The View | Forget reclamation. Hong Kong should build a floating city
- Richard Harris says critics are right to note that massive reclamation in Lantau is too costly to be worth the returns, not to mention the risk of storms triggered by climate change. There’s a better way to make use of our coastal waters
It is a universally acknowledged truth that there is an enormous amount of land in Hong Kong’s New Territories that could be developed. Sitting on a dilapidated but seaworthy boat sipping a rum recently, the whole of Tseung Kwan O lay before me as a large catchment area of poorly utilised land.
The platform itself would cost around HK$5,500 per square foot to build, which translates into at least HK$4 million for a 400 sq ft apartment. That’s 21 years’ salary for the average wage earner – as long as he spends it on nothing else!
In selling off the land, the government gets its money back (presumably to throw it all again into the sea). A few lucky public tenants get to live in very expensive flats and the developers get the rest to flog off at sky-high prices. Wouldn’t it be easier to give money to carefully selected low-wage earners, a slightly larger amount to the engineers, and a huge bag of cash to the property developers – and cut out the middle man?
The net result is that we have spent all our reserves and created just 15 per cent more flats than we have now. I don’t have to take my shoes and socks off to do the counting to see that it is a non-starter.
