ENG-1953 — Page 23

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1953

in each of the years since 1948, building activity seemed to be everywhere. Roads were torn up, to the disgruntlement of 19,826 impatient motorists (and there were 1,535 new cars and 4,718 new drivers in 1953), improved and extended contraptions for the public utilities were laid beneath them and then, re- surfaced and widened, they accepted a full flow of traffic again. Government itself completed the first section of a huge block of Government offices which will eventually run the length of a lateral spur which once directly overlooked the central harbour The construction of a new Police Headquarters on the water front proceeded and by the end of the year its final outline was apparent. Work began on 99 more flats for Government officers, five new blocks of flats were built for Royal Naval families on the Peak and large numbers of married quarters for Army families at Kowloon Tsai and in the New Territories. Two new Police Stations were completed. Eleven schools of various sizes were built, of which one for 320 children was completed within seven months of work commen- cing on the site.

Evidence of the extent of this constructional development was apparent to anyone who cared to climb the Peak or the Kowloon hills on a clear day. The regular pattern of the urban area was pitted with excavations, clearances and site-formations visible even from that distance. But perhaps the most remarkable development was the two reclamations proceeding simultaneously, one off the centre of the city and one to the east at Causeway Bay. These two projects will shortly add 3 million square feet to a land-starved city. The citizen from his place in the hills might take some pride in the fact that virtually the whole of this area is to be devoted to public purposes. At Causeway Bay the reclaimed land will be devoted entirely to playing fields, recreation grounds and planned open spaces. The Central Reclamation will provide for a new City Hall, new piers, a traffic concourse for the cross-harbour ferry, and public gardens and promenades, thus continuing the design

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