Hong Kong must support building in country parks to ease crisis: development secretary
The development secretary has once again floated the controversial idea of flattening parts of country parks in order to build flats as a means to ease Hong Kong's housing shortage.
Hong Kong must get behind the idea of building on a limited amount of green land in order to provide adequate housing for all, the development secretary said yesterday as he again pushed for development in Hong Kong's country parks.
Paul Chan Mo-po admitted that the idea would be greeted with reservation, but said there was "no magic wand" for increasing land supply in the short term. Green areas, he said, could be a major source of land.
He said society needed to face up to the reality "as one" in order to provide housing, and that every effort would be made to miniise the impact of building on green land.
Zeman said about 3-5 per cent - "a small fraction" - of country parks should be allocated for this purpose.
Schemes such as promoting new development in areas such as Kwu Tung North, Fanling North and Hung Shui Kiu, researching the potential of using land in the northern New Territories and planning the long-term development of Lantau needed the support of "everyone and the Legislative Council", he argued.
Chan, who suggested the idea in a post on his official blog yesterday, wrote that Hong Kong's hills posed a hindrance to housing development.