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Written by: Commentary Editing Room
2021-07-13 06:30
Last update date: 2021-07-13 06:30
Last Thursday (July 8), the Solidarity Hong Kong Fund published a report entitled "Speeding Up the Urbanization of the New Territories to Help Hong Kong Innovation Day", stating that the government's current plan can only provide 5,080 hectares of land, which cannot meet the 9,080 hectares of land demand in the next 30 years. Therefore, Advocate "planning large-scale land development with a prudent attitude and macro-thinking", requesting that the "Central Perspective" be removed from the urban planning process to discover the new face of the New Territories, and calling on the government to vigorously increase housing supply while not neglecting "allowable The livability factor for every Hong Kong citizen to live better."
According to the assessment of the Solidarity Hong Kong Fund, there are 3,000 hectares of potential development areas in the New Territories worthy of study. Together with the 500 hectares to strengthen the East Lantau Metropolis and the 2,200 hectares of Cheung Chau South artificial island reclamation, it is believed that an additional 5,700 hectares of developable land can be supplied to Hong Kong.
In addition, the report also criticizes the slow increase in land supply under the current mechanism. This is mainly due to the fact that the Hong Kong government has been neglecting to provide adjacent infrastructure and catering for the interests of local stakeholders. In addition, the relevant administrative procedures are rigid and inefficient, which makes it difficult to implement large-scale development projects in the New Territories. .
The Unity Hong Kong Fund urges the government to study 9 potential development areas in the New Territories.
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The development speed of the new district is slow
The projects in Tai Po, Yuen Long, Fanling and Sheung Shui, Tin Shui Wai, Tseung Kwan O, Tung Chung and other new towns before the reunification. The period from the first concept to the first migration of the population did not exceed ten years, but later the SAR The government’s plans for new development areas such as Kwu Tung North/Fanling North, Hung Shui Kiu, Yuen Long South, "Lantau Tomorrow", Tung Chung New Town Expansion, and New Territories North, without exception, will take more than ten years. And this also requires the assumption that there will be no delays in the specific implementation in the future, which shows that the speed of land development in recent years has indeed been slower than before.
One of the reasons for the slow development of the new district is the lack of a dedicated department to lead the development of related projects.
In the past, when the British Hong Kong government developed new towns, it used to set up a special office for each new town under the Territory Development Department to handle all relevant administrative procedures in a unified manner. In contrast, the current development planning, land administration, and land administration of the same new development area The functions and powers of project supervision are separated by different departments, and the personnel involved are often not required to formulate specific timetables and work indicators.
If the government leadership team really intends to improve this issue, they must think about how to break the above barriers and strengthen the implementation of cross-departmental high-level supervision.
The Solidarity Hong Kong Fund suggested that the government should authorize a central team to handle land planning and development applications in a unified manner, including coordinating the development procedures of various government departments involving public housing and private housing projects.
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Accountability for weak development
However, rather than the mechanism flaws, it may be more important for the senior officials and civil servants in charge to correct their mentality.
Because no matter what systems are implemented, the people themselves are always responsible for implementing them, and if these executors do not have the correct mentality, then no matter how well the system is designed, the results will not help.
For example, as far as the current so-called development mechanism is concerned, if the officials involved do not intend to protect the well-developed urban area and vested interests, it shouldn’t lead to a situation of over-emphasizing Hong Kong and Kowloon and despising the New Territories today. A large number of citizens need to endure the suffering of commuting across districts.
Moreover, apart from the "Central Perspective", the governance team's failure to recognize that it has improved social responsibility has a more profound impact.
The government should work together to achieve good governance and good governance to improve the lives of citizens, but in fact, officials in different positions are only concerned with their own performance evaluation, but with regard to land development, Hong Kong only formulated the "Long Term Housing Strategy" as a quantitative indicator of housing production in the past ten years. Years of experience have taught us that we did not meet the standards and did not have any practical consequences, so we continued to talk about the vision above, and the bureaucratic work below, let the problem delay to the next task.
In fact, two days after the publication of the aforementioned report, Ye Wenqi, head of land and housing research at the Unity Hong Kong Fund, stated on the radio program that he should consider setting annual land grant and unit supply targets, and required relevant departments to be held accountable if they fail to meet the standards.
The "Hong Kong 01" weekly editorial also pointed out earlier that the accountability system of the local governance team is in vain, and the nominal collective responsibility has become that no one needs to be truly responsible.
As for the issue of land development, which is the "top priority", of course, the lack of accountability also exists; only by letting the people who are really responsible to carry out the matter, can the problem be truly solved.
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