Govt Accused Of Ignoring Brownfield Land Potential

An urban planning concern group on Thursday accused the government and its task force on land supply of deliberately underestimating the development potential of brownfield sites.

The Liber Research Community said it had identified 1,172 hectares of brownfield land in the New Territories, 732 hectares of which are not included in any government development project.

A member of the group, Brian Wong, said the sites aren't as scattered as officials believe and some have been wrongly described as remote outposts without road access.

"The comments from the task force and the government are very contrary to what we see on Google Maps. And after we have done a very detailed analysis using a proximity study and also land parcel analysis, we found actually, there are over a thousand hectares of contiguous brownfield clusters than can be used for development," Wong said.

The group said a third of the brownfield land not already included in government development projects could be used to provide rural style public housing. It said this would be medium and low-rise residential blocks, up to 12 floors high, providing around 500 units per hectare of land.

Wong said a conservative estimate suggests these sorts of developments could provide around 84,000 flats in total.

"The government has said that the brownfield clusters are very scattered and that's why we cannot use a high-density development mode in which a large piece of land is used. The development potential is very low. But in fact if they use the rural type housing development mode, these types of brownfield clusters can be fully utilised."

Since last September, the government's Task Force on Land Supply has been considering various ways to boost the amount of land available for housing, including building on top of transport infrastructure or on sites used by private clubs. The public are expected to be asked for their views from next month.