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4.3 Need for a Land Reserve

With hindsight, too little land is made available for development,
and too few new houses are being built. A critical lesson that should be
drawn from the past 20 years is that over the long-term, there is a strong
demand for land in Hong Kong, notwithstanding fluctuations in the property
market in between.

For example, as we have illustrated in the first Research Report,
Hong Kong’s per capita living space is only two-thirds, if not less, of other
advanced cities such as Singapore, Shenzhen and Shanghai. In addition, a
rapidly ageing society may render a substantial amount of our hardware
obsolete: our public housing needs more spacious corridor and bathroom
designs, more barrier-free facilities are called for, not to mention the
enormous increase in demand for healthcare and community elderly care
services. As far as our economy is concerned, 93% of Hong Kong’s GDP is
contributed by services. And services, regardless of their industry, customer
group and value-added, all require sufficient space to grow. In other words,
as long as we wish to support our socioeconomic development and
enhance our living standard in general, land supply is always an integral
and indispensable element of the solution set.

Needless to say, the acceleration of housing and land provision
is one of the most salient matters facing the population of Hong Kong in
the future. Hence, we need to find ways to expedite the process of land
supply and infrastructure provision. It is clearly evident that because land
development pressures have augmented remarkably, in order to achieve
any medium- to long-term development targets, it is a necessity to
truncate lead-times as much as possible.

Moreover, in light of the overall extended lead-time required for the
completion of the planning process before any sites (including brownfield
sites) could be made available for development, provisions should be made
for the establishment of a consistent and persistent land bank to mollify
any unanticipated future requirements. A land reserve can ensure sufficient
time for development and meet demands for spatial capacity.

Therefore, the government should make a determined effort to
establish and sustain a land reserve for the purposes of planning for the
provision of land, housing, and strategic development initiatives beyond
the usual planning time horizon. The land reserve would help alleviate the
problem of long lead-time and ensure that future forecast of medium to
long-term land demands are met.

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