Letters | Carrie Lam’s Lantau Tomorrow Vision is riven with contradictions that defeat its purpose

Seldom has so colossal a project costing so much been decided in so short a time after such shoddy analysis. The government will be requesting at least HK$500 million to undertake a feasibility study of the Lantau Tomorrow project, which involves reclaiming 1,700 hectares of land in the central water passageway off east Lantau. The government says this land will be used to build a township for up to 1.1 million people with 400,000 housing units and 340,000 jobs. The capital cost is estimated at HK$500 billion but could rise to HK$1 trillion.

Ever since the initial version of this project, the East Lantau Metropolis, was announced in 2014 by former chief executive Leung Chun-ying, the core data provided by the government has been four numbers: the size of the reclaimed area, the number of residents, the number of housing units and the number of jobs created. On the basis of these four numbers, the government and supporters of the project make sweeping claims about how it will be a game-changer for Hong Kong. Yet, all their arguments run into contradiction.

Claim: Lantau Tomorrow will meet the needs of population growth. Contradiction: According to the Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong’s population will peak at 8.22 million in 2043 and decline to 7.7 million by 2066, while the project will provide excessive capacity, for a population of 9.4 million.