An independent lobby group of professionals is urging the government to first develop underused and polluted rural sites - which together make up an area equivalent to half of the Kowloon peninsula - before resorting to reclamation.
These 'brownfield' sites would provide a quicker solution to the land shortage problem than reclamation, which the government is proposing, The Professional Commons said yesterday.
Such sites cover 803 hectares and are concentrated in four districts: Yuen Long, Northern District, Tuen Mun and Tai Po, according to research conducted by the group. The term brownfield refers to sites left idle or abandoned after industrial or commercial use, where soil, groundwater and streams are contaminated.
'While brownfield is an important concept in land development in the United States and the United Kingdom, our government doesn't keep the data and often mixes up brownfield sites with abandoned agricultural land,' Chan Kim-ching, a researcher from the group, said.
The Professional Commons spent a month using geographical data to locate the sites on an aerial photo of the New Territories taken by the Lands Department in November.
The mapping exercise found 463 of the 803 hectares were being used for waste storage and sorting purposes. Another 178 hectares were occupied by cargo containers and the rest are being used as car parks or for container truck parking.
Chan said overseas governments that kept track of brownfield sites put priority on reusing them before opening up undisturbed land so as to protect the environment.