Building Boom In Hong Kong

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30959, 15 January 1966, Page 5

Building Boom In Hong Kong

From a "Sydney Morning Herald” Correspondent tn Hong Kong] JJONG KONG is building a multi-level “township” for 51,000 people on only 29 acres of land.

The township is In reality a housing estate, but because of its relative isolation from the nearest town of Aberdeen, one and a half miles away, the estates will have a town centre and will be almost completely self-contained. This will save heavy traffic between the estates and Aberdeen when it is completed four years from now.

The £330,000 town centre will have a community hall, a three-storey department store, a restaurant, and an eightlane bowling alley, a multistorey car park, banks, barber shops and other amenities. The estates, to be known as Wah Fu —the picture above is of a model —will provide 7500 apartments for people on middle incomes of from £33 to £75 a month. Rents have not yet been decided but will probably range from £4 to £l2 as in other estates, depending on the tenant’s income.

An unusual feature of the estate is that it will be built on a headland with the sea on three sides. The steep banks on which it is being built will be terraced to provide recreation areas for the people living on the estate and the beaches below will be developed for the inhabitants to use.

The view from the estate is superb. It looks across a narrow channel to Lamma island with the distant Po Toi group of islands on the horizon. It is one of the most attractive parts of Hong Kong island, with a southerly aspect and near the fishing town of Aberdeen, popular with every foreign tourist who comes to Hong Kong because of its floating res-

taurants where fish meals are served. The town centre in the estates will feature a trafficfree podium on its main deck leading to clinics, a 20-bed maternity home, banks and shops. Also on the main deck will be the department store. Other features of the town centre will be a public library and market stalls, while in other parts of the estate four primary schools will be built. On the lower tiers there will be the youth centre, the bowling alley and the milk and coffee bars. The estate will have a 60ft clock tower surrounded with seats, flowers and shrubs and there will be a bus terminus below the podium. The project, which is administered by the Urban Council’s Housing Authority, will cost an estimated £7.5 million and will be one of the showplaces of Hong Kong.

\ Many other estates have been built, but never has anything on such a grand scale been attempted. The town centre drew praise from one of Hong Kong's urban councillors, Mr A. de O. Sales, who said that it would enable many of the inhabitants to “enjoy pursuits which normally they would not be able to realise.” “While we are housing them, we must also raise their living standards. We must develop a township which will have amenities for modern living,” he said. The use of this rocky headland for a massive housing estate is typical of the way in which Hong Kong is forced to develop its land. While the Colony is a little more than 398 square miles in area, only 5.5 per cent of this is built-up and 28 per cent is rocky, precipitous hill-

side or mountain and another 41 per cent hilly grass or scrubland. Moreover, Hong Kong’s total area includes many islands, few of which support more than a handful of fishermen or farmers, and many are uninhabited. Only a few have regular ferry connexions with Kowloon or Hong Kong. Millions of pounds have been spent in the post-war years knocking down hills to make flat land for urban and industrial development, and dumping the soil into the sea to widen the narrow coastal strips on which the vast majority of Hong Kong’s four million people live. As a result, the emphasis on building has been heavily on multistorey construction. But the Wah Fu estate is not just a series of multistorey apartment blocks as the accompanying picture shows, but a multi-level township.