Forget The Peak, visit our public housing
The latest guided tour heads to Sha Tin, where some of the city’s oldest, and many say best, government flats are to be found
Hong Kong's public-housing planning has changed drastically over the years, with some saying that older estates are better thought out and more "people-friendly".
Sha Tin, considered one of the more successfully planned new towns, has borne witness to the changes: 19 public housing estates have been built there between 1972 and 2011.
Now people will have the chance to judge those changes for themselves as a non-governmental organisation is about to start conducting guided tours through the district's different neighbourhoods.
Each estate, like Lek Yuen, built in 1972, and Wo Che - the biggest public estate in Sha Tin, built in 1977 with 6,200 households - was planned with its own primary and secondary schools, cooked-food markets, gardens, locally run shops and wet market.
"It's a very self-sustaining model of community, where residents' needs can be fulfilled within their neighbourhood, and they don't need to travel too far out to find what they need," says Patrick Lee Wai-pong, Sha Tin resident and project officer at the Conservancy Association Centre for Heritage, or Cache for short.
Lee is leading the tours, starting in mid-February, under the association's "Embracing Heritage - Jockey Club Community Cultural Heritage Programme".