Government planners are ruining Hong Kong

The plan to turn Des Voeux Road into a pedestrian and tram precinct is one of the most imaginative urban planning schemes to emerge in Hong Kong for some time. So congratulations to the Hong Kong Institute, the Civic Exchange and others involved in the project.

Let's hope the government buys into the idea and proceeds with it. But it is the government that will be the main sticking point with this. So many projects and proposals are shuffled around numerous departments for years in a kind of bureaucratic "pass the project" game or spend years in a limbo known as "public consultation".

It has become apparent over the past few years that it is very difficult to get anyone in the civil service to stick their necks out and say, "this is a good idea - lets do it".

It is true some good projects do make it through the gauntlet of government bureaucracy. The pedestrianisation of Stanley was achieved within about 18 months from inception to conclusion. However, that was some years ago and as we have remarked before, Hong Kong is choking on its bureaucracy, so we are not expecting rapid progress on this.

We have only to look at the harbour to see what a mess our planners have made of it. Take a stroll from the central ferry piers east towards the Convention and Exhibition Centre.

If you're feeling meditative then you've come to the right place because you can brood undisturbed by others, because hardly anyone goes there. How this could have become such a dead area on the edge of one of the world's finest harbours is barely conceivable in what is supposed to be Asia's World City. It is a monument to the awful governance and planning that pervades this city.

Right in the middle of this stretch of prime waterfront we come across a fenced-off eyesore which extends for 150 metres blocking the view. This is the area reserved for the PLA pier. This will be there for some time as we know our civil servants are terrified of doing anything they think will offend the central government.

As for facilities along this stretch of waterfront there is one paltry kiosk. Since this area is deemed "open space" it is run by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department which is prohibited from setting up commercial operations though kiosks are allowed. It is hard to imagine any other so-called World City so badly screwing up prime waterfront within walking distance of the central business district. It is a wasted opportunity.

Not content with producing the most boring harbour front of any world city, the so called Urban Renewal Authority is busy flattening older areas with character, diversity and street life, and erecting sterile high rise towers. This is to be the fate of the area taking in Graham Street and Peel Street, near Central, an interesting location filled with diverse activity and interesting street life. But the people have been paid compensation and will move out. There ought to be a balance between large-scale development and smaller low-rise development.

What Hong Kong needs in these older areas is regeneration - which maintains communities - not tycoon-led redevelopment which kills them. But our government doesn't see it like that. Anywhere which isn't built up to its allowable plot ratio should be redeveloped - a game which brings in revenue for the government and profits for developers.

So why is this happening? In our opinion it is because the civil service has got out of control. They all have a vested interest in keeping this process going. It keeps them in jobs and pensions and maintains their control over the territory. Years ago some 10 new towns were built and this was achieved without a development bureau or a planning department. Now we have all these departments and thousands more civil servants and we can't even produce a decent harbour frontage.

The Hong Kong government has become a victim of the silo effect, where everybody works away within their own departments furthering their own interests at the expense of the community at large. Nobody is able to sit back and take a sensible view of what's going on.

If this kind of development continues we are going to end up with a bland undifferentiated city with all the interest and diversity sucked out of it by the relentless march of the plot ratio planners. So here's to the Des Voeux Road project but we're not holding our breath.

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