Letters | Lantau Tomorrow Vision versus 2030 Plus: what changed in just three years?

From 2014 to 2016, the Hong Kong government conducted an extensive study known as 2030 Plus that updated the city’s development strategy. Led by the Planning Department in cooperation with professionals in the bureaucracy and supported by paid consultants, eight colourful brochures were produced. The result can be reduced to just two key findings. Hong Kong is short of 1,200 hectares of land, and East Lantau Metropolis – with reclamation of 1,000 hectares of land in the waters between east Lantau and Hong Kong – needs to be constructed.

In the three years since the 2030 Plus results were published, its key findings have been disavowed – with changes and no documented substantiation. The government-appointed Task Force for Land Supply – set up in September 2017 and comprising only 22 members – concluded in just about five months that the 2030 Plus effort grossly underestimated the need for land.

Such a claim has long been advocated by Our Hong Kong Foundation, whose executive also happened to be a member of the Land Supply Task Force. On October 10 last year, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced that East Lantau Metropolis had been renamed the Lantau Tomorrow Vision, with 1,700 hectares of land to be reclaimed.

The size of the area the Lantau Tomorrow Vision proposes to reclaim happens to be between that of the East Lantau Metropolis’ 1,000 hectares and the 2,200 hectares advocated by Our Hong Kong Foundation in its Enhanced East Lantau Metropolis proposed in August last year. No supporting data was provided at the time.