Comment by Mokey [none/use name]@hexbear.net on trains pls

The same hong kong owned by western capitalist for 70 years right?

If it’s a problem caused by Western capitalism, why hasn’t China fixed it in the over 25 years?

How are you a star trek fan and this stupid, do you just clap at the spaceships?

They doubled the average size of new apartments by outlawing the appalling tiny units that the British establishment encouraged and by engaging in actual planning concerning land use, another thing the British colonial era ignored.

Now it’s about 50-90 sqm for new apartments which is the same as other high density cities like Barcelona. New York for example is 50-70 sqm.

They estimate a further gain of 10-20% in floor area per person by 2030.

Thanks China!

Your dumb ass should start questioning your assumptions because they’re wrong.

hey comrade, since you seem knowledgeable on the topic, do you know if there are any plans to further develop the new territories? I was in HK and I saw how much empty space and large single homes were there and I was astonished with the lack of development, not sure if there’s a historical reason for that.

I’m not an expert at all but I know the plan is to keep most of HK as undeveloped woodland.

It’s one of the things that surprises visitors, despite being one of the most densely populated places on earth, 2/3rds of HK is a nature preserve and they plan to keep it that way.

Partly this is because nature is good and the city treasures the green spaces. Which is why you see those funny high rises with a square missing in the center, it’s not actually feng shui it’s because approval often requires that you don’t block the sun and views of the mountains.

But it’s also in part because the mountainous parts are not very suitable for building and they’re prone to mudslides so building up on them would be a bad idea.

It’s actually cheaper and easier to “reclaim” land from the sea which is where most new land comes from, but really it’s increasing density and building up that creates most new housing.

Until 1947 colonial Hong Kong had a rule stating that you could not live on the land overlooking Hong Kong unless you were an expat (rich colonial capitalists).

This caused all elevated land in Hong Kong to become high-value. Today it’s all unbelievably expensive land. And only owned by millionaires and billionaires.

The process for purchasing land in HK is also a tender process, the government announces land sales and then takes bids. Until 2018 all of these bids would go into a box and then the government selects the highest bid from the box. This upholds the “free market” philosophy of the region, which they’re not allowed to change until the end of the agreement made in 1997 with Britain. In 2018 they managed to adjust it so that there was transparency on the bid amounts, so that bidders now don’t go in blind and overbid in order to get the land, its intention is to stop massive price balloons caused by the black box that the process used to be but you and I both know it won’t really solve the issue. The issue is the bidding process in its entirety of course, nobody can develop land this expensive and sell/rent property on that land to recuperate the cost of the land purchase without the properties that are built being absurdly expensive themselves.

I recently saw a mini-documentary about the segmented apartments in Hong Kong, and how because now they’re banned, some of them have been made into mini-museums as a kind of walk-through PSA about the horrific conditions people were forced to live in only 20 years ago. As interesting as things like that and the Kowloon Walled City are from a historical point of view, I’m glad that the government turned it into a park and people have better living conditions now.

Having examples for people to see is essential for making sure people remember what they came from and why they shouldn’t want to go back to it. This is something I think communist countries need to get on more efficiently, museums of capitalism and its historical conditions. This is also very important to capitalism, with its museums to feudalism and (at least here in europe) heavy focus in education on feudal lives).

You’re absolutely right. The One Country Two Systems approach isn’t worth the paper it’s written on now that the Brits are flagrantly interfering with HK’s affairs.

The PRC should immediately integrate HK into Guangdong Province, arrest the real estate oligarchs and seize their assets.

The communism button got misplaced and ended up in a dubiously legal tech market smh my head

Because you don’t just throw people out of their homes without a viable alternative. Viable alternatives take time and resources to build, neither of which are infinite. As @Kaisen@hexbear.net has already explained, this is already being done.

why hasn’t China fixed it in the over 25 years?

Because when China under Deng took it back from Britain by basically telling them “fuck off or we’ll do it by force” and Thatcher agreed (knowing full well they could not fight to keep it and would have had very little support for that anyway other than the western shitholes which were more concerned about the USSR and other communist countries in europe than China at the time), one of the requirements of the deal that Britain made was to keep the current system with unchanged policies for 50 years. This was signed in the Joint Declaration.

This blueprint would be elaborated on in the Hong Kong Basic Law (the post-handover regional constitution) and the central government’s policies for the territory were to remain unchanged for a period of at least 50 years after 1997.

So if you want to complaint to the correct people responsible the way it is currently, complain to the British.

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