Innovative Green Living Initiatives to Transform Hong Kong Into a “Green Metropolis”
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- Date Submitted: 10/14/2011 10:55 AM
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Innovative Green Living Initiatives to Transform Hong Kong into a “Green Metropolis”
The global population has experienced continuous growth since the disappearance of Black Death in around 1400 . The rate of increasing is even higher than before. The urban population has been raising and will reach 50% in a few decades and demand for land for accommodation and industrial production keeps get bigger and bigger, the exploitation of natural environment and the consumption of resources become much more serious than ever. There is an urgent need to maintain a long term balance between natures and people’s needs. Now what the environmentalists are trying to achieve is to preserve the remaining natural environment and to minimize the human impact to the exploited area. The most suitable solution at present time is compact development.
Compact development is only a direction guiding the way of development but not a standard providing condition for developers to fulfill. It hopes to increase urban population densities by accommodating more people in an area, to develop mixed-land uses, to concentrate job opportunities, to invest in mass transit system and discourage people from using private cars. Such concept would like to not only reduce the carbon consumption of the area and hence to maintain sustainability, but also to improve the living condition of urban population through allowing resident to enjoy greater amount of green area, to have cleaner air since less automobiles are used in the area and to improve the current using technology.
However, until now there is no clear example on how compact development should or could be. Yet, Sha Tin is a very good choice to apply compact development in its new town development. It is because of some reasons: firstly, Hong Kong has very little flat land for urban development and most population are concentrated in around 20% of total area of Hong Kong. Sha Tin is a new town that has population over 600,000. Secondly,...
The global population has experienced continuous growth since the disappearance of Black Death in around 1400 . The rate of increasing is even higher than before. The urban population has been raising and will reach 50% in a few decades and demand for land for accommodation and industrial production keeps get bigger and bigger, the exploitation of natural environment and the consumption of resources become much more serious than ever. There is an urgent need to maintain a long term balance between natures and people’s needs. Now what the environmentalists are trying to achieve is to preserve the remaining natural environment and to minimize the human impact to the exploited area. The most suitable solution at present time is compact development.
Compact development is only a direction guiding the way of development but not a standard providing condition for developers to fulfill. It hopes to increase urban population densities by accommodating more people in an area, to develop mixed-land uses, to concentrate job opportunities, to invest in mass transit system and discourage people from using private cars. Such concept would like to not only reduce the carbon consumption of the area and hence to maintain sustainability, but also to improve the living condition of urban population through allowing resident to enjoy greater amount of green area, to have cleaner air since less automobiles are used in the area and to improve the current using technology.
However, until now there is no clear example on how compact development should or could be. Yet, Sha Tin is a very good choice to apply compact development in its new town development. It is because of some reasons: firstly, Hong Kong has very little flat land for urban development and most population are concentrated in around 20% of total area of Hong Kong. Sha Tin is a new town that has population over 600,000. Secondly,...