Letters to the Editor, February 8, 2014

I refer to the report ("Felling of iconic tree angers activists", January 24). It is not only activists, but all Hongkongers who value their living environment who will feel sad and angry that these old banyan trees have been hacked down.

The walls and wide steps connected Nam Koo Terrace to the Hung Shing Temple which sits at the original Wan Chai shoreline on the tail of a characteristic rock spur formation running through the site from the mountainside above Bowen Road.

The wall trees and these solid granite relics were recognised as the finest on Hong Kong island. This evocative locality is being sacrificed for tourists and shopping. It is ironic that our government is destroying cultural heritage that strongly appeals to foreign visitors in order to accommodate a tourist hotel.

In most world cities, architects would give "their right arms" for such a unique opportunity to sympathetically integrate a modern hotel into this topography, with its impressive old stone structures and mature wall trees.

Here in Wan Chai, we can only expect a massive podium and concrete, glass and tiling and weak replacement trees in bunkers with no root room. But more than a failure of architecture, this represents a failure of government.

This development required much public land, and the Town Planning Board's conditions of approval required a landscaping plan, tree felling report, and a public park at Ship Street.