be heard the clatter of pneumatic drills, the crash of pile-driving machines, and the noise of concrete mixers. Cheek by jowl with the demolition of buildings of the Victorian era new blocks of flats and offices soar high into the sky, and it seems inevitable that the demand for accommodation of all types must rapidly become satisfied-if it has not already done so.

But this is only a superficial, and completely misleading impression. One does not have to go far from the centre of the city, or the high- class residential districts of the Peak or the outskirts of town before it becomes clear why Hong Kong to-day is regarded as one of the most densely-populated places in the world. A population of well over 21 million people is crammed into a Colony with a total area of 391 square miles-much of it inaccessible hillside or outlying and barren islands and with the vast majority of the inhabitants living in the sprawling twin conurbations of Victoria (popularly known as Hong Kong Island) and Kowloon, on the mainland. Densities of 2,000 to the acre are common-place-compare this figure with an average suburban density zone of seventy persons to the acre in London! The natural increase in the population-that is the excess of births over deaths-is alone more than 75,000 a year, and is steadily increasing. Coupled with this is a good deal of immigration, legal and illegal (difficult to combat with a long and twisting coastline to guard) from China, which aggravates an already serious situation. And it must be borne in mind that these immigrants are a direct and immediate liability as far as overcrowding of existing accommodation is concerned. There is little doubt that housing is probably the most important challenge which the community has to face in the social and economic field.

The general background of Hong Kong's housing problem is already familiar, and need only be briefly reiterated here. The last census, held in 1931, showed a total population of 849,000: by 1941 it had risen to about a million. During the occupation of the Colony by the Japanese, from December 1941 to August 1945, a good deal of forced and

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