The Legislative Council has signed off on a USD70 million feasibility study into building a huge artificial island off Lantau. That’s a lot of money for a study, but it’s estimated the project itself – if it comes to fruition – will cost a mind-boggling USD82 billion. And given our experiences with other recent infrastructure projects such as the Express Rail Link to Guangzhou and bridge to Zhuhai and Macau, which went massively over-budget, the final cost will certainly end up much higher – maybe even double.

But we don’t even need a USD70 million feasibility study. The project is unnecessary and won’t fulfil its intended purpose.

The idea was proposed by our dear leader Carrie Lam in order to create land for much-needed housing. The government has been plugging the line for years that we have a shortage of useable space.

But this simply isn’t true. Property developers are sitting on swathes of land in the New Territories – the large area of Hong Kong that borders mainland China. Three developers alone – New World, Henderson and Sun Hung Kai Properties have amassed land banks totaling around 100 million square feet.

Much of the land is fragmented and zoned by the government for agricultural use. But you can be pretty sure big players like Henderson didn’t buy it for farmers. They’re playing a waiting game of trying to figure out when to apply to have the land re-zoned for residential or commercial purposes. They want to build when it’s cheap and sell when it’s expensive – after all that’s what businesses do.

The government needs to take a long-term strategy of developing these areas in the New Territories. It needs to look at re-zoning land now and persuading developers to build housing. The land is a resource that needs to be used for the people of Hong Kong.

There’s no need to spend squillions of dollars building the artificial island in Carrie Lam’s Lantau Tomorrow Vision project. We have available land already. There are also other reasons why the project should not go ahead. The reclamation required would cause widescale environmental damage. It would take a long time. And given the huge costs involved, the resulting housing would not be cheap – the developers involved would want to recoup their layout, with a decent profit on top.

And it’s these developers who have already been making huge sums of money at the expense of ordinary Hong Kong citizens. They are run by millionaires and billionaires. Should they really be allowed to gouge more money out of Hong Kong?

By working with developers, and buying and selling land where necessary, the government can overcome the problem of fragmented brownfield sites. Two of the developers, New World and Henderson, have already offered to give up some of their rural land reserves to build cheap housing.

The government could even use the Land Resumption Ordinance and buy back the land, if necessary. It would cost a small fraction of the amount needed to build an artificial island. If this was combined with the scrapping of the Small House Policy, which allows indigenous male villagers the right to build a home in the New Territories, even more fragmented space could be freed up.

The land we need is there already, it just requires long-term planning and an assertive administration.

(Alex Price is a journalist who has lived and worked in Hong Kong for over 30 years.)

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