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3. Practical Issues and

Challenges in Land

Supply

In the previous two Chapters we have examined the latest
demand and supply situation across different property markets and have
established that the city is still facing a severe shortage of land and space
for all sectors of our society and economy, from housing and commercial to
basic support structures like healthcare.

On this premise, it is natural to ask the question “how should we
increase land supply?” As we have reviewed in detail in our first Research
Report, Hong Kong has long been relying on avenues including land
reclamation and the development of new towns to provide developable
land for the city. This model of development, however, is met with doubts in
recent years.

3.1 Exploring the Intricacies of Land
Supply Policy

There is an emerging discourse in the community that land supply
does not necessarily have to rely on reclamations or development of new
towns. The said discourse argues that there is still a large amount of land
resources that has not been efficiently used in Hong Kong. Therefore, the
formulation of land supply strategy by the government should prioritise
optimising inefficiency in the existing land resources.

An example of the inefficient use of land resources is brownfield
sites. “Brownfield sites” refer to abandoned agricultural or rural land in the
New Territories that are converted into various other uses such as open
storage, container yards, warehouses, and industrial recycling yards etc.,
which are often incompatible with the surrounding environment. The
concept of “Brownfield First” means that such land should be the first
option to take as a source of land supply before considering other options,
including land reclamation and land within the green belt.

OHKF does not agree with the said discourse. The vast majority of
our brownfield sites are privately owned, and are with different operations.
This means that to develop brownfield sites, the process must involve such
issues as land resumption, relocation, resettlement, and compensation.
We have surveyed numerous public housing projects to be completed in
the years 2015/16 to 2018/19 and established that whenever such issues are

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