BE prepared for a shock if you think that Hong Kong is already overcrowded. Government planners say our tiny city could potentially house 10 million people, compared with the current six million.
And if we keep an open mind as to how technology can increase the territory's carrying capacity, 10 million is not necessarily the absolute limit.
The figure is not one that the Government often bandies about, and there is currently no plan to increase the population to that level.
But stacked on the shelves of the Planning Department are studies on how the territory could cope if population growth ran out of control.
The disclosure of Hong Kong's 'maximum' carrying capacity was first made in 1984 by the then Principal Government Town Planner J. M. Wigglesworth at a conference on urban growth. 'Sub-regional studies have indicated recently that there is sufficient land potential to house 10 million people at current densities, 4.5 million in the metropolitan area alone,' he said.
It is not certain what were the precise density levels to which Mr Wigglesworth was referring, but the Government's annual report for 1984 said the population density of the metro area, encompassing Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, New Kowloon and Tsuen Wan, was 28,479 per sq km in 1983. In the most crowded district of Shamshuipo, the density level was 165,445 per sq km.
Since then, urban population density dropped to 26,180 per sq km last year because of migration to the New Territories, where the density level rose from 792 per sq km to 2,790 per sq km between 1983 and 1993.