Letters | Hong Kong housing crisis: yes to Lantau, no to artificial islands

I am writing in response to the letter, “Why Hong Kong must ditch ‘Lantau Tomorrow’” (November 10).

I do agree it is urgent to build some new towns in Hong Kong, where demand for decent homes is ever increasing and waiting times for public housing are at an all-time high, with hundreds of thousands of applicants on the waiting list. However, few new towns have been built in the last 20 years.

More than 200,000 Hongkongers currently live in subdivided units under deplorable conditions while they wait for public housing. In the meantime, there are plenty of brownfield sites in the New Territories that can easily be taken by using the Lands Resumption Ordinance. When compared with other choices such as developing the edges of country parks, brownfield sites seem to be a more sensible option to ease the land problem, as they can be built up immediately and have existing transport and other infrastructure. Thus, it is an advisable solution in the short term.

Personally, I do think Lantau has the potential to be developed into an urban area because of its favourable location. However, the government’s “Lantau Tomorrow Vision” project only plans to create artificial islands in the middle of the sea between Lantau and Hong Kong Island. I feel the new area will have poor accessibility and suffer transport and traffic bottlenecks.

Furthermore, the project will cost an estimated HK$624 billion (US$80.5 billion), which is a huge amount of money. Japan is expected to spend about that much to build a space elevator to the International Space Station. Moreover, the final bill could be HK$1 trillion by 2025. Hong Kong, with its fiscal reserves severely drained by the pandemic, could put this money to better use, with more immediate help to the community. Public money should help the people, not developers or corporates.