ENG-1973 — Page 151

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LAND AND HOUSING

The programme to acquire these latter properties by negotiation or resumption was continuing.

Some 57 pre-war properties have been demolished during the year, and domestic tenants requiring alternative accommodation have been rehoused.

Environmental Improvement

The year has seen a considerable expansion in environmental improvement proposals with a view to providing open space and government institutional and community facilities in the densely populated urban areas. The three environmental improvement areas already approved by the Governor in Council are the Urban Renewal District (March 7, 1972), Shek Kip Mei (January 18, 1972) and Cheung Sha Wan (November 14, 1972). The plans for these districts cover 1,600 acres and addi- tional environmental improvement proposals were in draft form awaiting approval, including Tai Kok Tsui, Wan Chai, Yau Ma Tei and Kennedy Town.

These projects will require the acquisition of some 1,500 properties in Hong Kong and Kowloon during the coming years. About 230 properties have already been purchased, more than 50 of which were bought in the current year for about $33 million.

Urban Renewal and Improvement

The draft Tak Kok Tsui outline zoning plan will, if approved, eventually neces- sitate the acquisition of 302 properties. Similar arrangements to those applicable to both Wan Chai and Yau Ma Tei would have to be made to deal with property redevelopment which is frustrated by the draft plan. The total compensation costs for these affected properties have been estimated at about $180 million.

Resumption

To enable a large number of projects to proceed, the number of resumptions has increased in both the urban area and in the New Territories. In the urban areas many of the resumptions are for major new highways, which frequently involve the use of the procedure prescribed in the Streets (Alteration) Ordinance. As many highway projects, such as elevated roads, affect land which is fully developed, compensation claims are now more sophisticated and time-consuming both in negotiation and in Compensation Board proceedings.

New Towns

Because of the lack of flat land in the territory, designs for the four new towns now in various stages of development have been based upon general principles of cutting platforms into hill slopes to form terraced sites. The excavated material is then used to fill nearby low-lying land and shallow seabed to form further flat land.

At Kwun Tong, to the east of the Kowloon peninsula, 618 acres of land have been formed in this way since 1955 at a cost of some $89 million. The town is now almost completed, covering an area of 913 acres and housing more than half a million