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Letters | Lantau Tomorrow Vision versus 2030 Plus: what changed in just three years?
- From the amount of land to be reclaimed, to estimates of office space to be created and the impact on transport, the changes in numbers and projections raise questions
From 2014 to 2016, the Hong Kong government conducted an extensive study known as 2030 Plus that updated the city’s development strategy. Led by the Planning Department in cooperation with professionals in the bureaucracy and supported by paid consultants, eight colourful brochures were produced. The result can be reduced to just two key findings. Hong Kong is short of 1,200 hectares of land, and East Lantau Metropolis – with reclamation of 1,000 hectares of land in the waters between east Lantau and Hong Kong – needs to be constructed.
In the three years since the 2030 Plus results were published, its key findings have been disavowed – with changes and no documented substantiation. The government-appointed Task Force for Land Supply – set up in September 2017 and comprising only 22 members – concluded in just about five months that the 2030 Plus effort grossly underestimated the need for land.
Such a claim has long been advocated by Our Hong Kong Foundation, whose executive also happened to be a member of the Land Supply Task Force. On October 10 last year, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced that East Lantau Metropolis had been renamed the Lantau Tomorrow Vision, with 1,700 hectares of land to be reclaimed.
The size of the area the Lantau Tomorrow Vision proposes to reclaim happens to be between that of the East Lantau Metropolis’ 1,000 hectares and the 2,200 hectares advocated by Our Hong Kong Foundation in its Enhanced East Lantau Metropolis proposed in August last year. No supporting data was provided at the time.
As the government prepared to request the Legislative Council to approve HK$550 million in funding to conduct a feasibility study for the Lantau Tomorrow Vision, more drastic changes from the 2030 Plus study were injected. Instead of a 1 million square metre shortage of space for grade A offices and a surplus of almost 5 million for non-central business district office and general business office space requirements reported in the 2030 Plus study, Lantau Tomorrow Vision says it will create an additional 4 million square metres of floor space for commercial activities, again with no documentation supporting the claim.
Similar drastic change is also noted in the study on how the traffic generated by the residents and activities in the Lantau Tomorrow Vision area, northwest New Territories and North Lantau would impact the transport infrastructure.
Within three years, the study completed in 2016 is now considered “obsolete, outdated related to incomplete analysis/ research or no longer applicable as of today”.
Is the government so incompetent that it could get data so wrong after spending millions in taxpayers’ money within such a short time? Or do powerful vested interests have undue inside influence on the formulation of public policy? Can we trust the government’s claims about the Lantau Tomorrow Vision?
Tom Yam, Mui Wo
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