ENG-1964 — Page 25

14

REVIEW

number of people were able to watch the ceremony and many more followed the live television and radio broadcasts.

The year has not been all formality and great issues. Hong Kong has helped to solve its fundamental problems by becoming a thriving manufacturing and trading metropolis and in the process has acquired appropriate standards and ambitions. In the field of housing, for example, while the paramount need is for massive cheap housing development, our society now numbers very many people in the middle income ranges who have their own special needs. Recognition of this led to the formation of a mortgage loan corporation to finance approved home buying for the $900 to $2,000 a month income group. Capital and loan finance of £1 million will be put up by the Commonwealth Development Corpora- tion and a similar sum by the Government. Other funds will come from local banks.

A traffic problem sometimes seems to be one of the status symbols of a developed society. By world standards our traffic jams may be little more than local irritations but there is quite enough to keep two advisory committees, on traffic and passenger transport, extremely busy. On the advice of the latter committee Government has engaged the services of experts from the Road Research Laboratory in Britain to conduct a full passenger transport survey as a firm basis for future planning. It began in August and will cost nearly $2.5 million. The constriction of traffic is, of course, more than a mere irritation. In a business community like ours it can be extremely wasteful. But even if we could devote to the solution of traffic problems a higher priority than our other pre- occupations will permit, we have less room than anyone else in the world to indulge in the easy solutions. Mile-wide clover-leaves are not for us but our planners are nevertheless producing some remark- able layouts for those areas in which there is still room to manoeuvre. In September the traffic engineers unveiled plans to ease congestion in the Central District on Hong Kong Island with a complex of new roads and no less than seven fly-overs. Even bolder planning is associated with the ambitious scheme for the re-development of the former naval dockyard land in the Central District. The return of this land to public use has opened up new possibilities for development and the intention is that the whole area, which is more than 13 acres, should be treated as a whole, Tenders have