Eden of the Orient by Kris Provoost
Hong Kong has been headline news for the better part of the past year, and it seems this will continue for the foreseeable future. Before the COVID crisis started, Hong Kong was already in turmoil. With a long list of political and social issues running through the population, the public health crisis only made the deep underlying problems more visible. Much of these problems can be traced back to one issue: a deep and severely growth limiting housing crisis. The city is at an upwards crossroad.
Hong Kong was long the gateway to China. Before China opened its borders to the wider world, Hong Kong was a strategic port connecting east and west. A result of this was a logical exploding population. Geographically, the region consists of islands and abundant green (an obvious advantage). However, these endless mountains leave only tiny slivers of buildable land. Where to put the ever-rising population? Building smaller, building outwards, or just building higher?