topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanization be met a policy of sustainable development?
Sybtitile: What is the impact of massive migration and population growth by the policy of sustainable development in Beijing?
Introduction
Urbanization will lead to an increasing number of population living in urban areas. and it defined as "the shift from a rural to an urban society, and involves an increase in the number of people in urban areas druing a particular year."[ref?] It brought many problems and was challenged by many developing countries. According statistics show that more than half of population of the world people (6.6 billion people) lived in urban areas (Gyabaah,K.). In China, in the past two decades, there is significant of economic growth in human history by a process of urbanization.[word soup] The population migrated from rural to urban in a massive scale with economic develop opportunities. The central Government has proposed satellite city plan as a city expansion in Beijing. As well, there are more than 3 million inhabitants being attracted to live in Beijing as a economic and cultural center by 2020 (Applyyard, 2007; P3). Beijing is impressing with rapid changes, such as new skyscrapers construction, greenbelts and new transportation construction. In the meanwhile, there are some negative impacts on environment with massive population growth. Such as traffic congestion, pollution and highly housing price...Hence, we have to consider the urban expanding whether match the needs of population growth with limited resources. However, Government awares that they can maintain development with the process of urbanization, and they will make sure to achieve sustainable development. It defined as " development which meets the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of the future"(Hussen, 2004;P269). Moreover, the China Government has planed the "smart growth" policies, it aims to use resources more efficiency. Especially, before Olympic, some policies carried on very efficient, such as underground routes expended, low carbon technology development and statellite plans..For this essay, I will decribe the problems of population growth and massive migration. Futhermore, I will discuss how to achieve the sustainable development with some policies, find the solution of the problems. Finally, I will give some recommendation and conclude my opinions.
Main body
Traffic congestion
Today, more and more people can afford the private cars as people's incomes increased. China become a car dependent country quickly, especially in some modern busy cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Though the percentage of private car owners is much lower than western countries, traffic congestion issue has become a very serious problem in major cities such as Beijing. There are a large number of privately owned cars in Beijing, especially the massive populations have growing fast. Currently, ther are approximately 3 owners of private cars for every 100households in China; by comparison, there are approximately 2 cars for each household in the US. In addition, there are 14 million additional vehicles in China's roads in 2003, almost 13,000 new cars every day. In the United States, at least some spaces are used for personal vehicles, such as carriages and autos with urban areas developed. In Beijing, the most of main roads don't have enough spaces for personal vehicles like bicycle, autos...According the surveys, Government has increased use of signs and extended many thoroughfares to guid traffic, but the average speed of vehicles fell from 28 miles (45 kilomeeters per hour) to 7 miles per hour (12 kilometers per hour) on the main roads, and the lowest speed is less than 4 miles per hour (7 kilometers per hour) from 1994 to 2003. Moreover, the automobiles have increased 10 percent but the roads only were extended by 2 percent. In Beijing, the housing price is vey high, especially near the center of the city. Residents have to move to the suburbs and bought private cars as main transport (Applyyard,2007).
The traffic congestion becomes a social issue and urgent problem which people have to face it. Due to the roads always overcrowding, people have to spend several hours on the roads every day. Meanwhile, traffic congestion also brings some serious problems, such as traffic addidents and air pollution. The main causes of air pollution from massive vehichels on the roads. And the large of transportation sector produced greenhouse gas emission and carbon dioxide. However, Beijing has been taking various ways to solve the traffic congestion problems like developing subway and rail transportation and traffic control policies. Firstly, develop a better subway plan. Beijing is building many new roads and widening some ones, but this city still has to open more bus lanes. By 2020, bus lanes will have been open on 75%. In addition, the Beijing Government has constructed of the new subway lines like lines 4,5 and 10 (Yan,2002). Indeed, the subway construction is very expensive, therefore every inch of the subways should be used efficiency. Compare with London subway, it is near in any of two stations and very conventient for people. But there are long distances in two stations in Beijing (Shi,2004). Secondly,Beijing Government has proposed 14 satellite cities to be developed from 1991 to 2010. These satellite cities have attracted almost 3 million inhabitants, this plan can solve the traffic congestion problem with massive population (Applyyard,2007).
Air pollution
High extension of urbanization causes pollution like air pollution. In Beijing, the main causes of air pollution from many polluting industries and new vehicles on the roads. These main reasons have exacerbated poor air quality (Streets, 2006). Moreover, the process of urbanization has increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon dioxide from the large of transportation sector pollution. The pollution from many vehicles with growth populatins in city. For example, Beijing produces much carbon dioxide combined with Los Angeles and Tokyo total together. Between 1998 and 1999, the ozone concentration has exceeded health standard of public in Beijing (Applyyard, 2007). In addition, Beijing unicipal Government began to try to improve air quality from 1998, and the Government has deal with this kind of problems focusing on vehicle emissions, industrial pollution and construction sector. And the air quality has improved (Streets, 2006).
The Beijing Government is committed to implement a number of policies to improve air quality and reduces air pollution. Such as increasing environmental areas and protection, introducing and developing new technololgy (Streets, 2006). Moreover, in order to reduce carbob dioxide emissions, China Government develops low carbon technology like wind power. For example, Goldwind company successfully purchases the licenses with advanced technology under the support of Chinese policies. In 2008, Goldwind did the wind power plant project for the Beijing Olympics and this created the symbol of "green Olympics' for China. In additon, company help cut carbon dioxide emissions by 100,000 tons and save 50,000 tons of coal every year (Lewis,2007). People should be awareness of the importance of environment, Government also should educate public about protection enviromental issues. However, it will take a couple of years to achieve the significant changes for air quality.
High housing price issue
In recent years, it has been increase in housing demand for urban residents in China. Especially, it has also increased rapidly urban housing prices in Beijing, since the housing is a necessary demand for people. According to China's special household registration system, it separated the urban population growth annual for two parts: one from the natural growth of the existing urban population; another from the urban migration. This means that Chinese urbanization and urban population expansion would cause a high demand and high price for housing. According the survey, the private rate of urban housing had increased already to 80% in most of cities, and almost 100% to Beijing in 2001 (Chen, 2010). According to the National Bureau of statistics of China, housing transaction has increased almost 14 times from 1998 to 2007, as well the soaring housing price has led to many concerns in society, especially for that low-income households. Due to the sluggish increase of income in many low income families, the much higher housing prices far away to income's level of many urban households. It still exists some problem with development of affordable housing program by Government. China Government gains greatly benefits from high housing price, with high tax revenue, high asset investment. Nowadays, economic growth replies on the asset investment by Government heavily. In 2008, there is 2% of GDP growth from the real estate industry. Hence, once the housing market collapse, the whole China's economy will face to immeasurable risk.
Housing is a big problem to citizens, especially that young people who don't have enough money can afford the house. Today, many people cannot afford it with a very high price. Moreover, more and more immigrants were coming to cities like Beijing, lead to the value of lands increased very fast. For my opinion, the Government should pay more attention and take steps to control the increasing price. The Government should make some new policies measures to control the price of house price. However, the Beijing Government is determined to control property bubble. In 2010, the State Council has introduced administrative 12 tough measures and decided to curb soaring urban housing prices. Such as it not allow all families from buying more than one home. This policy can restricted middle class families bought more house. The central bank has begun to tighten the monetary policy. At the same time, Beijing made plans to increase the supply of property development and of sponsored low-cost housing (Bottelier, 2010). The Government made these new policies to restrict market demand, and pulling down the property prices efficiently. Market price declined sharply (5%-10%) in some cities, the price also declined in 5% in Beijing (Bottelier, 2010;P4). Compare with other country, Singapore build the high density way to solve the housing shortage's problems, then people can afford those kinds of flats. For my opinion, during the process of urbanization, the city can build more satellite towns to scatter massive popultion and solve the problem of housing shortage.
Conclusion
At present, the process of urbanization with the growth populaton and massive migration moved into cities. It caused many environment and social problems. As a result, we should develop urbanization in a sustainable way in order to make a better future. And the policies are successful in Beijing by susbtainable development for the process of urbanization. Beijing has ambitious plans and actions improved the overall environmental conditions. These will require a signigicant effort and financial investment by Government. More and more people will increase environmental awarenes.
However, the Government should continue to invest in public transit. And the resources should be diverted to public transportation. For example, the subways and light rail are popular forms of public transportation. Moreover, central Government should maintain high density and redevelop urban areas. Such as continue to develop the satellites plans and land use pattern more efficiency. On the other side, the policies of limited car registration that can help reduce congestion and pollution (Applyyard, 2007). For my opinion, I hope that the policies and visions which made by Government will help Beijing develop fast. Futhermore, the Chinese cities will grow smart and improve the lives of urban with economic growth and environment protection.
Reference:
Applyyard,B. Zheng,Y. Watson,R. Bruce,L. Sohmer,R. Li,X. Qian,J. (2007), Solution for China's rapid urbanization, Natural resources defense council
www.china.nrdc.org/files/china-nrdc-org/smartcities.pdf
Gyabaah,K. Urbanization processes-environmental and health effects in Africa.PERN steering committee member and principal. www.populationenvironmentresearch.org/Nsiah-Gyaabah-contribution.pdf
Hussen,A.(2004), Principles of environment economics, Simultaneously published in USA,P269.
Yan,Z.(2002), Traffic congestion in Beijing: What to do?
www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Mar/28866.htm
Shi,L. (2004), Beijing traffic strategies outlines,
www.btmbeijing.com/contents/en/business/2004-12/focus/traffid
Lewis (2007) Technology acquisition and innovation in the developing world: wind turbine development in China and India. Springer,vol.42,pp.208-232
Streets,D., Fu,J. Jang,C., (2006), Air quallity during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games,
www.anl.gov/media-center/2007/Beijing-report-final.pdf
Green Beijing
www.unep.org/sport-env/beijingreport07/chapter5.pdf
The formation of housing price expectation in China: A general research proposal
www.eres2010.org/contents/papers/id23.pdf
Bottelier,P. (2010), Beijing's new challenge: China's post-crisit housing bubble
www.carnegieendowment.org/files/chinabubble.pdf
Chen,J., Guo,F., Wu,Y. (2010), One decade of urban housing reform in China: urban housing price dynamics and the role of migration and urbanization, 1995-2005
Friday, 23 July 2010
Sue's first draft
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?
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 adopt the polices of 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 with economic growth. In this essay, it 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 base on Hong Kong’s housing problems and sustainable policies with Shanghai to compare which city’s policies more efficient. At the end of this essay, it will give the recommendations in the future and my opinion that I think Hong Kong and Shanghai are facing urban housing problems. Although I believe there are many more problems than solution in Hong Kong but the housing polices are more efficient than Shanghai.
• .
Main body
In this essay, I will 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. 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, H. L., Lee, S. K. and Woo, K. Y. (2001)(1), the official website by Hong Kong’s government (2) 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, C. K. (2007).(3) 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, H. L., Lee, S. K. and Woo, K. Y. (2001)(1) and I found the evidence of Hong Kong housing price ranking from the news which is Hong Kong’s newspaper website. Fourthly, the housing sustainable development information was found from two articles to obtain the main ideas by Peng, R. and Wheaton, W. C., (1994) (6) and ( Chiu, R. L. H.,2002) (7). Finally, I found a study on provision of housing system in Shanghai is reported by Mostafa, A., Wong, F. K. W., and Hui, E. C. M.,(1998) (8) to support the comparison of polices between Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. The population in Hong Kong has increased rapidly and it was indicated about 7 million at the end of 2009 by the latest statistic which is found from the official statistic on "Population and Vital Events (2).It is obvious that shortage of housing units is a historical problem due to Hong Kong’s population growth and economic progress. What is the factor leading to population growth? Immigration is one of the main reasons because people desire to move from rural area to urban area to improve their life quality and looking for further different opportunities such as career, education. In particular, in times of war, violence or ecological disaster results in an influx of refugees who move from the damaged area to more steady and 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 leading to lack of provision of residential areas. This is because Hong Kong’s 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.
Moreover, housing problems not only means the quantity of housing, but it also relate the housing quality and maintenance such as a large number of people and new migrants live in the squatters where have inadequate facilities and poor sanitation due to lack of planning with lower standard of early development .These are the potential risks can lead to dangerous accident such as fire. Mark, C. K. (2007) (3) indicates 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. Due to narrow area in the squatter village caused a serious fire that led to most of the people homeless. Mark C. K. (2007) (3) also mentions 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 for the government to develop the sustainable housing policy in the following decades.
In addition, Hong Kong has maintained a high housing price because of limited of supply land. H.L. Chan, S. K. Lee and K. Y. Woo,(2001)(1) indicate 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. This is no doubt that 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$1373 each per square foot (4).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 where is in Hong Kong Island (5). 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. They do not have own bedroom but need to share the area together leading to overcrowded households. Besides, the limited supply land restrictions in Hong Kong housing market. The development of the conclusive land supply and the new land available is controlled by its government directly. The government aware high housing price is an urban problem for the citizens leading to implement different sustainable polices to solve this problem.
Since the Shek Kei Mei fire, Hong Kong’s government started to pay more attention to implement various sustainable developments to solve the housing problems such as the provision of public rental housing (PRH). However, this stage of PRH policy was not comprehensive housing policy. Peng, R. and Wheaton, W. C., (1994) (6) indicate that the government 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, R. and Wheaton, W. C., 1994,p.268) (6). 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 three decades in Hong Kong. The 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.
However, Chiu, R. L. H.,(2002) (7) indicates that the housing policy has experienced dramatic changes again since 1997. This is because the new government of Hong Kong Special Administrative (HKSAR) is more focus on the social issue to adopt a resolution in housing policy. As this article mentions that the main housing policies are established by new government such as a rate of 70% home ownership was targeted for 2006 to reinforce social stability and the sense of belonging; 8500 units of target production was set to decrease the housing price each year and to eliminate the housing needs; a pledge was made shorter period as three years for the waiting time of public rental housing. The purpose of these policies base on the Home Owner Scheme (HOS) and Public Rental Housing (PRH) to make the adjustment. The aim of these polices encourage more people to buy their own flat at the cheaper price and arrange the poor people to live in the Public Rental Housing in a shorter time. Furthermore, housing policies are comprehensive in Hong Kong because the government has considered different aspects to suit various kinds of people such as the Rent Allowance for Elderly Scheme in the PRH housing policy because of the needs of elderly people of housing ( Chiu, R. L. H.,2002) (7)
On the other hand, the urban housing problem in Shanghai also has been one of the most serious social problems as Hong Kong. The survey reported that about half of the city’s 1.8 million households lived in overcrowded area in 1985.Nearly 216,000 households had per living area below 4 square meters only, more than about 15,200 of those households had less than 2 square meters. Shanghai Municipality had begun to adopt the Housing Settlement project in 1987 to solve the urban housing problem. The policy has resettled over 470,000 households living in the narrow space under 2.5 square meters. The Municipality spent 1.8 million Yuan on the project, developing about 1,8 square meters for households’ overcrowded problem (8). 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. In fact, Shanghai has similar housing policies as Hong Kong but it is obvious that Hong Kong’s housing sustainable development policies are more efficient and comprehensive than Shanghai. This is because Hong Kong‘s market performance is more flexible and it has exercised its provision of residential areas for long period under a laissez-faire economy. Additionally, a large part of civilian in shanghai belongs to working- class which means they can not afford even under the home ownership policy. Thus, the home ownership scheme may cause a burden on the local government in the future.(5) ( Mostafa, A., Wong, F. K. W., and Hui, E. C. M.,1998)(8)
Conclusion
In fact, Hong Kong and Shanghai are suffering the same situation of urban housing problems. Both of cities have implemented the similar sustainable polices in the housing development but it is apparent that Hong Kong’ has favorable factors such as flexible market, a laissez-faire economy 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. Due to 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 as three years for public rental housing but the waiting time still are too long. Therefore, it can not really assist the people who desire the real help. Moreover, the scheme of Public Rental Housing (PRH) and Home Owner (HOS) can facilitate economic growth because the government can increase its income by the policies. 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:
(1) 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
(2) Hong Kong Statistic, Census and Statistics Department, available at: http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hong_kong_statistics/statistics_by_subject/index.jsp
(accessed 18 July 2010)
(3) 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
(4) Business Times Newspaper from Hong Kong, available from,
http://gb.hkbt.com.hk/a-20091007/hk_4.htm (accessed 19 July 2010)
(5)Knight Frank, Kennedy Town Building, Kenned own Praya, available from, http://search.knightfrank.com/hk00052987s (accessed 20 July 2010
(6) 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
(7) (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
(8) 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)
Sub-Title: Can the sustainable development policies solve the urban housing problems in Hong Kong?
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 adopt the polices of 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 with economic growth. In this essay, it 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 base on Hong Kong’s housing problems and sustainable policies with Shanghai to compare which city’s policies more efficient. At the end of this essay, it will give the recommendations in the future and my opinion that I think Hong Kong and Shanghai are facing urban housing problems. Although I believe there are many more problems than solution in Hong Kong but the housing polices are more efficient than Shanghai.
• .
Main body
In this essay, I will 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. 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, H. L., Lee, S. K. and Woo, K. Y. (2001)(1), the official website by Hong Kong’s government (2) 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, C. K. (2007).(3) 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, H. L., Lee, S. K. and Woo, K. Y. (2001)(1) and I found the evidence of Hong Kong housing price ranking from the news which is Hong Kong’s newspaper website. Fourthly, the housing sustainable development information was found from two articles to obtain the main ideas by Peng, R. and Wheaton, W. C., (1994) (6) and ( Chiu, R. L. H.,2002) (7). Finally, I found a study on provision of housing system in Shanghai is reported by Mostafa, A., Wong, F. K. W., and Hui, E. C. M.,(1998) (8) to support the comparison of polices between Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. The population in Hong Kong has increased rapidly and it was indicated about 7 million at the end of 2009 by the latest statistic which is found from the official statistic on "Population and Vital Events (2).It is obvious that shortage of housing units is a historical problem due to Hong Kong’s population growth and economic progress. What is the factor leading to population growth? Immigration is one of the main reasons because people desire to move from rural area to urban area to improve their life quality and looking for further different opportunities such as career, education. In particular, in times of war, violence or ecological disaster results in an influx of refugees who move from the damaged area to more steady and 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 leading to lack of provision of residential areas. This is because Hong Kong’s 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.
Moreover, housing problems not only means the quantity of housing, but it also relate the housing quality and maintenance such as a large number of people and new migrants live in the squatters where have inadequate facilities and poor sanitation due to lack of planning with lower standard of early development .These are the potential risks can lead to dangerous accident such as fire. Mark, C. K. (2007) (3) indicates 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. Due to narrow area in the squatter village caused a serious fire that led to most of the people homeless. Mark C. K. (2007) (3) also mentions 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 for the government to develop the sustainable housing policy in the following decades.
In addition, Hong Kong has maintained a high housing price because of limited of supply land. H.L. Chan, S. K. Lee and K. Y. Woo,(2001)(1) indicate 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. This is no doubt that 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$1373 each per square foot (4).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 where is in Hong Kong Island (5). 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. They do not have own bedroom but need to share the area together leading to overcrowded households. Besides, the limited supply land restrictions in Hong Kong housing market. The development of the conclusive land supply and the new land available is controlled by its government directly. The government aware high housing price is an urban problem for the citizens leading to implement different sustainable polices to solve this problem.
Since the Shek Kei Mei fire, Hong Kong’s government started to pay more attention to implement various sustainable developments to solve the housing problems such as the provision of public rental housing (PRH). However, this stage of PRH policy was not comprehensive housing policy. Peng, R. and Wheaton, W. C., (1994) (6) indicate that the government 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, R. and Wheaton, W. C., 1994,p.268) (6). 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 three decades in Hong Kong. The 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.
However, Chiu, R. L. H.,(2002) (7) indicates that the housing policy has experienced dramatic changes again since 1997. This is because the new government of Hong Kong Special Administrative (HKSAR) is more focus on the social issue to adopt a resolution in housing policy. As this article mentions that the main housing policies are established by new government such as a rate of 70% home ownership was targeted for 2006 to reinforce social stability and the sense of belonging; 8500 units of target production was set to decrease the housing price each year and to eliminate the housing needs; a pledge was made shorter period as three years for the waiting time of public rental housing. The purpose of these policies base on the Home Owner Scheme (HOS) and Public Rental Housing (PRH) to make the adjustment. The aim of these polices encourage more people to buy their own flat at the cheaper price and arrange the poor people to live in the Public Rental Housing in a shorter time. Furthermore, housing policies are comprehensive in Hong Kong because the government has considered different aspects to suit various kinds of people such as the Rent Allowance for Elderly Scheme in the PRH housing policy because of the needs of elderly people of housing ( Chiu, R. L. H.,2002) (7)
On the other hand, the urban housing problem in Shanghai also has been one of the most serious social problems as Hong Kong. The survey reported that about half of the city’s 1.8 million households lived in overcrowded area in 1985.Nearly 216,000 households had per living area below 4 square meters only, more than about 15,200 of those households had less than 2 square meters. Shanghai Municipality had begun to adopt the Housing Settlement project in 1987 to solve the urban housing problem. The policy has resettled over 470,000 households living in the narrow space under 2.5 square meters. The Municipality spent 1.8 million Yuan on the project, developing about 1,8 square meters for households’ overcrowded problem (8). 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. In fact, Shanghai has similar housing policies as Hong Kong but it is obvious that Hong Kong’s housing sustainable development policies are more efficient and comprehensive than Shanghai. This is because Hong Kong‘s market performance is more flexible and it has exercised its provision of residential areas for long period under a laissez-faire economy. Additionally, a large part of civilian in shanghai belongs to working- class which means they can not afford even under the home ownership policy. Thus, the home ownership scheme may cause a burden on the local government in the future.(5) ( Mostafa, A., Wong, F. K. W., and Hui, E. C. M.,1998)(8)
Conclusion
In fact, Hong Kong and Shanghai are suffering the same situation of urban housing problems. Both of cities have implemented the similar sustainable polices in the housing development but it is apparent that Hong Kong’ has favorable factors such as flexible market, a laissez-faire economy 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. Due to 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 as three years for public rental housing but the waiting time still are too long. Therefore, it can not really assist the people who desire the real help. Moreover, the scheme of Public Rental Housing (PRH) and Home Owner (HOS) can facilitate economic growth because the government can increase its income by the policies. 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:
(1) 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
(2) Hong Kong Statistic, Census and Statistics Department, available at: http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hong_kong_statistics/statistics_by_subject/index.jsp
(accessed 18 July 2010)
(3) 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
(4) Business Times Newspaper from Hong Kong, available from,
http://gb.hkbt.com.hk/a-20091007/hk_4.htm (accessed 19 July 2010)
(5)Knight Frank, Kennedy Town Building, Kenned own Praya, available from, http://search.knightfrank.com/hk00052987s (accessed 20 July 2010
(6) 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
(7) (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
(8) 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)
kelvin's first draft
Topic: To what extent can the problems of urbanisation be met by a policy of sustainable development?
Sub-title: How the sustainable policies in Hong Kong can iron out the urban problem successfully? [is this a question?]
Introduction
More than half of the population of the world are living in the urban areas now (Ciok Ling Ooi, 2009). There is no surprise that it is the trend in the future of the world. From this point of view, urbanisation is used to describe the growth of the urban cities. Kam Wing Chan (2009) claimed that urbanisation is caused by the growth of population in the city. The migrants moving from rural areas to urban area and the sprawling of the urban area are the two main patterns of the urbanisation. At the very beginning, urbanisation can boost the economic growth thus leading to a higher living standard of the whole community. Government welcomed the urbanisation or even encourages and develops more urban areas. However, the reality is that urbanisation brought the economic growth to the community together with a handful of urban problems. The main underlying cause of the problem is the huge population in a tiny place. In this essay, Hong Kong is being used as a case in order to illustrate the urban problems in most of the cities in the World. Additionally, Asia is the home of the fastest growing urban population in the World. Therefore, the main cities in Asia such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai are suffering from the urban problems. Those problems are now the obstacles for the economic growth because of the poor transportation system and housing environment and heavy pollution in terms of air, water and solid wastes. With the aim to eliminate the negative effects of the urbanisation and continue the city development, sustainable development policy is the ultimate method. According to WCED report, “sustainable development refers to establish the fundamental needs of the current population without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”(WCED 1987, P.8). Based on this principle, the sustainable development policy does improvement on environmental and economic and quality of life for the people living (David L. Blumenthal, 2007). Definitely, it is not an easy task for the government to balance every aspect, therefore, there is a need to evaluate the policy regularly. In the case of Hong Kong, sustainable development policy had been carried out for a long time with the aim to iron out the two main urban problems, which are housing and transport problem. Indeed, to a fair extent the policy can meet the urban problem in Hong Kong. At the end of the essay, there is a comparison with Singapore in order to evaluate the sustainable development policy in Hong Kong and comes up with some recommendations eventually.
[did you say which problme you will be concentrating on?]
Housing problem in Hong Kong
To begin with the housing problem in Hong Kong, incredible population density should be highlighted. The land area of Hong Kong is about 1,100 square kilometres while the total population is around 7 million. The average population density is 6,181 persons per square kilometre compared with 4,483 persons pre square kilometre in London and 6,814 persons pre square kilometre in Singapore. However, this calculation includes the park and special areas, which accounted for almost 40% of land in Hong Kong (AFCD, 2005). Therefore, to be more precise, 80% of the population of Hong Kong are living in the built-up area thus the density can up to 82,107 persons per kilometres. Because of the geographic factor, Hong Kong has an uneven distribution of population over the territory. Therefore, the housing problems started from the old urban areas that located at north and south of the Victoria Harbour (figure 1). The two sides of Victoria Harbour are the heart of the development of Hong Kong historically; therefore, the land use is mixed and complex. Mixed and unplanned land use plus the unbelievable high population
Figure 1: The overview of the Victoria Harbour
Source:http://www.hongkonghousing.com/
density make the housing problem in Hong Kong unique and difficult to solve. In Hong Kong, flat land is scarce and population is high. The main housing problem features are small living space, insufficient open areas, shortage of housing supply and public services. The pictures below (figures 2, 3, 4, 5) show how bad the living condition is in Hong Kong. Obviously, there is no space between block and block or even home and home. People live in a house with one large window and two small windows. It is totally against the principle of sustainable development, which is linked with the concept of quality of life (Moore and Scott, 2005). Based on this concept, housing is not only providing a shelter but also quality living condition to the inhabitant.
Figure 2: The living condition in Hong Kong
Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/theweekinpictures/2690758/The-week-in-pictures-6-September-2008.html
Figure 3: The buildings are close to each other
Source: http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/money_politics_law/hong_kong_protest.htm
Figure 4: The old public house in Sham Shui Po
Source: http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/money_politics_law/hong_kong_protest.htm
Figure 5: The Unplanned Old Town
Source: http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/money_politics_law/hong_kong_protest.htm
Housing Policy in Hong Kong
With the aim to iron out the severe problem, Hong Kong really takes sustainable development policy in consideration. According to The Fact Sheet of Hong Kong, increase the flat land areas, redevelop the old urban areas and subsidies the low and middle classes improve the living condition are the main policies to tackle the problem (The Fact, 2009). The mission of those policies is in the line with the idea of “sustainable housing should cater for the housing needs of not only this generation but also those to come” (Rebecca L, 2000). It is easy to understand that Hong Kong government is trying to build up the future for the next generation and also those are coming.
Reclamation
The initial step is to increase the flat land area supply meeting the demand of land use re-planning. In Hong Kong, the problem is difficult because of limited area. The only way to increase the flat land is do reclamation. From 1898, after the government had finished the feasibility study of the reclamation project, the project was carrying out until now. There are three phases that planed to involve reclaiming 57 hectares of land. The project located at Central and Wan Cha and Kowloon Peninsula with the aims to release the stresses of the surrounding over-crowed districts and supply the land for the further transportation system development and also meet the future land demand. The remarkable reclamation in Hong Kong is that the land of the Hong Kong International Airport—Chek Lap Kok Airport was come from reclamation. Meanwhile, there is small size reclamations beyond the main project such as those near Tsing Yi and To Road Harbour. Indeed, reclamation helps to release the tension of inadequate land. However, due to the strong opposite voice form the public and the pressures group, the government made a promise that there will be no more reclamation with the Harbour in the future.
Renewal of old urban area and satellite town development
The follow up step after the reclamation is to redistribute the population and re-plan the land use. These two projects were parallel to each other. The problem of the old urban town in Hong Kong is the mixed land use whilst the population is uneven distributed. Seeing that, government tries to rehabilitate and re-plan the old town in order to separate the different land use. Urban Renewal Authority (URA) carried the project, which main target areas are Kwun Tong, Sham Shui Po, Tsuen Wan, Wan Chai, Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok. Apart form redeveloping and rehabilitating, heritage preservation and is also the main concern for URA. 1) Redevelopment will target old and dilapidated building with poor condition. These sites will be re-planned and rebuilt to achieve clear environmental and social benefits. 2) Rehabilitation is to work with the owner to prevent the decay of the built environment and repair and maintenance of building. Under this program, government will provide professional advice and funding to the building owners. 3) Revitalisation is an idea to revive and strengthen the economic of different district. Based on the district history and features, government encourages and helps some “local” small business in order to improve the district economic and preserve the heritage.
Parallel to the old town renewal, government needs to redistribute the population. Satellite town is the way to achieve this aim. The main task of the establishment of satellite town is to solve over-crowded condition. There are nine new towns in Hong Kong to meet the increase in population (figure 6). The nine new towns are divided into three generations. The earliest one started at 1970s and the second one started at the late 1970s and the final one started at 1990s. the current population of the nine new towns is around 3.2 million and which is expected to reach 3.4 million in 2013. All the new towns are well design with good infrastructure and community facilities. Another main concept of new town development is self-sufficient community. A new town should include a well-developed transportation network, own commercial and Industrial centres and variety of governmental and recreational
Figure 6: The population growth from 1990 to 2008
Source: Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department
Pubic Housing Scheme
Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) responsible for implementing the public housing programmes in Hong Kong. The mission of HKHA is to provide the public house for those who cannot afford the rental of private house. According to the statistic, there are 30% of the population living in the public house (HKHA report, 2007/2008). Additionally, HKHA is not only put an effort on providing housing to the low and middle class people, but also establish a harmony living environment. On the other hand, private property provider also plays a crucial role on providing harmony housing for Hong Kong. Therefore, another responsibility of HKHA is to monitor the private property provider and stabilize the land supply and the private property market. Generally, there are three types of house that provided by HKHA. Subsidised flat is suitable for middle-income group and Interim is designed for those are homeless with a special reason but not eligible for applying the public house. Moreover, HKHA takes consideration of the elders in Hong Kong who are not willing to live with their family or via versa.
Other Policies
A comprehensive and thoughtful policy should include the follow up and related issue. Actually, the design of the house, the location of the construction site and the waste form the new housing estate are the issue the government have to put an eye on. For instance, environmental friendly materials are being used during the construction. More important, government attempts to eliminate the disruption during and after the construction in terms of noise, dust and traffic. The noticeable one is to eliminate the light pollution by introducing low-energy light bulb and educating the citizens.
[this is the first time you have directly addressed sustainability]
The situation in Singapore
Singapore is the city similar to Hong Kong and both of them are facing the same housing problem. The total area of Singapore is around 700 square kilometres with 4.8 million population thus the density is around 6,814 persons per kilometre. The Housing and Development Board (HDB) was the largest housing provider in Singapore, which already satisfied over 85% housing needs (Lawrence C, 2004). Establish new town and develop super-high rise flat (figure 7) are the two main strategies to tackle the housing problem. Super-high rise flat is with the result in solving the housing shortage, over-crowding, dilapidation, poor sanitation and inadequate facilities. On the other hand, new town is used to deurbanise that is moving the dwellers to the residential zones and develop the self-sufficient community. The future plan of Singapore is focusing on “high density and high-rising housing” (Lawrence, 2004). Review the housing policy of Singapore, which gains the most successful result. Majority of the population are residing and with a quality living environment as well. Therefore, Singapore is going to focus on providing a way of life for the citizens in the future.
Figure 7: The super High-rise Flat in Singapore
Source: Strait Times
Comparison
The first criterion to evaluate the policy is based on the mission. Obviously, both Hong Kong and Singapore are following the mission and implement a series of plan to deal with the housing problem. It is important to follow the mission, which gives the correct direction and makes all the plans toward the target.
Secondly, sustainable development should balance different aspects at the same time. From this point of view, both governments did a lot to achieve this measurement. Housing is not only for the adult, but also the elderly; Housing is to provide a home to live with enough space and good condition; public services such as transportation network and community facilities should be well developed within the residential area; however, there is a failure example in Hong Kong. Tin Sheung Wai is one of the latest new towns with a lot of serious family problems due to insufficient community facilities and services such as social workers and family care centres. Since the problems are getting worse and the government is unable to find out any solution in a short time, the number of suicide is keep increasing. Therefore, the town is called “ pathetic city”.
Thirdly, the inborn factor makes Hong Kong facing more problem than Singapore. HDB is the housing department in Singapore and it had already satisfied over 85% of the housing need, which is a successful number. To contrast, there are 30% of population of Hong Kong are living in public houses that provided by government. The reason behind is that the private property providers are the main houses provider in Hong Kong. It is no surprise that profit oriented developers are hesitant to try out the affordable and environmental friendly houses unless the houses offer a better profit prospect. Meanwhile, Hong Kong citizens treat house as an investment tool thus leading to a very high property price. Therefore, government fails to control the private providers. In Singapore, HDB has an authority to acquire private land for public house building. The above factors make the situation more complex and difficult to deal with.
Finally, the most serious consequence is the environmental hazard in Hong Kong. Reclamation caused a huge environment problem to the Victoria Harbour. Because of the enormous reclamation, the size of the harbour is diminishing (figure 8 and 9 ) and harmful for the living environment of the Chinese White Dolphin. As mentions before, sustainable development should be balance social , economy, resource and environment ,therefore, Hong Kong’s housing policies cannot be considered as high achievement sustainable development policies although they did improve the living condition and sufficient houses to the citizens in Hong Kong.
Figure 8: The history of reclamation from 194501993 in Hong Kong
Source: http://www.harbourprotection.org/web_image/other/appendix09.jpg
Figure 9: Three Phases Reclamation
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_and_Wan_Chai_Reclamation
Conclusion
The main principle of sustainable development is to satisfy the current needs without affecting the coming generation. In order to evaluate the housing policies in Hong Kong, there is no single indicator to monitor the sustainability (Michalos, 1997). In fact, Hong Kong government is following the concept of sustainable development and implementing a set of policy to handle the housing difficulties. After the long time effort, the achievement cannot be neglect that tackles the core-housing problem successfully. Despite the achievement is obvious, the criticism is for the long-term problem. Environment hazard, family problem and high price of private house are the three main drawbacks of the housing policy. Compare with Singapore, the policy in Hong Kong meets the basic housing needs but there is a room for improvement to create a sustainable and liveable community.
References:
• Ciok Ling Ooi 2009. Challenge of sustainability for Asian urbanisation. Current opinion in Environment Sustainability 2009, 1:187-191
• David L. Blumenthal and Edward J. Martain 2007. Urban Sustainable Development, Lower Income communities, and Transorganisation. Public Administration, 30: 95-107
• Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department
http://www.afcd.gov.hk/eindex.html
• Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department
http://www.afcd.gov.hk/eindex.html
• Hong Kong fact sheet: new town and new major urban development 2009 report. Available at:
www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/.../towns&urban_developments.pdf
• Hong Kong housing Authority
http://www.housingauthority.gov.hk/en
• Hong Kong 2009-2010 Policy Address full report, available at :
http://www.policyaddress.gov.hk/09-10/eng/index.html
• Hong Kong Sustainable Development Department
http://www.susdev.gov.hk/html/en/council/
• Kam Wing Chan and Ying Hu 2003. Urbanization in China in the 1990s: New definition, Different Series, and Revised Trends. The China Review, vol. 3 No, 2(Fall 2003), 49-71
• Lawrence C. 2004. Public Housing Governance in Singapore: Current Issues and Challenges
• Michalos, A. (1997). Combining social, economic and environmental indicators to measure sustainable human well-being. Social indicators research, 41, 1-4
• Moore, N., & Soott, M. (Eds). (2005). Renewing urban communities: Environment, citizenship and sustainability in Ireland. Aldershot: Ashgate
• Rebecca L. H. CHIU (2000). Environmental Sustainability of Hong Kong’s Housing System and Housing process model. International planning studies, Vol, 5, No. 1, 45-64
• Report of the the World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. Chapter 2: Towards Sustainable Development. Available at: http://habitat.igc.org/open-gates/ocf-02.htm#I
Sub-title: How the sustainable policies in Hong Kong can iron out the urban problem successfully? [is this a question?]
Introduction
More than half of the population of the world are living in the urban areas now (Ciok Ling Ooi, 2009). There is no surprise that it is the trend in the future of the world. From this point of view, urbanisation is used to describe the growth of the urban cities. Kam Wing Chan (2009) claimed that urbanisation is caused by the growth of population in the city. The migrants moving from rural areas to urban area and the sprawling of the urban area are the two main patterns of the urbanisation. At the very beginning, urbanisation can boost the economic growth thus leading to a higher living standard of the whole community. Government welcomed the urbanisation or even encourages and develops more urban areas. However, the reality is that urbanisation brought the economic growth to the community together with a handful of urban problems. The main underlying cause of the problem is the huge population in a tiny place. In this essay, Hong Kong is being used as a case in order to illustrate the urban problems in most of the cities in the World. Additionally, Asia is the home of the fastest growing urban population in the World. Therefore, the main cities in Asia such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai are suffering from the urban problems. Those problems are now the obstacles for the economic growth because of the poor transportation system and housing environment and heavy pollution in terms of air, water and solid wastes. With the aim to eliminate the negative effects of the urbanisation and continue the city development, sustainable development policy is the ultimate method. According to WCED report, “sustainable development refers to establish the fundamental needs of the current population without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”(WCED 1987, P.8). Based on this principle, the sustainable development policy does improvement on environmental and economic and quality of life for the people living (David L. Blumenthal, 2007). Definitely, it is not an easy task for the government to balance every aspect, therefore, there is a need to evaluate the policy regularly. In the case of Hong Kong, sustainable development policy had been carried out for a long time with the aim to iron out the two main urban problems, which are housing and transport problem. Indeed, to a fair extent the policy can meet the urban problem in Hong Kong. At the end of the essay, there is a comparison with Singapore in order to evaluate the sustainable development policy in Hong Kong and comes up with some recommendations eventually.
[did you say which problme you will be concentrating on?]
Housing problem in Hong Kong
To begin with the housing problem in Hong Kong, incredible population density should be highlighted. The land area of Hong Kong is about 1,100 square kilometres while the total population is around 7 million. The average population density is 6,181 persons per square kilometre compared with 4,483 persons pre square kilometre in London and 6,814 persons pre square kilometre in Singapore. However, this calculation includes the park and special areas, which accounted for almost 40% of land in Hong Kong (AFCD, 2005). Therefore, to be more precise, 80% of the population of Hong Kong are living in the built-up area thus the density can up to 82,107 persons per kilometres. Because of the geographic factor, Hong Kong has an uneven distribution of population over the territory. Therefore, the housing problems started from the old urban areas that located at north and south of the Victoria Harbour (figure 1). The two sides of Victoria Harbour are the heart of the development of Hong Kong historically; therefore, the land use is mixed and complex. Mixed and unplanned land use plus the unbelievable high population
Figure 1: The overview of the Victoria Harbour
Source:http://www.hongkonghousing.com/
density make the housing problem in Hong Kong unique and difficult to solve. In Hong Kong, flat land is scarce and population is high. The main housing problem features are small living space, insufficient open areas, shortage of housing supply and public services. The pictures below (figures 2, 3, 4, 5) show how bad the living condition is in Hong Kong. Obviously, there is no space between block and block or even home and home. People live in a house with one large window and two small windows. It is totally against the principle of sustainable development, which is linked with the concept of quality of life (Moore and Scott, 2005). Based on this concept, housing is not only providing a shelter but also quality living condition to the inhabitant.
Figure 2: The living condition in Hong Kong
Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/theweekinpictures/2690758/The-week-in-pictures-6-September-2008.html
Figure 3: The buildings are close to each other
Source: http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/money_politics_law/hong_kong_protest.htm
Figure 4: The old public house in Sham Shui Po
Source: http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/money_politics_law/hong_kong_protest.htm
Figure 5: The Unplanned Old Town
Source: http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/money_politics_law/hong_kong_protest.htm
Housing Policy in Hong Kong
With the aim to iron out the severe problem, Hong Kong really takes sustainable development policy in consideration. According to The Fact Sheet of Hong Kong, increase the flat land areas, redevelop the old urban areas and subsidies the low and middle classes improve the living condition are the main policies to tackle the problem (The Fact, 2009). The mission of those policies is in the line with the idea of “sustainable housing should cater for the housing needs of not only this generation but also those to come” (Rebecca L, 2000). It is easy to understand that Hong Kong government is trying to build up the future for the next generation and also those are coming.
Reclamation
The initial step is to increase the flat land area supply meeting the demand of land use re-planning. In Hong Kong, the problem is difficult because of limited area. The only way to increase the flat land is do reclamation. From 1898, after the government had finished the feasibility study of the reclamation project, the project was carrying out until now. There are three phases that planed to involve reclaiming 57 hectares of land. The project located at Central and Wan Cha and Kowloon Peninsula with the aims to release the stresses of the surrounding over-crowed districts and supply the land for the further transportation system development and also meet the future land demand. The remarkable reclamation in Hong Kong is that the land of the Hong Kong International Airport—Chek Lap Kok Airport was come from reclamation. Meanwhile, there is small size reclamations beyond the main project such as those near Tsing Yi and To Road Harbour. Indeed, reclamation helps to release the tension of inadequate land. However, due to the strong opposite voice form the public and the pressures group, the government made a promise that there will be no more reclamation with the Harbour in the future.
Renewal of old urban area and satellite town development
The follow up step after the reclamation is to redistribute the population and re-plan the land use. These two projects were parallel to each other. The problem of the old urban town in Hong Kong is the mixed land use whilst the population is uneven distributed. Seeing that, government tries to rehabilitate and re-plan the old town in order to separate the different land use. Urban Renewal Authority (URA) carried the project, which main target areas are Kwun Tong, Sham Shui Po, Tsuen Wan, Wan Chai, Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok. Apart form redeveloping and rehabilitating, heritage preservation and is also the main concern for URA. 1) Redevelopment will target old and dilapidated building with poor condition. These sites will be re-planned and rebuilt to achieve clear environmental and social benefits. 2) Rehabilitation is to work with the owner to prevent the decay of the built environment and repair and maintenance of building. Under this program, government will provide professional advice and funding to the building owners. 3) Revitalisation is an idea to revive and strengthen the economic of different district. Based on the district history and features, government encourages and helps some “local” small business in order to improve the district economic and preserve the heritage.
Parallel to the old town renewal, government needs to redistribute the population. Satellite town is the way to achieve this aim. The main task of the establishment of satellite town is to solve over-crowded condition. There are nine new towns in Hong Kong to meet the increase in population (figure 6). The nine new towns are divided into three generations. The earliest one started at 1970s and the second one started at the late 1970s and the final one started at 1990s. the current population of the nine new towns is around 3.2 million and which is expected to reach 3.4 million in 2013. All the new towns are well design with good infrastructure and community facilities. Another main concept of new town development is self-sufficient community. A new town should include a well-developed transportation network, own commercial and Industrial centres and variety of governmental and recreational
Figure 6: The population growth from 1990 to 2008
Source: Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department
Pubic Housing Scheme
Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) responsible for implementing the public housing programmes in Hong Kong. The mission of HKHA is to provide the public house for those who cannot afford the rental of private house. According to the statistic, there are 30% of the population living in the public house (HKHA report, 2007/2008). Additionally, HKHA is not only put an effort on providing housing to the low and middle class people, but also establish a harmony living environment. On the other hand, private property provider also plays a crucial role on providing harmony housing for Hong Kong. Therefore, another responsibility of HKHA is to monitor the private property provider and stabilize the land supply and the private property market. Generally, there are three types of house that provided by HKHA. Subsidised flat is suitable for middle-income group and Interim is designed for those are homeless with a special reason but not eligible for applying the public house. Moreover, HKHA takes consideration of the elders in Hong Kong who are not willing to live with their family or via versa.
Other Policies
A comprehensive and thoughtful policy should include the follow up and related issue. Actually, the design of the house, the location of the construction site and the waste form the new housing estate are the issue the government have to put an eye on. For instance, environmental friendly materials are being used during the construction. More important, government attempts to eliminate the disruption during and after the construction in terms of noise, dust and traffic. The noticeable one is to eliminate the light pollution by introducing low-energy light bulb and educating the citizens.
[this is the first time you have directly addressed sustainability]
The situation in Singapore
Singapore is the city similar to Hong Kong and both of them are facing the same housing problem. The total area of Singapore is around 700 square kilometres with 4.8 million population thus the density is around 6,814 persons per kilometre. The Housing and Development Board (HDB) was the largest housing provider in Singapore, which already satisfied over 85% housing needs (Lawrence C, 2004). Establish new town and develop super-high rise flat (figure 7) are the two main strategies to tackle the housing problem. Super-high rise flat is with the result in solving the housing shortage, over-crowding, dilapidation, poor sanitation and inadequate facilities. On the other hand, new town is used to deurbanise that is moving the dwellers to the residential zones and develop the self-sufficient community. The future plan of Singapore is focusing on “high density and high-rising housing” (Lawrence, 2004). Review the housing policy of Singapore, which gains the most successful result. Majority of the population are residing and with a quality living environment as well. Therefore, Singapore is going to focus on providing a way of life for the citizens in the future.
Figure 7: The super High-rise Flat in Singapore
Source: Strait Times
Comparison
The first criterion to evaluate the policy is based on the mission. Obviously, both Hong Kong and Singapore are following the mission and implement a series of plan to deal with the housing problem. It is important to follow the mission, which gives the correct direction and makes all the plans toward the target.
Secondly, sustainable development should balance different aspects at the same time. From this point of view, both governments did a lot to achieve this measurement. Housing is not only for the adult, but also the elderly; Housing is to provide a home to live with enough space and good condition; public services such as transportation network and community facilities should be well developed within the residential area; however, there is a failure example in Hong Kong. Tin Sheung Wai is one of the latest new towns with a lot of serious family problems due to insufficient community facilities and services such as social workers and family care centres. Since the problems are getting worse and the government is unable to find out any solution in a short time, the number of suicide is keep increasing. Therefore, the town is called “ pathetic city”.
Thirdly, the inborn factor makes Hong Kong facing more problem than Singapore. HDB is the housing department in Singapore and it had already satisfied over 85% of the housing need, which is a successful number. To contrast, there are 30% of population of Hong Kong are living in public houses that provided by government. The reason behind is that the private property providers are the main houses provider in Hong Kong. It is no surprise that profit oriented developers are hesitant to try out the affordable and environmental friendly houses unless the houses offer a better profit prospect. Meanwhile, Hong Kong citizens treat house as an investment tool thus leading to a very high property price. Therefore, government fails to control the private providers. In Singapore, HDB has an authority to acquire private land for public house building. The above factors make the situation more complex and difficult to deal with.
Finally, the most serious consequence is the environmental hazard in Hong Kong. Reclamation caused a huge environment problem to the Victoria Harbour. Because of the enormous reclamation, the size of the harbour is diminishing (figure 8 and 9 ) and harmful for the living environment of the Chinese White Dolphin. As mentions before, sustainable development should be balance social , economy, resource and environment ,therefore, Hong Kong’s housing policies cannot be considered as high achievement sustainable development policies although they did improve the living condition and sufficient houses to the citizens in Hong Kong.
Figure 8: The history of reclamation from 194501993 in Hong Kong
Source: http://www.harbourprotection.org/web_image/other/appendix09.jpg
Figure 9: Three Phases Reclamation
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_and_Wan_Chai_Reclamation
Conclusion
The main principle of sustainable development is to satisfy the current needs without affecting the coming generation. In order to evaluate the housing policies in Hong Kong, there is no single indicator to monitor the sustainability (Michalos, 1997). In fact, Hong Kong government is following the concept of sustainable development and implementing a set of policy to handle the housing difficulties. After the long time effort, the achievement cannot be neglect that tackles the core-housing problem successfully. Despite the achievement is obvious, the criticism is for the long-term problem. Environment hazard, family problem and high price of private house are the three main drawbacks of the housing policy. Compare with Singapore, the policy in Hong Kong meets the basic housing needs but there is a room for improvement to create a sustainable and liveable community.
References:
• Ciok Ling Ooi 2009. Challenge of sustainability for Asian urbanisation. Current opinion in Environment Sustainability 2009, 1:187-191
• David L. Blumenthal and Edward J. Martain 2007. Urban Sustainable Development, Lower Income communities, and Transorganisation. Public Administration, 30: 95-107
• Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department
http://www.afcd.gov.hk/eindex.html
• Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department
http://www.afcd.gov.hk/eindex.html
• Hong Kong fact sheet: new town and new major urban development 2009 report. Available at:
www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/.../towns&urban_developments.pdf
• Hong Kong housing Authority
http://www.housingauthority.gov.hk/en
• Hong Kong 2009-2010 Policy Address full report, available at :
http://www.policyaddress.gov.hk/09-10/eng/index.html
• Hong Kong Sustainable Development Department
http://www.susdev.gov.hk/html/en/council/
• Kam Wing Chan and Ying Hu 2003. Urbanization in China in the 1990s: New definition, Different Series, and Revised Trends. The China Review, vol. 3 No, 2(Fall 2003), 49-71
• Lawrence C. 2004. Public Housing Governance in Singapore: Current Issues and Challenges
• Michalos, A. (1997). Combining social, economic and environmental indicators to measure sustainable human well-being. Social indicators research, 41, 1-4
• Moore, N., & Soott, M. (Eds). (2005). Renewing urban communities: Environment, citizenship and sustainability in Ireland. Aldershot: Ashgate
• Rebecca L. H. CHIU (2000). Environmental Sustainability of Hong Kong’s Housing System and Housing process model. International planning studies, Vol, 5, No. 1, 45-64
• Report of the the World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. Chapter 2: Towards Sustainable Development. Available at: http://habitat.igc.org/open-gates/ocf-02.htm#I
Whole essay(first draft)-Nero
Title:
To what extent can the problems of urbanisation be met by a policy of sustainable development?
-What are the problems of urbanisation in China and the existing solution and possible solution?
Introduction
“Urbanization is a historic transformation process by which the means of production and people’s lifestyles evolve from the country to the city. While this process is often characterized as farmers’ migration to cities and the continuing development of cities” (Wen, undated). It not only includes movement from rural area to urban area but also include the changes of migrants’ attitudes, habits, behavior and life style. In the present age, urbanization is playing a significant role in the development of society and economy. It can reflect the level of social development and civilization of a country as well (Zhao & Liu 2010). Urbanisation was caused by industrialisation and technological development in developed countries, such as in Europe and North America. The huge economic and social changes were happened gradually. From 19th to early 20th centuries, industrialisation and technology developed very fast in these countries or regions. A vast number of opportunities were created for workers who were from rural areas (Wang & Hu 1999). The process of urbanisation comes out rapidly all over the world. In the meantime, urbanisation has caused many problems, such as crimes, environmental pollution, overcrowded housing, high unemployment and traffic jam. Governments attempt to solve these problems. A serial of policies were introduced. Many policies solved these problems effectively, but some of them could affect our future lives. For instance, aim to solve the problem of overcrowded housing, some governments decided to destroy some traditional architecture or cut plenty of trees to build tall buildings. It could solve this problem at this moment, but in the long run it will cause many other serious problems. Therefore, the concept of ‘sustainable development’ was tabled. Sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (wordIQ.com, undated). Sustainable development not only consider present but also consider the effects of the future. Increasing people suggest that sustainable development should be adopted to solve the problems of urbanisation. Personally, I agree with this opinion. Sustainable development can improve our living condition and environment.
China is a developing country. Urbanisation has encouraged both the development of economy and society hugely, but the situation of urbanisation in developing countries is different from developed countries. China has the largest number of population in our world. It brings more negative effects.
This essay will talk about the different problems which caused by urbanisation in China, it will focus on crimes, unemployment and overcrowded housing, I will analyse these three problems and give some existing policies of solving these problems and possible solutions, then will discuss whether they can effectively solve those problems and use some evidences to illustrate that sustainable development could be successful. Furthermore, some limitation will be given at the end of this essay.
Negative effects of urbanisation
During the past 2 decades, the economy is growing quite fast in China. After joining the World Trade Organisation(WTO), China becomes a significant role in the world economy. Considering the fast economic growth of China, some economists and experts assert that urbanisation starts in China quite later than developed countries and regions. The authority of China must adopt a series of policies to catch up with these developed countries. Indeed, the Chinese government permit rural people move to urban area in order to accelerate the process of urbanisation(Wen, undated). There are more than 1.3 billion people in China. With the huge amount of population, China has to be confronted with the unprecedented challenge of urbanisation.
Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, China Statistical yearbook, various issues
Firstly, due to the huge amount of farmers migrating into big cities, lots of them cannot find any rooms to live. More and more homeless people appear. Secondly, many migrants have to live in one small room with the other people. Poor living condition caused many health issues and infectious disease.
After looking at over-crowded housing, we should now focus on another urbanisation problem – unemployment. Urbanisation of a city should provide more jobs to its residents, but in China, the situation is different. A vast number of people in Chinese cities need plenty of jobs while the narrow employment opportunities cannot meet residents’ needs. Furthermore, increasing migrations moving into cities caused high competitions. In 2002, the number of employees who work for state-owned firms fell from 75millions to 40 millions. More than 20millions people lost their jobs. Until June 2004, nearly 8.37millions urban residents were unemployed(Wen, undated). Otherwise, in China, the reason of many poor rural people moving into big cities is that they could not find any jobs in countries rather than they get a job in urban area. They just think that if they move into cities, they will have better lives (Wang & Hu 1999). In fact, when they move into cities, most of them cannot find a job because of both high competitions and less skills. That causes more and more unemployment.
Considering the reasons of those three problems, we can understand that too many unemployed people in large cities is the main problem. If the governments want to solve these problems, they should first find a way to create more jobs to meet those unemployed people.
.
Policy of sustainable development
.
Having introduced some urbanisation problems, we should now focus on some successful policies of sustainable development. Aim to solve those urbanisation problems, the Chinese government carries out a series of strategies to face these unprecedented challenges. First of all, after the economic reform, Chinese government revised its strategies. The authority has implemented a small town development policy to develop rural areas instead of engaging enormous workforce move into big cities. The authority encouraged rural farmers to do some non-farm activities, such as animal husbandry, fishery and handicrafts. In the mean time, the government encouraged farmers to transfer their jobs in local industry, construction, transportation and the other service(Wang & Hu 1999). In 1984, the Chinese government adopted new policy to liberalise rural trade. Farmers are allowed to engage selected goods between town and countries and to adopt household registration in small town to engage in commerce. They could be responsible for their own goods supplies (Wang & Hu 1999). In 1987, China adopted a strategy which is an export-oriented development. Many rural products closely link to the export sector (Wang & Hu 1999). These policies effectively created enormous job opportunities in rural areas. When big cities are too crowded and lacking job opportunities, those small towns can supply lots of job opportunities. Furthermore, to create more job opportunities, huge investments are needed. Facing to the challenges, China attempts to reproduce the rural urbanisation model on nationwide scale. If the government sent all of surplus workforce to towns, it would be more than 2 times of the current population. Therefore, a vast number of new towns will needed to be develop(Gale & Dai, 2002). Indeed, this kind of huge investment will spend plenty of money and resources to build housing, roads, water and sewer, electric and gas systems for new town, but in the mean time, it will create a vast number of jobs (Gale & Dai, 2002). The occurrence of these jobs could reduce unemployment. Since 1978, small towns have developed rapidly in main land of China. Many new towns were built in China. In 1979, almost 2400 small towns housed about 55.56millions people, but in 1995, according to China’s Ministry of Construction, more than 50,000 small towns occurred in China. Small town development was progressed rapidly in coastal cities. For instance, in Shanghai, the number of small towns had increased from 1070 to 2300 in 2 decades. In the Zhujiang Delta, the number increased from 21 to 188 form1982 to 1987. The increased small towns absorbed a vast number of rural surplus workforces (Wang & Hu 1999).
.
Given two existing sustainable development police, let us look at another two possible solutions. Firstly, the west of China is an important investment area in China. In the western area, the urbanisation rate is still very low. In 2007, the urbanisation rate of the western China is only 37.83% while the rate in the east is 60.47%, and the average rate is 44.94%. Obviously, the low urbanisation rate prevents the improvement of national urbanisation rate. Only the urbanisation rate of Inner Mongolia and Chongqing are higher than the average rate of China (Zhao & Liu , 2010). If the government implemented a policy to send the huge number of surplus workforce to the western area, the west of China would be urbanized faster. In the mean time, the urbanisation of west of China would be able to create plenty of jobs as well. Secondly, finding approaches to send Chinese rural labour to work in the other countries is another good methods to solve unemployment problems. It is not only a good way to make the farmers getting rich but also a good way to improve farmers' views and their work skills. These benefits could equip them and make them have enough abilities and skills to find a job when then come back (Wen, undated).
After showing these existing policies of sustainable development and possible solutions, we can understand that in China, the key methods of solving those urbanisation problems, such as over-crowded housing, unemployment and crimes are jobs creation and encourage surplus workforce to develop those less developed area, such as rural area, small towns and western China. As a result, the two existing solution effectively reduce the negative effects of urbanisation. It can fully testify that a policy of sustainable development could effectively solve urbanisation problems. The investment of western China and accelerating the pace of international employment are good way to solve urbanisation problems as well, because they can also create plenty of jobs to absorb rural surplus workforces.However, these two methods both have some limitations. Not all of people are willing to or have enough ability to migrate to western China or go to the other countries. The weather of western China is not as pleasant as the east of China, and the desertification of some western area is quite serious. In addition, not all of rural farmers have enough money to go to the other countries to find a job without any economic aid.
.
Conclusion
.
To summarise, in China, urbanisation has caused many serious problems, including over-crowded housing, unemployment and increasing crime rate. Chinese government has reduced the effects of these urbanisation problems effectively through adopting some policies of sustainable development. It can illustrate that urbanisation problems could be solved by sustainable development. However, due to the largest number of population of the world in China, they are still big problems in the modern society. The Chinese government should carry out some new policies of sustainable development to further solve these problems. The investment of western China and accelerating the pace of international employment are two possible solutions, but they both have some limitation. The authority of main land of China should consider both the benefits and limitation of these two possible solutions. If the government can adopt some new policies to reduce these limitation, these two possible solutions will be good methods to solve urbanisation problems effectively.
Reference:
.
Gale Fred & Dai Hongguo(2002) Small Town Development in China, A 21st Century Challenge, Rural America, vol17, issue 1 pp.12-19.[online ] Available from:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/ruralamerica/ra171/ra171b.pdf
.
Wang Gabe T & Hu xiaobo (1999) Small town development and rural urbanization in China, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 29:1, pp.76-94. [online] Available from:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a778632865
.
Wen Guoming (undated) Cautions on China’s Urbanization. [online] Available from:
http://www.mansfieldfdn.org/pubs/pub_pdfs/wen0105_chinaurban.pdf
.
WordIQ.com (undated) Sustainable development [online] Available from: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Sustainable_development
.
Zhao Bing & Liu jinpeng (2010) Research on Pushing Effect of Urbanization on China Western Investment. International Journal of Economics and Finance Vol.2 No.1 pp.182-185 [online] Available from: http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijef/article/viewFile/4961/4120
.
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Renie's whole essay(draft)
Title: To what extent can the problem of urbanization be met by a policy of sustainable development?
-to what degree can UK government policies improve present traffic situation and reduce the impact on the environment to achieve sustainable development.
Introduction
Over last 2 decades, as the population increase rapidly, urban areas in many counties have witnessed a dramatic growth accordingly, at present, nearly half of the world’s population lives in cities, and it’s expected that over the next 3decades, most people that increase in global population will also live the urban areas. Many countries are towards the way towards urbanisation which means cities of which grow rapidly and massively, and large amount of migration pour into these areas. In Europe, the urban population was 51.2 million in 1950, it’s predicted by the year of 2030, and this figure will amount to 79.6 million in 2030(Cohen, 2006).
Urbanisation, it also stands for low average cost of providing infrastructure, education and health care, and other basic services (Cohen, 2006), however, it’s also attended by many serious problems that challenge the surrounding environment and society current situation such as: traffic congestion, pollution, over-crowd public places, high price houses and consumer goods, increased crime rate, fierce competition which are difficult to manage.
Facing the problems that become increasingly sticky, government carried out a rang of measures to improve the situation and hope to achieve sustainable development, the most widely used definition describes sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”( Brundtland, 1987,p43 ),as this essay will focus on the traffic problems and traffic pollution in UK, firstly, I will reveal the traffic problems of UK’s current situation, secondly, introducing the policies that the government adopted to tackle the problems, then move on to analysis how sustainable the solutions are.
[good]
Till now, a series of initiatives are implemented by UK Department for Transport to encourage sustainable travel, meanwhile to promote healthier lifestyle and to improve local environment. Great efforts have been made by the government, based on the statistic and research have done before, in my opinion, to a large extent the problems can be solved by the sustainable development policies in the long run.
Main body
Traffic related problems
Transport, road transport in particular generates a huge amount of pollution and it is [well known and evident]hedge] that this is the major factor contributing to global warming, (Neale, 1997) .The impact that transport has on environment can be measured by estimating carbon dioxide emissions (Leith, 2007) In 2007, transport accounts for 24% all carbon dioxide emissions in the UK, rising from 20% (117 million tonnes) in 1990. Carbon dioxide emissions come from road transport increased by 11% between 1990 and 2007(Department for transport, 2007).
[The] UK Government pointed out in the White Paper on the Future of Transport: ‘‘Road traffic is a major contributor to air pollution. Up to 24,000 vulnerable people are estimated to die prematurely each year, and similar numbers are admitted to hospital, because of exposure to air pollution, much of which is due to road traffic’’ (DETR, 1998)[paraphrase this].
Another problem of transport is traffic congestion, new road building projects are planned to meet the traffic demand, but more often than not, are being neglected that they can bring more traffic problems and noise pollution; moreover, it has become a striking symbol of unsustainable development in UK and many other countries (Neale, 1997).
In order to find out the effects of traffic-related pollution in urban areas and come out with possible policy to deal with it, in 1999, a national survey was conducted and it indicated that 66.6% of 147 surveyed respondents regard the effects that road traffic has on the health in urban areas of UK as being serious or very serious, and (70.5%) view traffic exhaust pollution and 41.1% consider noise pollution as a serious or very serious issue (Ison, 2002)
Government solutions
In 1998, Transport White Paper as integrated transport strategy carried out with the aim to change the travel habits and arouse people’s the realisation to reduce car-based travel to order to lessen the traffic congestion caused pollution and to bring additional health benefits (Coleman, 2000), therefore, the adoption of Sustainable Travel Plans play an important role in this strategy to fulfill the goal that is to make the transport better for Everyone as the slogan of Transport White Paper suggests (Rye et al, 2000).
Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future(2009), a strategy designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport , which is coincide with Climate Change Act 2008 and enable UK to meet the requirements of the carbon budgets by 2022, calling for businesses and citizens to take collectively actions to reduce the impact of transport has on climate change and carbon emission by using green transport(Department for transport,2009) , the cycle to work scheme is encouraged greatly by the government by offering tax-free bikes to company to promote healthier travel to work and reduce environment pollution.
In recently years, UK government gives priority to cut down the transport problems and building a low carbon future, transport is recognaised as a major consumer of scarce resources and a significant contributor to environmental pollution (Banister et al, 2003),so develop low carbon travel with wide rang of options for citizen and businesses is essential (Department for Transport, 2009).
[last 3 paragraphs read like a 'soup' made from the referenced papers]
In responding to comply with policies and take actions, for both organisations and individuals make commitment to the environment, the implement of the Sustainable Travel Plans especially meaningful in reducing carbon dioxide emission and striving for a sustainable future, since walking and cycling cause no carbon dioxide emission and resource consumption, in addition, using public transport and car sharing such kind of environmentally-friendly alternatives exhausting much less carbon dioxide emission than driving alone, furthermore, it can improve the quality[of what?], alleviate national and global environmental problems, such as climate change, global warming.
“Sustainable Travel Plans(or Green Commute Plans) is a package of measures tailored to needs of individual and aimed at promoting greener, cleaner travel choices and reducing reliance on the car thus reduce the impact on the environment”(Department for Transport, 2009). It’s including: walking, cycling, public transport, car clubs, car sharing, eco-driving and low carbon vehicles (the Scottish Government, undated), table below are the measures of Sustainable Travel Plans:
(Source:The Scottish Executive Central Research Unit 2000, p18)
The first Green Commute Plan in UK was adopted in Nottingham in 1995, Nottinghamshire County Council and a number of local employers were intend to make a public commitment to encourage their staff to use sustainable transport to travel to work and to reduce the impact on environment (Emerson et al, 1999). Since then GCP is developed by the adoptions of a number of public and private organisations including Nat West and Hewlett Packard (Newson, 1997).At present, some big companies in UK such as: Pfizer, Stockley, Park, AstraZeneca and Boots also have their own Green Commuter Plans. Green Commute Plan has witnessed a steady increase since 1990 peeking at the implementation of reducing car-based travel by the department of environment (Coleman, 1999).
Evidence and statistic
In order to find out how feasible and sustainable policies are, numerous researches have been done, in The Effects of Smarter Choice Programs in the Sustainable Travel Towns: Full Report which was published by Department for Transport in 2010, this full independent report examined every aspect of traffic and served to evaluate the results of 3 'Sustainable Travel Towns'- Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester in which Sustainable Travel including cycling, walking, public transport, and decreases usage in cars is being adopted (Department for Transport, 2010).
The report indicate that the using of bus increased tremendously in Peterborough and Worcester, while Darlington showed a slight declining, but the growth in Worcester and Peterborough were dramatic: 760,000 extra trips p.a. and 2.6 million extra trips p.a. respectively Bus use grew substantially in Peterborough and Worcester during the period of the Sustainable Travel Town work, whereas it declined in Darlington (though the rate of decline slowed from 2006 onwards). The degree of growth in Peterborough and Worcester was dramatic: 760,000 extra trips p.a. in Worcester, and 2.6 million extra trips p.a. in Peterborough. The car driver trips of household travel in three cities reduced by 7% to 10% in three places based on that figures of 2004’s report, and this helps to lessen the traffic congestion to a great deal, moreover, the carbon saved from the decrease in car driver journeys that below 50km in the Sustainable Travel Towns achieved a percentage of 0.6% reduction in individual emission compared to the figure of 2004, and the carbon savings of an individual can amount to approximate 50kg CO2 across the three towns (Department for Transport, 2010).
The Department for Transport concluded that implement of Sustainable Travel in three towns is very successful in terms of carbon savings which is an important element of reducing carbon emission, and it also bring about additional substantial benefits, evident congestion relief, improved air quality, cost saving, the report also gives an example of two employees who use car sharing to commute, each of then can save £4,000 a year, furthermore, it can be of great assistance to fulfill government objectives.
In research: Mitigating Transport's Climate Change Impact in Scotland: Assessment of Policy Options, the finding suggested that the join force of the policy options in the Central Scenario would achieve a reduction of approximately 1.35 MtCO2 p.a. in 2022, while another project called Ambitious Scenario would achieve 2.15 Mt CO2 p.a. in 2022, an estimated reduction of 44% from 1990 total transport emissions.
(Scottish transport statistics, 2009), the above mentioned researches are region based, however, if the implement in small places can be successful, taking the country as a whole, to a large extend, sustainable transport can be achieved.
The annual publication Sustainable development indicators in your pocket 2008 which measured the UK progress in sustainable development, this research outlined 68 aspects together with the evidence which can examine the progress, the study associated with transport related data shows emissions of six greenhouse gases in 2007 were 639 million tonnes, 17% reduction compare with that of 1990, and this almost fulfill the goal of 18 reduction of Kyoto protocol. Emission of carbon dioxide was estimated to be 544 million tonnes, 8 per cent lower than in 1990, between 1990 and 2006, emissions of air pollutants were decreased: ammonia (NH3) by 18 per cent, nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 46 per cent, particulates (PM10) by 50 per cent and sulphur dioxide (SO2) by 82 per cent, during this period the GDP grew by 48 per cent.
[need some comment, analysis or evaluation with all this data]
Conclusion
As urbanisation becomes increasingly severe ,transport related problems become one of symbols of being unsustainable(Neale, 1997), and as transport plays an important role in meeting the challenges that the urbanisation bring about, sustainable transport initiatives which design to combat with traffic related problems make great contribution in minimising negative impact on environment, traffic stress and congestion, improving air quality, researches show that an increase percentage using of green transport methods instead of car-based travel can lessen the traffic caused environmental pollution and to bring additional health benefits, meanwhile can be supportive to economic growth, improve health and life quality( Department for Transport, 2009),
The data of researches also indicate that the resolutions are effective in achieving government’s goals, to a large extent the problems can be solved by the sustainable policies, despite huge amount of money need to be invested in infrastructures and results are not so obvious in the short run, the achievements are satisfactory, moreover, it’s predictable that the targets set in the initiatives are achievable if continuing efforts are being made, and most likely these areas are full of opportunities that researches can be carry forward to examine whether these targets are being fulfilled with reference to taking current statistics as the base year.[needs to be clearer]
Reference:
Leith A., 2007, Travel to Work in Nottingham: An Analysis of Environmental Impacts and Mitigating Policies, School of Geography, University of Leeds,
Chris B., Gallent N., Sustainable Commuting: A Contradiction In Terms?
Department for transport, 2009, low carbon transport, a greener future, A Carbon Reduction Strategy for Transport
Coleman, C. 2000, Green commuter plans and the small employer: an investigation into the attitudes and policy of the small employer towards staff travel and green commuter plans, Transport Policy 7 (2000) 139–148
David B., Kenneth J. B., 2003, Transport, the environment and sustainable development, charter2 PP19-52, Regional Studies, 33: 3, 274 — 280,
Neale, A. (1997) Extending the scope of environmental management: the case of company-assisted travel in Britain, Business Strategy and the Environment, volume 6, pp9–17,
Tony E. and Romney T., 1999, GREEN COMMUTER PLANNING:
A ROLE FOR BUSINESS, Business Strategy and the Environment, volume8, pp82-87,
Tom R. and David M., 2000, Green Commuter Plans, Do They Work? The Scottish Executive Central Research Unit 2000,
Cohen, B. (2006) Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future projections, and key challenges for sustainability, Technology in Society 28 (2006) 63-80
Brundtland, 1987, the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future
Department for Transport, 2009, Delivering Sustainable Low Carbon Travel: An Essential Guide for Local Authorities
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR),1998. A new deal for transport: better for everyone, Cm3950. The Government’s White Paper on the Future of Transport, The Stationery Office, London.
Department for Transport, 2010, The Effects of Smarter Choice Programmes in the Sustainable Travel Towns: Full Report
Stephen Ison a,*, Stuart Wall b,2002 Attitudes to traffic-related issues in urban areas of the UK and the role of workplace parking charges, Journal of Transport Geography 10 (2002) 21–28
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2008, Sustainable development indicators in your pocket 2008
Scottish Transport Statistics,2009, Mitigating Transport's Climate Change Impact in Scotland:Assessment of Policy
[put in alphabetical order; use inverted commas and italics to separate titles and publications]
-to what degree can UK government policies improve present traffic situation and reduce the impact on the environment to achieve sustainable development.
Introduction
Over last 2 decades, as the population increase rapidly, urban areas in many counties have witnessed a dramatic growth accordingly, at present, nearly half of the world’s population lives in cities, and it’s expected that over the next 3decades, most people that increase in global population will also live the urban areas. Many countries are towards the way towards urbanisation which means cities of which grow rapidly and massively, and large amount of migration pour into these areas. In Europe, the urban population was 51.2 million in 1950, it’s predicted by the year of 2030, and this figure will amount to 79.6 million in 2030(Cohen, 2006).
Urbanisation, it also stands for low average cost of providing infrastructure, education and health care, and other basic services (Cohen, 2006), however, it’s also attended by many serious problems that challenge the surrounding environment and society current situation such as: traffic congestion, pollution, over-crowd public places, high price houses and consumer goods, increased crime rate, fierce competition which are difficult to manage.
Facing the problems that become increasingly sticky, government carried out a rang of measures to improve the situation and hope to achieve sustainable development, the most widely used definition describes sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”( Brundtland, 1987,p43 ),as this essay will focus on the traffic problems and traffic pollution in UK, firstly, I will reveal the traffic problems of UK’s current situation, secondly, introducing the policies that the government adopted to tackle the problems, then move on to analysis how sustainable the solutions are.
[good]
Till now, a series of initiatives are implemented by UK Department for Transport to encourage sustainable travel, meanwhile to promote healthier lifestyle and to improve local environment. Great efforts have been made by the government, based on the statistic and research have done before, in my opinion, to a large extent the problems can be solved by the sustainable development policies in the long run.
Main body
Traffic related problems
Transport, road transport in particular generates a huge amount of pollution and it is [well known and evident]hedge] that this is the major factor contributing to global warming, (Neale, 1997) .The impact that transport has on environment can be measured by estimating carbon dioxide emissions (Leith, 2007) In 2007, transport accounts for 24% all carbon dioxide emissions in the UK, rising from 20% (117 million tonnes) in 1990. Carbon dioxide emissions come from road transport increased by 11% between 1990 and 2007(Department for transport, 2007).
[The] UK Government pointed out in the White Paper on the Future of Transport: ‘‘Road traffic is a major contributor to air pollution. Up to 24,000 vulnerable people are estimated to die prematurely each year, and similar numbers are admitted to hospital, because of exposure to air pollution, much of which is due to road traffic’’ (DETR, 1998)[paraphrase this].
Another problem of transport is traffic congestion, new road building projects are planned to meet the traffic demand, but more often than not, are being neglected that they can bring more traffic problems and noise pollution; moreover, it has become a striking symbol of unsustainable development in UK and many other countries (Neale, 1997).
In order to find out the effects of traffic-related pollution in urban areas and come out with possible policy to deal with it, in 1999, a national survey was conducted and it indicated that 66.6% of 147 surveyed respondents regard the effects that road traffic has on the health in urban areas of UK as being serious or very serious, and (70.5%) view traffic exhaust pollution and 41.1% consider noise pollution as a serious or very serious issue (Ison, 2002)
Government solutions
In 1998, Transport White Paper as integrated transport strategy carried out with the aim to change the travel habits and arouse people’s the realisation to reduce car-based travel to order to lessen the traffic congestion caused pollution and to bring additional health benefits (Coleman, 2000), therefore, the adoption of Sustainable Travel Plans play an important role in this strategy to fulfill the goal that is to make the transport better for Everyone as the slogan of Transport White Paper suggests (Rye et al, 2000).
Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future(2009), a strategy designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport , which is coincide with Climate Change Act 2008 and enable UK to meet the requirements of the carbon budgets by 2022, calling for businesses and citizens to take collectively actions to reduce the impact of transport has on climate change and carbon emission by using green transport(Department for transport,2009) , the cycle to work scheme is encouraged greatly by the government by offering tax-free bikes to company to promote healthier travel to work and reduce environment pollution.
In recent
[last 3 paragraphs read like a 'soup' made from the referenced papers]
In responding to comply with policies and take actions, for both organisations and individuals make commitment to the environment, the implement of the Sustainable Travel Plans especially meaningful in reducing carbon dioxide emission and striving for a sustainable future, since walking and cycling cause no carbon dioxide emission and resource consumption, in addition, using public transport and car sharing such kind of environmentally-friendly alternatives exhausting much less carbon dioxide emission than driving alone, furthermore, it can improve the quality[of what?], alleviate national and global environmental problems, such as climate change, global warming.
“Sustainable Travel Plans(or Green Commute Plans) is a package of measures tailored to needs of individual and aimed at promoting greener, cleaner travel choices and reducing reliance on the car thus reduce the impact on the environment”(Department for Transport, 2009). It’s including: walking, cycling, public transport, car clubs, car sharing, eco-driving and low carbon vehicles (the Scottish Government, undated), table below are the measures of Sustainable Travel Plans:
(Source:The Scottish Executive Central Research Unit 2000, p18)
The first Green Commute Plan in UK was adopted in Nottingham in 1995, Nottinghamshire County Council and a number of local employers were intend to make a public commitment to encourage their staff to use sustainable transport to travel to work and to reduce the impact on environment (Emerson et al, 1999). Since then GCP is developed by the adoptions of a number of public and private organisations including Nat West and Hewlett Packard (Newson, 1997).At present, some big companies in UK such as: Pfizer, Stockley, Park, AstraZeneca and Boots also have their own Green Commuter Plans. Green Commute Plan has witnessed a steady increase since 1990 peeking at the implementation of reducing car-based travel by the department of environment (Coleman, 1999).
Evidence and statistic
In order to find out how feasible and sustainable policies are, numerous researches have been done, in The Effects of Smarter Choice Programs in the Sustainable Travel Towns: Full Report which was published by Department for Transport in 2010, this full independent report examined every aspect of traffic and served to evaluate the results of 3 'Sustainable Travel Towns'- Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester in which Sustainable Travel including cycling, walking, public transport, and decreases usage in cars is being adopted (Department for Transport, 2010).
The report indicate that the using of bus increased tremendously in Peterborough and Worcester, while Darlington showed a slight declining, but the growth in Worcester and Peterborough were dramatic: 760,000 extra trips p.a. and 2.6 million extra trips p.a. respectively Bus use grew substantially in Peterborough and Worcester during the period of the Sustainable Travel Town work, whereas it declined in Darlington (though the rate of decline slowed from 2006 onwards). The degree of growth in Peterborough and Worcester was dramatic: 760,000 extra trips p.a. in Worcester, and 2.6 million extra trips p.a. in Peterborough. The car driver trips of household travel in three cities reduced by 7% to 10% in three places based on that figures of 2004’s report, and this helps to lessen the traffic congestion to a great deal, moreover, the carbon saved from the decrease in car driver journeys that below 50km in the Sustainable Travel Towns achieved a percentage of 0.6% reduction in individual emission compared to the figure of 2004, and the carbon savings of an individual can amount to approximate 50kg CO2 across the three towns (Department for Transport, 2010).
The Department for Transport concluded that implement of Sustainable Travel in three towns is very successful in terms of carbon savings which is an important element of reducing carbon emission, and it also bring about additional substantial benefits, evident congestion relief, improved air quality, cost saving, the report also gives an example of two employees who use car sharing to commute, each of then can save £4,000 a year, furthermore, it can be of great assistance to fulfill government objectives.
In research: Mitigating Transport's Climate Change Impact in Scotland: Assessment of Policy Options, the finding suggested that the join force of the policy options in the Central Scenario would achieve a reduction of approximately 1.35 MtCO2 p.a. in 2022, while another project called Ambitious Scenario would achieve 2.15 Mt CO2 p.a. in 2022, an estimated reduction of 44% from 1990 total transport emissions.
(Scottish transport statistics, 2009), the above mentioned researches are region based, however, if the implement in small places can be successful, taking the country as a whole, to a large extend, sustainable transport can be achieved.
The annual publication Sustainable development indicators in your pocket 2008 which measured the UK progress in sustainable development, this research outlined 68 aspects together with the evidence which can examine the progress, the study associated with transport related data shows emissions of six greenhouse gases in 2007 were 639 million tonnes, 17% reduction compare with that of 1990, and this almost fulfill the goal of 18 reduction of Kyoto protocol. Emission of carbon dioxide was estimated to be 544 million tonnes, 8 per cent lower than in 1990, between 1990 and 2006, emissions of air pollutants were decreased: ammonia (NH3) by 18 per cent, nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 46 per cent, particulates (PM10) by 50 per cent and sulphur dioxide (SO2) by 82 per cent, during this period the GDP grew by 48 per cent.
[need some comment, analysis or evaluation with all this data]
Conclusion
As urbanisation becomes increasingly severe ,transport related problems become one of symbols of being unsustainable(Neale, 1997), and as transport plays an important role in meeting the challenges that the urbanisation bring about, sustainable transport initiatives which design to combat with traffic related problems make great contribution in minimising negative impact on environment, traffic stress and congestion, improving air quality, researches show that an increase percentage using of green transport methods instead of car-based travel can lessen the traffic caused environmental pollution and to bring additional health benefits, meanwhile can be supportive to economic growth, improve health and life quality( Department for Transport, 2009),
The data of researches also indicate that the resolutions are effective in achieving government’s goals, to a large extent the problems can be solved by the sustainable policies, despite huge amount of money need to be invested in infrastructures and results are not so obvious in the short run, the achievements are satisfactory, moreover, it’s predictable that the targets set in the initiatives are achievable if continuing efforts are being made, and most likely these areas are full of opportunities that researches can be carry forward to examine whether these targets are being fulfilled with reference to taking current statistics as the base year.[needs to be clearer]
Reference:
Leith A., 2007, Travel to Work in Nottingham: An Analysis of Environmental Impacts and Mitigating Policies, School of Geography, University of Leeds,
Chris B., Gallent N., Sustainable Commuting: A Contradiction In Terms?
Department for transport, 2009, low carbon transport, a greener future, A Carbon Reduction Strategy for Transport
Coleman, C. 2000, Green commuter plans and the small employer: an investigation into the attitudes and policy of the small employer towards staff travel and green commuter plans, Transport Policy 7 (2000) 139–148
David B., Kenneth J. B., 2003, Transport, the environment and sustainable development, charter2 PP19-52, Regional Studies, 33: 3, 274 — 280,
Neale, A. (1997) Extending the scope of environmental management: the case of company-assisted travel in Britain, Business Strategy and the Environment, volume 6, pp9–17,
Tony E. and Romney T., 1999, GREEN COMMUTER PLANNING:
A ROLE FOR BUSINESS, Business Strategy and the Environment, volume8, pp82-87,
Tom R. and David M., 2000, Green Commuter Plans, Do They Work? The Scottish Executive Central Research Unit 2000,
Cohen, B. (2006) Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future projections, and key challenges for sustainability, Technology in Society 28 (2006) 63-80
Brundtland, 1987, the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future
Department for Transport, 2009, Delivering Sustainable Low Carbon Travel: An Essential Guide for Local Authorities
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR),1998. A new deal for transport: better for everyone, Cm3950. The Government’s White Paper on the Future of Transport, The Stationery Office, London.
Department for Transport, 2010, The Effects of Smarter Choice Programmes in the Sustainable Travel Towns: Full Report
Stephen Ison a,*, Stuart Wall b,2002 Attitudes to traffic-related issues in urban areas of the UK and the role of workplace parking charges, Journal of Transport Geography 10 (2002) 21–28
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2008, Sustainable development indicators in your pocket 2008
Scottish Transport Statistics,2009, Mitigating Transport's Climate Change Impact in Scotland:Assessment of Policy
[put in alphabetical order; use inverted commas and italics to separate titles and publications]
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