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The wrong attitude to 'progress'

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To be great, a city must have a past and a future: they give the place its character and identity. Yet, with all that it possesses, Hong Kong seems suspended in the short-term present, with its unique history rapidly slipping into oblivion and its future as hazy as its air.

Hong Kong's history is unique. Nowhere else does one see east meet west the way it does here. Nowhere else does one find the same cultural complexity - and the potential for development into something unprecedented.

Hong Kong has every incentive to pursue its own destiny as a great city, and one that is great to live in. It is, therefore, all the more frustrating that it seems to be going nowhere.

The fundamental problem is that the government clings to a hopelessly out-of-date idea of development as a continuous building programme on every available inch of saleable land. There is no merit in these characterless, identical and vulgar malls and commercial or residential blocks. It is doubtful whether yet another six-lane highway is the solution to traffic jams.

This outdated attitude is reflected in the way development and conservation have become polarised here in Hong Kong.

In other parts of the world, people and governments have long taken on board the need for both: for development to be conservation-conscious, and for conservation to recognise the need for economic viability. They have drawn up procedures, rules and regulations to help them achieve development that does not do violence to nature or heritage, or to the original character of the place.

Underlying the government's attitude towards development is, no doubt, the old magical formula of public finance. The colonial government discovered land sales as a source of revenue. Our current administration finds it hard to come up with a substitute.

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