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Wednesday, April 18, 2018, 16:57
Outside the box
By Peter Liang
Wednesday, April 18, 2018, 16:57 By Peter Liang

The government has listed more than a dozen tracts of land in various parts of Hong Kong that can be used for public housing development.

The total area of those plots exceeds the projected requirement of the government ambitious housing projects. Indeed, as some housing officials have noted before, finding land for public housing is the easy part.

The hard part is to secure public support needed to overcome the expected stiff objections to the development of some land parcels on environmental and myriad other grounds.

It is common knowledge that the easiest and least costly way to create land is through reclamation. In fact, a large proportion of Hong Kong people are living on land reclaimed from the surrounding sea. The business and commercial districts on both sides of the harbor sit on reclaimed land.

But proposals for land reclamation for building more homes have met with howls of protests from environmentalist groups and social activists. They have also mounted vigorous campaigns against proposals to develop the fringe areas of some country parks and under-utilized recreational facilities.

The government has said it would publish detail information of the list of identified tracts of land with development potential for public discussion. At a time when housing prices have soared to level even well-paid young professionals find hard to afford, it would be difficult to find a convincing reason to slam a proposal that could lead to a significant increases in the supply of affordable homes.

By some estimates, Hong Kong would need to build five more mega-sized satellite towns to meet the projected need for housing in coming years. It is important to bear in mind that the existing satellite towns were build on rural land of paddy fields and fish ponds.

No doubt, there was a cost to the environment. Millions of people have moved to these satellite towns and nobody seems to mind the initial cost.


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