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Opinion | Hong Kong has the land to solve its housing crisis. It just needs the courage to act
- Mega projects like the Northern Metropolis and proposals to build on the fringes of country parks and utilise brownfield sites show land can be found
- The city needs to show boldness and determination to change ideas around land use and planning to fix its persistent housing shortage
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Recently, public debate on whether golf courses, green belts or peripheral areas of country parks should be converted into land for housing has resurfaced. If such debate is anything to go by, this reflects one issue: land use and housing are still thorny issues in Hong Kong.
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There are several yardsticks usually used to demonstrate the severity of the city’s land and housing problems. They include the long waiting time for general applicants for public housing – six years on average now – the more than 220,000 people living in horrible conditions in subdivided flats, and the astronomical prices of private residential housing, meaning ordinary Hongkongers have to save every cent for at least 20 years to accumulate enough just for a down payment.
Most people attribute this less-desirable side of “Asia’s world city” to the scarcity of land for building homes, but I don’t believe this is really the root of the problem. On the contrary, Hong Kong does not lack land supply per se. Rather, the challenge is to be determined, fast and cost-effective in turning land that is available into homes for the people.
Why do I say this? Hong Kong is about 1.5 times larger than Singapore, a city state often referred to as one of its competitors. Hong Kong covers about 1,100 sq km compared to around 720 sq km for Singapore.
Taking topography into account, both cities have comparable amounts of usable land as well as similarly sized populations – Hong Kong has around 7.4 million people; Singapore, 5.4 million. Yet, Singapore is not struggling with housing problems. Why has it been able to effectively use its limited land resources to build homes for its citizens, while it remains a challenge for us to explore using every square inch of our land?
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Hong Kong has until 2049 to fix its housing crisis, but is it possible?
Hong Kong has until 2049 to fix its housing crisis, but is it possible?
Again, numbers can shed light on this. Singapore’s nature reserves, akin to our country parks, occupy around 4.5 per cent of the city’s total land area whereas Hong Kong country parks account for nearly 40 per cent of our land.
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