Sue's whole essay

Topic:
“To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development? ”

Sub-Title:
Can the “sustainable development policies ”solve the urban housing problems in Hong Kong?

Abstract
Hong Kong is a prosperous city but it has the serious problems of urbanlisation because it has limited resource of land to supply the high population with about 7 million leading to citizens suffering in overcrowded living condition especially the large family. The government has attached great importance to adopt the sustainable development policies such as (HOS) and (PRH) programmes to solve the housing problems. In this paper, the comparison of urban housing problems between Hong Kong and Shanghai are described and the information are collected from the academic articles and relative websites that can find out the positive sustainable polices and statistic to support. Both of the cities have suffered in the same situation but Hong Kong’s policies are more efficient than Shanghai. For this research purpose, I concentrated each situation with these two cities to compare its own sustainable policies.


Introduction
Urbanisation has become a trend in the developing countries. Urbanisation means massive population growth in urban cities due to more and people are moving from rural to urban areas .The majorities of citizens live in a narrow area rather than stay in a large region. The government and others provide more service and resource allowance such as water, electricity and transport to a large number of citizens. Education, business and technological advances are also more accessible in urban area result in economic growth. Thus, the opportunities are the main factors to attract people to move to cities because people can seek their jobs to improve their life quality and build a better future for their children. However, the characteristics of urban area can cause a lot of serious problems in the societies like high housing price, limited resource, pollution, high population, traffic congestion, crimes. In fact, the problems of urbanisation have been the barriers to bring negative effects for the economic growth. Therefore, these problems have led the government to implement the sustainable development to solve the problems such as waste management charge scheme, recycling scheme, renewable energy, urban living space. Sustainable development depends on how profitably balance on the objectives of society, economy and environment to maintain the needs of present for human and future generations to improve their lifestyle, protect ecosystems and the quality of environment. I will give the case of Hong Kong’s situation of housing problems focusing on overcrowded living condition and high housing price to evaluate the different policies of sustainable development in housing whether they are the effective solutions to meet the aim that can solve and improve the problems but maintain the economic growth simultaneously. I will also compare Hong kong’s housing problems and sustainable policies with Shanghai to judge which city's policy is more efficient. However, I believe there are many more problems than solutions between these two cities but Hong Kong’s housing polices are more efficient than Shanghai.

Main body
I will mainly focus on the case of Hong Kong but I will also compare the city in Shanghai finally because it has the same housing problem with Hong Kong and adopts the similar policies. Then I will base on each situation to analyse which city’s sustainable policies will be more efficient to solve the problems.

Methods
I will use the academic journals to find out the useful information to support this essay. Firstly, the beginning of main body will be given some background information about Hong Kong and I found the quantitative and qualitative data from the academic article which talk about how to detect the bubbles in Hong Kong’s residential housing market as describe by Chan, et al (2001), the official website by Hong Kong’s government that the statistic can prove the real situation of limited land but high population in Hong Kong.

Secondly, I found the relative evidence which is demonstrated the accidental incident in Shek Kei Mei by Mark (2007). This evidence can support the problems of overcrowded and reflect that the government realised how serious of housing problem and started to adopt the housing policy to solve the problems.

Thirdly, the article is described about the situation of high housing price in Hong Kong by Chan, et al (2001) and I found the evidence of Hong Kong housing price ranking from the news which is Hong Kong’s newspaper website.

Fourthly, the government has implemented the PRH and HOS programmes which are sustainable policies in housing development as this information is found from GovHK website (2009).

Finally, I found a study on provision of housing system in Shanghai is reported by Mostaf,et al, (1998) and Xing, Z. (2010) to support the comparison of problems and polices with Hong Kong .

The case of“Hong Kong”

The first problem of Overcrowded living condition
The population in Hong Kong has increased rapidly and it was indicated about 7 million (Hong Kong Statistic, 2009). It is obvious that shortage of housing units is a historical problem due to Hong Kong’s population growth and economic progress. Immigration is one of the main reasons. In particular, in times of war, violence or ecological disaster results in an influx of refugees who move from the damaged area to more flourishing areas. This phenomenon is especially true in “Hong Kong”. Since“the Second World War in 1956”, the large number of refugees immigrated to Hong Kong because the location next to China and comparatively prosperity. Thus, the mainlanders believed that Hong Kong can provide more stable life and prosperous economy for their future, but this circumstance led to overcrowded on households and deteriorated of housing environment.

Housing problems contains the housing quantity but it also relates the housing quality and maintenance such as a large number of people live in the squatters where have inadequate facilities and poor sanitation with lower standard of early development .These are the potential risks can lead to dangerous accident such as fire. Mark (2007) indicated the evidence of Shek Kei Mei fire in 1593 when Hong Kong was British colony. The mainlander built the squatter huts for their accommodation after they settled down in Hong Kong. The narrow area in the squatter village caused a serious fire leading homeless families. Mark (2007) also mentioned that it was impossible to allocate the funds for the exclusive refugees because it was a short term resolution with huge cost. Therefore, this incident was a very important factor to inspire the government to build the resettlement estates for them leading to a great impact to develop the sustainable housing policy in the present and the future.

The problems of High housing Price
Hong Kong has maintained a high housing price because of limited of supply land .Chan and Woo,(2001) indicated that the total area of land in Hong Kong is only about 1075 km2 but there is approximate 80 % of the region where is too hilly in housing development. Thus, only a little segment can be used for residential development. Land is the scarcest resource in Hong Kong. In fact, Hong Kong‘s housing price ranking which is the fourth out of the ten cities in the world with about US$ 1373each per square foot (Business Time newspaper, 2009).For instance, a narrow flat which is about 583 sq ft with a single bedroom that it sales about 483,333 pounds of Kennedy Town Building which is in Hong Kong Island (Kennedy Town Building, Hong Kong). Therefore, most of citizens can not afford to buy their own flat. It is common to find the Hong Kong Citizens who are living in a poor living condition such as a big family with 6 members but live in a small flat. Besides, the limited supply land restrictions in Hong Kong housing market. The conclusive land supply development and the new land available is controlled by its government directly . The government recognises high housing price is the problem leading to implement different sustainable polices such as PRH and HOS .

Housing Policies
Since the Shek Kei Mei fire, Hong Kong’s government started to look out to implement various sustainable policies in housing development. Hong Kong Special Administrative (HKSAR) has implemented the public housing programmes such as PRH and HOS.


PRH policy was not comprehensive housing policy at the beginning but the government still has played a very important role to provide low –cost public housing. “At the end of 1980s, Hong Kong had the second largest public housing sector in the capitalist world. ”(Peng and Wheaton 1994,p.268) . It means the government has adopted large investment to develop the public housing as the article reports that about half of the total housing stocks are used for developing PRH policy. A decline of housing size was one of the significant changes over the past thirty years in Hong Kong. This article reports that the number of people per occupied housing unit was 8.4.in 1965 but this number decreased to 4.3. in 1990. These statistics proved the public housing policy was efficient to improve the housing problems (Peng and Wheaton, 1994).


PRH
PRH means Public Rental Housing which is the government’s subsided housing policy that can assist the families who are low income or poor. Therefore, they can not afford the expensive rent at the private accommodation. The stock of public rental housing estates was about 733 300 in the beginning of 2009 by 29% of the population. This programme is committed to maintain the period of waiting PRH flats with about three years. Around 120,700 applications of the average time of waiting for the PRH were about 1.8 years at the end of June in 2009. It is set the rent range at the affordable level with about 18 to 280 pounds and the average rent is about 110 pounds each months. Additionally, the government has adopted the new mechanism since 2008 which provides a flexible framework that can reflect the affordability of tenants to base on their income to adjust the reasonable rent. This mechanism can contribute to the sustainability of the PRH programme
(GovHK website, 2009).

HOS
HOS means Housing Owner Scheme which was instituted in the 1970s. HOS flats are subsidised public housing estates which are sold at the lower price below over the market with the discount between 30%-40%. More than 458, 200 of the flats have sold to the groups who have only low and middle income since 1978. However, HKSAR accepted the government’s recommendation to stop selling the estates from the onwards in 2003 but decided to sell the residual flats about 16,700 in phases that can increasing the provision of the public housing for poor families and elderly people (GovHK website, 2009) .

The case of Shanghai__________________________________________
Comparing the same existing urban housing problems with Hong Kong

In fact, Shanghai has the same urban housing problems as Hong Kong even in the past or present. The survey reported that about 1.8 million families lived in overcrowded area in 1985. Nearly 216,000 families had living area below 4 square meters only for each family, more than about 15,200 of those families had only 2 square meters ( Mostaf,et al, 1998). Nowadays, Shanghai is also one of the prosperous cities. It is reported that the amount of Shanghai’s population about 19.21 million at the end of 2009 (People’s Daily Online, 2010). Thus, the overcrowded phenomenon has not improved because the population is increasing every year.

Shanghai housing price has increased in recently year. The average housing price rose to RMB20, 733 per square in 2006 which means people need to pay more than RMB 2million ( before taxes) to buy a 100 square meter apartment (Xing , 2010) .

According the above data that can reflect Shanghai is also facing the problems of lack of provision of the housing and high housing price. Therefore, these problems have caused the citizens living in the narrow flats especially the large families but they can not afford to buy their own housing.

Housing Settlement project
“Shanghai Municipality” had started to adopt the “Housing Settlement project” in 1987 to solve the urban housing problem. The policy has resettled over 470,000 families living in the narrow space under 2.5 square meters. “Shanghai Municipality” spent 1.8 million Yuan on this programme, developing about 1,8 square meters to increase the supply of living area for the families. Therefore, the new residential areas were developed Shi Guang, Guo He, Kang Jian. This project is a sustainable development and it has been the process of Shanghai’s housing system reform (Mostaf, et al, 1998).


Conclusion
Hong Kong and Shanghai are suffering the same situation of urban housing problems. Both of cities have implemented the similar sustainable polices to maintain society stability that can assist the low income people to afford too buy their own flat or pay affordable rent. In fact, implementing these policies can increase government’s income to facilitate the economic progress. Developing the estates by the PRH and HOS programmes that can improve the environment friendly. For instance, the government redeveloped the old region or industry areas to be a new public housing estate to plant more trees and different facilities such as schools and hospitals. As Hong Kong’s PSH and HOS programmes and Shanghai’ Housing Settlement project are the sustainable policies because depending on how profitably balance on their society, economy and environment to sustain the needs for people and our generations to provide a better lifestyle and maintain the economic growth simultaneously. However, Hong Kong’ has favorable factors such as flexible market, a laissez-faire economy and it has implemented the olicies for long period leading to more comprehensive polices than Shanghai. Although both city’s housing polices are planned to solve the problems such as lack of residential area and high housing price, I believe that it is hard to solve these kind of problems in long term. This is because the population growth in Hong Kong and Shanghai has increased even in the future. It is difficult to control the population growth but distribute the area under the limited land supply. For instance, the PRH policy in Hong Kong, its government provide lower rent for lower or no income people to offer stable residence. Even adopting the adjusted police as changing the shorter waiting time for PRH flats but the long period of waiting still are a problem. Additionally, a large part of civilian in shanghai belongs to working- class which means they can not afford even under the home ownership policy. Therefore, it can not really assist the people who desire the real help. It is obvious that urbanization can cause economy progress but many urban problems at the same time. Thus, the government has adopted the sustainable development that is definitely important and continues to keep our society stability in the future.

References:

Business Times Newspaper( 2009) from Hong Kong, available from,
http://gb.hkbt.com.hk/a-20091007/hk_4.htm (accessed 19 July 2010)

Chan, H. L., Lee, S. K. and Woo, K. Y. (2001), Detecting rational bubbles in the residential housing markets of Hong Kong, the journal of Economic Modelling 18, pp.61-73

Chiu, R. L. H.,(2002), Social Equity in housing in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region : A Social Sustainability Perspective, the journal of Sustainable Development ,10, pp.155-162

GovHK website(2009), Hong Kong the facts: Housing, available at: http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/housing.pdf

Hong Kong Statistic (2009), Census and Statistics Department, available at: http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hong_kong_statistics/statistics_by_subject/index.jsp (accessed 18 July 2010)

Kenned Town Building, Hong Kong, Frank, available from:
http://search.knightfrank.com/hk00052987s (accessed 20 July 2010)

Mark, C. K. (2007), The problem of people : British colonials, Cold War Power, and the Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong, 1949-62 ,the journal of Modern Asian Studies 42,6,pp. 1145-1181

Mostafa, A., Wong, F. K. W., and Hui, E. C. M.,(1998) , A study on Housing provision System towards Hosuing Affordability in Shanghai, available from:
http://www.iut.nu/China_Shanghai_hous%20affordabiity.pdf (accessed 22 July 2010)

Peng, R. and Wheaton, W. C., (1994), Effects of Restrictive Land Supply on Housing in Hong Kong : An Econometric Analysis, the journal of housing research, vol.5,issue 2,pp.263-293
Report

People’s Daily Online,( 2010), Shanghai’s permanent population approaches 20 mln, available from:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/90872/6897139.html (accessed in 2 aug 2010)

Xing, Z. (2010) China's housing market makes moving abroad cheaper than buying at home, available from:
http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/life/would-you-give-your-passport-buy-apartment-773526 (accessed in 2 aug 2010)