Concrete Analysis | How Tuen Mun shakes off underdog status to become future apex of a new golden triangle

Tuen Mun is currently undergoing a transformation that is shifting the city’s dynamics and role in the Greater Bay Area, the district in northwest New Territories is set to become the apex of a new ‘golden triangle’ of flows to and from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Macau and Zhuhai.

Today, Tuen Mun is comparable to Quarry Bay before its regeneration. Since the 1970s, a wave of urban transformations swept over Quarry Bay – the former Taikoo dockyard became Taikoo Shing, the Swire Coca-Cola bottling plant transformed into the Kornhill Apartments, and the Taikoo sugar refinery, which fed Asia’s sweet tooth for 90 years, was redeveloped into Taikoo Place.

Tuen Mun is currently occupied by a coal-fired power plant, a cement plant, a steel mill, a jet fuel storage depot, an eco-park recycling area, and the Tuen Mun River trade terminal; however, it’s on the edge of undergoing a transformation as profound as the one that swept Quarry Bay over 50 years ago.

Quarry Bay experienced the obsolescence of labour intensive manufacturing industries and the emergence of a middle class aspiring to improved housing conditions and growth through white collar jobs. While Tuen Mun might experience similar changes, it is now emerging as the key staging ground in creating closer physical strategic links critical to Hong Kong’s integration with the Greater Bay Area.

The period between 2007 to 2010 was a turning point in the acceleration of Tuen Mun’s development, the district acquired the status of being a gateway to mainland China through the opening of the Shenzhen Western Corridor, and the highways department issued a formal proposal to undertake the Tuen Mun – Chek Lap Kok Link. Elsewhere, Tuen Mun’s Waterfront Site 46, designated to be used by the funeral industry, was rezoned into a modern logistics hub through local lobbying and support from organisation like Heung Yee Kuk.

By 2012, many of these changes were compounded by the strong turnaround of Hong Kong’s residential market, which led to a growing interest by local developers to purchase and invest in Tuen Mun, and the opening of the Harrow International School in So Kwun Wat. Interest in the Tuen Mun market persisted through 2015 to 2018, during which three major mainland Chinese developers and more recently the Goodman Group decided to take a stake in the area.