To help cope with the housing crisis, Hong Kong’s government recently announced a plan to build 4,200 acres of artificial islands in the South China Sea.
In this March 2017 photo, Tse Chu, a retired waiter, sleeps in his subdivided flat in Hong Kong. In wealthy Hong Kong, there's a dark side to a housing boom, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to live in partitioned shoebox apartments and other inadequate housing.
A resident who gave only his surname, Yeung, takes rest in his tiny flat in Hong Kong. In wealthy Hong Kong, there's a dark side to a housing boom, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to live in partitioned shoebox apartments known as"coffin homes." One such method is to inject cement into mud at the bottom of the sea, creating columns strong enough to build on. Another, used in building the new bridge, involves dropping giant steel cells filled with debris onto the seabed to anchor seawalls supporting an artificial island. That method came into question during the bridge’s construction when the structures started drifting from their positions, causing additional costs for repairs and to reinforce the adjoining seawalls.
“With global warming, typhoons are expected to become stronger, bringing even higher storm surges. Latest research also shows that the sea-level rise could be double that of previous projections,” wrote Lam Chiu-ying, a geography professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in a South China Morning Post op-ed. “To go for a gigantic artificial island facing the open sea in a warming world is an unequivocally disastrous move.
At this point, the government has said that it is already developing more than 800 acres of brownfields, but that it has only limited planning resources and can’t be expected to pursue all options at the same time. Brownfields and Lantau Tomorrow Vision are both part of a “multi-pronged approach” to tackle land supply, according to official statements.
Last year, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam proposed a vacancy tax that would penalize hoarders, and within two months, more than 1,600 of the units were sold off.Hong Kong’s housing crunch has also been attributed to a government decision in 1997 to halt public housing construction planning at the time the Asian financial crisis hit.“When the economy is bad, the government should build more,” said Yiu Ching-hei, a researcher at Liber Research Community, a local think tank.
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