How poor planning leaves Hong Kong's new housing estates with inadequate infrastructure
Residents fret as they move into new housing estates, but find there are not enough school places, transport links and open space in their district; not-in-my-backyard attitudes complicate matters
Whenever he reads about new housing plans being rolled out, headmaster Mak Tin-chi cannot help but think back to the summer of 2009 when he found himself caught in the thick of one such development.
Just weeks earlier, he had been turning down three out of four applications from parents seeking places for their children at his school. He did not have enough places. But then the Education Bureau came knocking, less than a month before the school year opened. It ordered him to add one more class. Mak dutifully obeyed the call. But even then many children still had to be turned away.
The sudden spike in demand for places at his Jordan Valley St Joseph's Catholic Primary School came about because it was the only such facility in the new public rental estate of Choi Ying. It was moved from Choi Hung to its present location in Kowloon Bay in 2009. The year before, 10,000 residents moved into Choi Ying.
But the amenities had not caught up with the population. The result: not enough schools and no buses even to serve the route to the only school in the area. "It was about population planning," Mak lamented. Since that summer, the class size at his school has grown from 25 to 32, contrary to the Education Bureau's original plan to reduce class sizes in the district.
St Joseph's story is typical of new towns, analysts say. And its woes are just one of the myriad town planning problems encountered in recent years.