hey comrade, since you seem knowledgeable on the topic, do you know if there are any plans to further develop the new territories? I was in HK and I saw how much empty space and large single homes were there and I was astonished with the lack of development, not sure if there’s a historical reason for that.
I’m not an expert at all but I know the plan is to keep most of HK as undeveloped woodland.
It’s one of the things that surprises visitors, despite being one of the most densely populated places on earth, 2/3rds of HK is a nature preserve and they plan to keep it that way.
Partly this is because nature is good and the city treasures the green spaces. Which is why you see those funny high rises with a square missing in the center, it’s not actually feng shui it’s because approval often requires that you don’t block the sun and views of the mountains.
But it’s also in part because the mountainous parts are not very suitable for building and they’re prone to mudslides so building up on them would be a bad idea.
It’s actually cheaper and easier to “reclaim” land from the sea which is where most new land comes from, but really it’s increasing density and building up that creates most new housing.
Until 1947 colonial Hong Kong had a rule stating that you could not live on the land overlooking Hong Kong unless you were an expat (rich colonial capitalists).
This caused all elevated land in Hong Kong to become high-value. Today it’s all unbelievably expensive land. And only owned by millionaires and billionaires.
The process for purchasing land in HK is also a tender process, the government announces land sales and then takes bids. Until 2018 all of these bids would go into a box and then the government selects the highest bid from the box. This upholds the “free market” philosophy of the region, which they’re not allowed to change until the end of the agreement made in 1997 with Britain. In 2018 they managed to adjust it so that there was transparency on the bid amounts, so that bidders now don’t go in blind and overbid in order to get the land, its intention is to stop massive price balloons caused by the black box that the process used to be but you and I both know it won’t really solve the issue. The issue is the bidding process in its entirety of course, nobody can develop land this expensive and sell/rent property on that land to recuperate the cost of the land purchase without the properties that are built being absurdly expensive themselves.
hey comrade, since you seem knowledgeable on the topic, do you know if there are any plans to further develop the new territories? I was in HK and I saw how much empty space and large single homes were there and I was astonished with the lack of development, not sure if there’s a historical reason for that.
I’m not an expert at all but I know the plan is to keep most of HK as undeveloped woodland.
It’s one of the things that surprises visitors, despite being one of the most densely populated places on earth, 2/3rds of HK is a nature preserve and they plan to keep it that way.
Partly this is because nature is good and the city treasures the green spaces. Which is why you see those funny high rises with a square missing in the center, it’s not actually feng shui it’s because approval often requires that you don’t block the sun and views of the mountains.
But it’s also in part because the mountainous parts are not very suitable for building and they’re prone to mudslides so building up on them would be a bad idea.
It’s actually cheaper and easier to “reclaim” land from the sea which is where most new land comes from, but really it’s increasing density and building up that creates most new housing.
Until 1947 colonial Hong Kong had a rule stating that you could not live on the land overlooking Hong Kong unless you were an expat (rich colonial capitalists).
This caused all elevated land in Hong Kong to become high-value. Today it’s all unbelievably expensive land. And only owned by millionaires and billionaires.
The process for purchasing land in HK is also a tender process, the government announces land sales and then takes bids. Until 2018 all of these bids would go into a box and then the government selects the highest bid from the box. This upholds the “free market” philosophy of the region, which they’re not allowed to change until the end of the agreement made in 1997 with Britain. In 2018 they managed to adjust it so that there was transparency on the bid amounts, so that bidders now don’t go in blind and overbid in order to get the land, its intention is to stop massive price balloons caused by the black box that the process used to be but you and I both know it won’t really solve the issue. The issue is the bidding process in its entirety of course, nobody can develop land this expensive and sell/rent property on that land to recuperate the cost of the land purchase without the properties that are built being absurdly expensive themselves.