Good Planning in the New Territories should reflect the liveability aspiration

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Good Planning in the New Territories should reflect the liveability aspiration

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Good Planning in the New Territories should reflect the liveability aspiration of the people powered by a practical and bold revamp of the Land Administration system

Lucy Kwan & Leslie Lee, Tanner Hill Workshop, North Point
PROPOSED APPROACH

Under “one country, two systems”, Hong Kong needs a unified land administration system for Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories, as part of a sound housing policy.

Good liveability, in terms of living space per capita, work opportunities, and access to education and other facilities, should all be considered in a holistic planning system that has a good understanding of the overall socio-economic development road map.

For better integration with the Greater Bay Area, the New Territories planning team should have a high-level coordination with Shenzhen. The relevant Hong Kong government departments and business associations should meet their Shenzhen counterparts to explore development, business, and social opportunities for citizens on both sides.
Planning of Hong Kong’s New Development Areas (NDA) must include a high-level strategic approach on both housing and economic development. Work opportunities in the area will reduce the need for long journeys and address the current northbound-southbound commuting imbalance.
For New Development Areas, we suggest that the ratio of subsidized to private housing should be no less than 70:30. (Currently, it is 45:55.)
In planning the New Territories, the government should involve business associations in working out a development strategy for different economic sectors especially on the locational requirements of land-intensive users such as the logistics industry and other distributive trade industry such as repair, recycling, and storage. Economic sectoral planning & thus job creation supported by the in-tandem on-the-ground land administration efforts should be the foremost steps in addressing the housing and liveability problems we are now facing.

While the public coffer is paying for most of the infrastructures to facilitate the high-density development of the New Development Areas (over HKD120billion for Northeast New Territories NDA to be spent over some 20 years), that doesn’t mean that the landowners should not be allowed to share the benefits of up-zoning. And from the political point of view, to rally for the support of landowners for development, the government needs to provide more incentives instead of just by resumption with legal coercion. The Letter M below represents a fairer mechanism by allowing landowners to share the benefits of developments - the appreciation of land values through up-zoning.

Such practices will unleash the potential of the New Territories’ land bank while encouraging northward migration within Hong Kong, whether as part of the environmental narrative of living in a natural heritage setting, or the economic narrative of tapping the business potential of the Greater Bay Area

PROPOSED RELATED CHANGES IN THE CURRENT LAND ADMINSTRATION SYSTEM

Owing to the rapid changes in the economic structure of Hong Kong since the 1960s, majority of the agricultural land are either abandoned or used for non-agricultural purposes. We propose Government to critically review all the agricultural land in the New Territories. For some good quality arable land at suitable location, such land could continuously be designated for agricultural purposes. For the rest of the current abandoned or non-agricultural land, it could be released for more meaningful purposes and designated for other appropriated zoning on the relevant Outline Zoning Plans.

Under the circumstances where land resumption is required for public purposes such as provision of public housing, GIC facilities and major infrastructure, the affected landowners are mandated to participate according to the current provisions of the Land Resumption Ordinance. Such landowners can be compensated in cash on special preferential rate for agricultural land or alternatively through a “land exchange” scheme. We propose a letter M scheme to address concerns over the fairness of the current land resumption system.

Under “Letter M” proposed by Dr Albert So Chun-hin, a former district land officer, owners of agricultural-land who surrender their land would be given a letter of right to cash out at the current value of “agricultural-land” set periodically by the government or use the value to bid at a future land auction. The Letter M is an enhanced version of the once popular and now defunct “Letter B” with designs to overcome the latter’s shortcomings. Land resumed with Letter M should be amalgamated into bigger plots of land inside a more coherent New Development Area. We propose to allocate certain plots of lands within the NDAs to be designated for holders of certain amounts of Letter M to bid, i.e., all bidders must have received enough Letter M from the government or acquired enough through the open market. That way a market for Letter M will be formed accordingly. We would even further suggest that the government should operate a Letter M transaction quotation board to register all transactions and make the market more transparent than the former Letter A and B markets.

The logic is as followed. The original landowner should be able to capture part of the land value enhancement through development to incentivise them to support the development and smoothen the land resumption process. However, the government must utilize substantial public finance resource to realise the planning by providing the necessary infrastructures including railway connection, public roads, water supplies, drainage and sewerage services, and other education, social and human services to make the NDAs liveable. Therefore, the public coffer has borne a large proportion of the development costs and it is fair that the government should have a say in the overall planning of the whole NDA. To enhance the NDA planning, the government should reserve the right to reconfiguring the land parcels according to the planning principles of the day. Private landowners with Letter M, either from the government directly or acquired through open market, should be allowed to participate in the development and enjoy the benefits of development. The likely supporters include big developers when they foresee the potential to create high value-added projects as well as the small landowners who might be relieved from day-to-day management of their low-usage asset including patrol against infringement.

The big challenge in land administration is the matter of industrial entities on “brownfield” land. Unlike in the West, the term “brownfield” does not denote disused land in Hong Kong. Rather, it is part of our economic ecosystem. Their relocation requires comprehensive planning to address the locational and operational needs of their respective industries. As such, government efforts to facilitate searching for appropriate reprovisioning accommodation, coordinate availability of necessary infrastructural support and environmental mitigation measures including relocation compensation package such as temporary rental fees, are essential. Reasonable compensation is being offered, but there is a lack of overall planning and willpower to resolve such real hard issues.
Another challenge in land administration is the matter of squatter huts. Many individuals in squatter huts are not registered occupants and have no right to live there. But officials must be compassionate to provide adequate assistance to such dwellers.

The paramount imperative is good planning where land will be resumed or developed for the overall benefits to Hong Kong with the citizens’ realization and rationalization of their own as well as societal good. When the northern New Territories are reinvented as highly liveable areas with high-efficiency, high-density economic clusters, it may help relieve the overconcentration of people and events in the rest of Hong Kong.
We would then be able to phase out the urban slums with their infamous cage homes and subdivided flats, realizing the vision set out by Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office director Xia Baolong.

August 4, 2021

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Lucy M.S. Kwan is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics & Actuarial Science at the University of Hong Kong. Leslie Lee was in the quality management consultancy business for over 30 years and is currently chairman of IuPDI (the International union of Professional Development Institutions)
Both are executive committee members of the Tanner Hill Workshop
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MORE ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Lucy M.S. Kwan is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics & Actuarial Science, University of Hong Kong. In the past 15 years, she conducted a few land and housing studies including “Poor Housing Conditions in Hong Kong” 2008-2012, commissioned by the late Sir David Akers-Jones. She founded The Tanner Hill Workshop, which operates a cross-media platform www.talkrainbow.com for Hong Kong people across the globe to share their ideas for personal and societal advancement. She has also served on the Management Committee of the Boys' & Girls' Club Association for two decades and on the Innovation & Technology Committee of the Hong Kong Women Professionals and Entrepreneurs Association. She holds a BA in math (1st-class honours) from the University of Hong Kong, and an MSc in statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Leslie Lee, a UK Chartered Quality Professional, was in the quality management consultancy business for over 30 years. His clients included government departments, public-listed companies, multinationals and SMEs. His interests include research into family-owned business succession, supplier and supply management, and critical success factors of businesses. He is the current chairman of IuPDI (International union of Professional Development Institutions).

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