REVIEW
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surroundings, and the less sophisticated country people come to know their new neighbours. To cushion the impact of town on country, the Government is determined to avoid, wherever possible, a policy of urban development at the expense of agriculture. The principle underlying the current surveys is the provision of new land rather than the re- development of what is already being utilized, and the engineers are briefed to report on what can be done through the reclamation of shallow water and mangrove swamp and the opening up of unproductive hill areas.
The sites chosen for current new town surveys are all on the mainland, but the planners' eyes are already on Lantao, with 58 square miles the largest of the islands in the Colony's waters. Lack of communications has hitherto deterred any large-scale development of this island. With an engineering investigation for another great reservoir in progress in the south-western tip of the island, however, and with its first five miles of surfaced highway already com- pleted, the possibilities of Lantao appear more attractive and industrialists are examining development prospects there.
For the present, in terms of size and social importance, the North Point Housing Estate is undoubtedly the most significant building completed in Hong Kong in 1957. Its three great blocks of flats, each eleven storeys high, built at a cost of $33,000,000, rise sheer above the waters of Kowloon Bay. The mass of concrete, 100 feet high and extending for more than a quarter of a mile, could be dull, even forbidding; but the architect has skilfully avoided the obvious by dividing the whole project into three deeply- indented blocks, and by tinting the facades of each block with coloured balconies. One of the chief aims of the designer has been to ensure light and air for the 1,955 flats at North Point.
Vast as the statistics of North Point are, the main purpose of the scheme has not been lost among estimates and blue- prints. That purpose, simply, is to put a roof over the head
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