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Lantau Tomorrow Vision
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Letters | Why build artificial islands for Hong Kong housing when school sites lie vacant?

  • Since 2011, the Planning Department has reviewed vacant school sites and made recommendations on how these should be used. But the Hong Kong government has yet to act on many of them

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A child takes part in an NGO-led demonstration outside the venue for a public forum on tenancy control of subdivided units, in Mong Kok on November 1. The average wait for public housing in Hong Kong has risen to 5.6 years, forcing many to live in poorly maintained subdivided flats in rundown urban buildings. Photo: Winson Wong
Letters
With reference to Lo Wai Kong’s “How developing Lantau further today can avoid reclamation tomorrow” (December 13), we agree with your correspondent that the government should explore how Lantau Island can be further developed for housing and commercial use, before moving forward with the hugely controversial Lantau Tomorrow Vision reclamation project.
We also believe that the government should review how the Planning Department makes recommendations on vacant school sites and turn them into housing projects, thus avoiding the risk of depleting the city’s fiscal reserves to construct artificial islands. To ensure the city’s scarce land resources are fully utilised, the department must provide more information on how recommendations are made under the Central Clearing House (CCH) mechanism and develop action plans to follow up on those recommendations.
With declining birth rates and admission numbers, numerous schools in Hong Kong have been closed or merged, leaving the school sites vacant and available for other uses. Since 2011, the Planning Department has reviewed 234 such sites and made recommendations on how these sites should be used productively under the CCH mechanism.

04:11

Tiny 290sq ft temporary housing a welcome upgrade for some low-income Hong Kong families

Tiny 290sq ft temporary housing a welcome upgrade for some low-income Hong Kong families

Despite the acute shortage of land for housing, the Planning Department allocated as much as 77 per cent (181) of the “vacant school premise” sites for “government, institution, or community” use.

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In response to our inquiry about why the sites are not being used for housing, the department explained that a site needs to achieve certain standards for location, compatibility with the surrounding land, and transport to be recommended for a housing project. Regrettably, the department could not provide further information for the public to review and debate its decisions on how vacant school sites should be allocated.

Among the 234 vacant school sites, including 43 that are partly or wholly held by private owners, 64 sites have not been put to productive use despite the recommendations made by the government. According to the Planning Department, land owners have the right to decide how to use the sites. As a result, the government has no policy option to prevent the sites from remaining idle indefinitely.
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For the CCH mechanism to achieve its purpose of ensuring the sites are not wasted, the government should set up an interdepartmental agency to review and act on the recommendations made by the Planning Department.

Yuechen Wang, Simon Wang, Kowloon Tong

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