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The northern metropolis wins "Lantau Tomorrow"

2021-10-18T10:22:23.590Z


Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor received an exclusive newspaper interview recently and was asked if the Housing Association’s research on the borders of country parks was inadequate in the early days of taking office. She retorted that because country parks are popular with locals and overseas tourists,


Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was interviewed by the newspaper a few days ago. When she was asked if the Housing Association’s research on the borders of country parks was inadequate in the early days of taking office, she retorted that because country parks are popular with locals and overseas tourists, they did not reach the final stage. No need to destroy country parks.


In addition, she also emphasized that there are more than 16,000 hectares of green belts between country parks and urban areas. Therefore, as usual, priority should be given to these green belts rather than country parks.

Regarding being questioned about taking care of country parks but agreeing to develop wetland buffer zones to relax plot ratios, she pointed out that the current proposals are all forward-looking development strategies, and that they should be confronted with a positive attitude when they should be developed.


In fact, country parks are protected by the "Country Parks Ordinance." You need to consult the Country Parks and Marine Parks Committee before changing land use. Therefore, even if you do not stop the research on the border areas of country parks, you will still have to face complicated procedures, which may not help increase Overall land development.

But more importantly, it proves that the government has the power and ability to suspend research or policies that it considers unsuitable to continue to implement.

"Lantau Tomorrow" does not meet current needs

Although the new "Policy Address" still carries out work related to the "Lantau Tomorrow" study as usual, the importance of the former has obviously been compared since the northern metropolitan area was proposed.

The cost of the entire "Lantau Tomorrow" project is not only as high as 620 billion yuan, and the first batch of housing is expected to be occupied in 2034 at the earliest. In response to the current shortage of land supply, it is obvious that distant water is difficult to put in place.

This does not count the potential environmental problems that it has been criticized for, such as threats to the habitat of the Chinese White Dolphin.

As the Chief Executive said in response, there are still a large number of green belts between country parks and urban areas that can be inspected for use. This actually means that Hong Kong actually has a lot of potential land for development. "The most direct method of land" is simply untenable as an opinion in support of reclamation, because Hong Kong is not without land at all, but just out of place.

In view of this, the government should actually focus on studying how to develop existing land instead of blindly relying on reclamation projects.

The current plan for the northern metropolitan area has the ability to supplement the "Lantau Tomorrow" project. At the moment when the second phase of the 700-hectare reclamation project on Lantau Tomorrow has not yet started, the government must rethink the overall interests of the society. Whether the plan is still worthy of execution, or is it more like the research rapids on the borders of country parks at that time, and the research should be terminated.

The right to land development should be responded to by the government and the people should respond to the government’s efforts to build housing, not to make the land empty to the moon. The ecological conservation policy should be implemented in the policy address. There is only one key point in the northern metropolitan area: how to implement it.

Source: hk1

All news articles on 2021-10-18

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