ENG-1993 — Page 29

A RARE ALCHEMY

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Conspicuous among the first of the satellites, along with Tai Po, Yuen Long and Tuen Mun, was Sha Tin, nestling at the foot of a valley where, seemingly not too long ago, rice had been cultivated for the Emperor in Beijing. Sha Tin became something of a test case, and a major publicity campaign was undertaken by its District Office and the Housing Department to lure its pioneer settlers.

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Those due to be rehoused under the resettlement programme provided the - frequently reluctant spearhead of this emigration, followed in due course by private developers, once it was apparent Sha Tin really was fulfilling its promise. And behind these came a wave of business and commercial investors, increasingly convinced that here indeed was an independent, self-contained, fully-serviced township, directly linked by road and rail to the older developed areas just south of the Kowloon foothills.

While architecture and infrastructure served to build the framework of the new town, building the community to inhabit it called for another kind of engineering - social rather than structural. And the government responded to this challenge by developing communal programmes and institutions that would put the pioneer settlers in touch with each other, turning strangers into neighbours and engendering a spirit of shared endeavour that marked the first step towards civic pride.

Sha Tin served as the prototype, not only for other satellites in the New Territories but for architects and town planners from abroad to come and admire. As a major exhibition at the Frankfurt Museum of Architecture demonstrated in November 1993, what has been achieved in Sha Tin is a far cry from the nightmare visions of H.G. Wells and movie maker Fritz Lang when, earlier this century, they respectively conceived their journeys in The Time Machine and to the equally grim fantasy of Metropolis.

Sha Tin and its successors have shown that it is not only possible to house multitudes, humanely, comfortably and decently, in what might once have been regarded as impossibly confined spaces, but that people will readily choose to dwell in such conditions, in order to enjoy the convenience and the accessibility they afford.

What a tribute to the farsightedness, the care, the pride and dedication of the govern- ment planners and architects who designed such a showcase for 20th century living! Unsung public servants, operating from small back rooms away from the public spotlight, they too contracted that contagious Hong Kong infection which drives people to give unremittingly of their best. And they exemplified the spirit of a civil service that, I submit, has been crucial to Hong Kong's success.

One story, so frequently retold it has come to be regarded as apocryphal, relates how that whole development plan for the New Territories came about. It tells of a group of senior civil servants who sat around a dinner table back in the sixties, after a typically exhausting day, to pursue, informally, the problem of what could be done about the growing pressure on diminishing land supply around the main harbour. One of them unfurled his napkin and started sketching in the New Territories and its existing, but meagre, centres of population. Somebody else drew a finger from an approximate Kowloon across an imaginary mountain range and presto! "Let's take a look at that on paper in the morning."

It may not be true, but one would like it to be true, because it rings true.

Which brings me to another change enforced by altered circumstance in the aftermath of World War Two. The style of our administration has been transformed beyond recognition. What that style once was is best captured in the charming reminiscence by