The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government issued the final recommendation of "Hong Kong 2030+: Planning Vision and Strategy Transcending 2030", which estimates that the overall land demand from 2019 to 2048 is about 5,790 to 6,210 hectares, but after deducting the supply that has been promoted or is in a more mature planning stage After the option, we still have to face a shortage of 2,580 to 3,000 hectares of land.
In order to solve the problem of tight supply and serious shortage, society must use the available land more effectively, but if you want to do this, it is natural to have comprehensive and open information as the basis.
As early as 2019, the Hong Kong Policy Research Institute and Hong Kong Vision published a research report on "New Ideas in Land Administration: Comprehensively Improve the Land Administration System", criticizing the lack of transparency, openness, reliability and accessibility of land administration information in Hong Kong, and recommending the establishment of The "one-stop" electronic platform allows the public to obtain land data, as well as to compile and disclose the distribution of idle land, the calculation method of "land premium" and other non-transparent information, but these opinions seem to have not been accepted by the Hong Kong government so far.
Should actively organize public information
The most obvious example of arranging land administration data is the private land held collectively by traditional clans and families under the New Territories Ordinance.
Obviously, during the "Land Debate" three years ago, there were opinions that the development-related land restrictions could be relaxed. This year, the Chief Executive Carrie Lam finally agreed in the "Policy Address" to consider revising the "New Territories Ordinance"... The dilemma is difficult to develop," but so far the government seems to be unable to grasp specific statistics.
Carrie Lam and Xu Yingwei met with reporters.
(Photo by Liang Pengwei)
As of July this year, the Secretary for Home Affairs, Xu Yingwei, in reply to questions from Legislative Council members, still stated that "the government has no plan to conduct statistics on the number and area of existing ancestral/tang land in Hong Kong." By this Wednesday (October 20), he He also said, "If Zutang has never contacted the relevant home affairs office, or has not notified the home affairs office about the appointment, resignation or death of the manager, the government will not be able to know...whether his managerial position is vacant and whether he holds land. And the number, area and location of the land held."
If the government really intends to speed up the development of "ancestral halls," it should take the initiative to further organize relevant statistics.
Make good use of technology to update plans in real time
Another related example is the "Plan of Preferential Compensation Zoning for Land in the New Territories".
The government must first make an offer according to the established preferential compensation rate when the government applies the law to recover private land. The specific price is divided into four levels according to the distance between the land and the existing new town or new development area. Make a claim.
In the past, the Lands Department would prepare and publish the above-mentioned plans every year to assist in relevant work, but from this year onwards, it has suddenly stopped relevant arrangements without consultation.
The Secretary for Development, Wong Wai-lun, recently explained that "the relevant plans have no forward-looking effect", that is, it is difficult to show the development planning of the neighbouring areas at the time of land resumption. Therefore, he has decided not to compile and publish the plans and leave it to the public to inspect the compensation mechanism. Define to make judgments.
However, the visual zoning is definitely easier to understand than the text description, not to mention the current technology is sufficient to support the authorities to open and quickly update the relevant plans online.
The government plans to recover about 700 hectares of private wetlands and fish ponds, together with adjacent government land, to establish a multi-functional wetland conservation park.
(Photo by Lu Yiming)
Of course, in recent years, the Hong Kong government has not achieved nothing in the disclosure of land information. For example, the "Hong Kong Geodata Station" launched by the Lands Department in 2018 and the free public distribution of a large number of digital map products through the "Hong Kong Map Service" at the beginning of this year are all very important. This is a commendable move, but there is undoubtedly room for improvement in the types and methods of publishing information, especially on issues that require collaboration with other departments such as "Zutangdi" statistics. I am afraid that the authorities still have to continue their efforts.
Relaxing the resale of "ancestral halls" is not the only option, and guard against changes in the "rules of the game" for Hong Kong land