Hong Kong’s government is looking at relocating the city’s 65-hectare River Trade Terminal to make way for a major new town in the northwest of the city, the development minister has said.
As one of the land-boosting measures announced in the policy address last Wednesday, a study will be carried out early next year into the development potential of 440 hectares of land along Tuen Mun West to house the proposed residential settlement and a nearby industrial site, subject to funding approval from the Legislative Council.
Under the vision, half of that land would be for the new town and the other half would serve as an alternative site for the container port and other transferred industry.
Explaining the long-term plan on a radio programme on Monday, Secretary for Development Michael Wong Wai-lun, believed the coastal area development could be on a similar scale to other new towns established in Hong Kong.
“We hope to relocate the current logistics and industrial businesses to the 220-hectare proposed reclamation land at Lung Kwu Tan, somewhere more remote in northwest Tuen Mun, thus freeing up another 220 hectares from the River Trade Terminal and its surrounding coastal land for residential development,” Wong said.
Wong added 70 per cent of the 220-hectare area earmarked for residential development could be used for public and subsidised housing, 30 per cent for private residences and a smaller percentage for commercial use, benefiting the city amid housing shortages.
