Letters | Hong Kong doesn’t need two ‘metropolises’ to solve the housing crisis

Readers discuss the need for the Lantau Tomorrow Vision in the face of the Northern Metropolis proposal, and the city’s immediate problem of worsening air pollution

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A view of an oyster farming area in Lau Fau Shan in the New Territories on January 25, with Shenzhen in the misty background. The village has been earmarked for transformation in the government’s Northern Metropolis plan. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 2:30pm, 11 Feb 2022Updated: 4:21pm, 11 Feb 2022

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The northern metropolis project is one of the large-scale plans Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor proposed in her last policy address and it has received a fair bit of attention in recent months. The plan covers an area of 30,000 hectares and proposes to create an innovation and technology hub as well as a residential area providing over 900,000 residential units for some 2.5 million people near the border with mainland China.

That part of Hong Kong has long been a sleepy border area with farmland and brownfield sites. It is a great waste that such a big portion of land for agricultural or industrial use is so sparsely populated. This rural land stands in stark contrast to the land nearby in Shenzhen, which is a highly concentrated residential and commercial area with numerous skyscrapers.

Not long ago, the government proposed the Lantau Tomorrow Vision to ease the dire need for housing, a project that would involve building 1,700 hectares of artificial islands to provide up to 260,000 flats in the first phase.

It is an ambitious and controversial plan, which attracted immense public opposition because it would involve massive land reclamation that could have a devastating impact on our environment.

Moreover, there is not even a concrete timeline and road map for the megaproject. Infrastructure projects in Hong Kong are notorious for their delays and cost overruns. Therefore, the Lantau Tomorrow Vision is a far from ideal response to the urgent need for housing in Hong Kong. Most importantly, the cost of the project could amount to around HK$1 trillion, an astronomical amount for taxpayers.

It is shocking that the government did not use readily available land in the past decade, but instead plans to reclaim massive areas of land from the sea to resolve the city’s chronic housing shortage.