In the past few years, Hong Kong has been facing a serious problem that more and more immigrants and tourists coming to Hong Kong and causing an overcrowding and congested living environment. As a result of such limited land resource, land usage and value maximization appears to be the predominant principle in the urbanization of Hong Kong. However, there are too many stakeholders involved in the urban development, so government should balance different stakeholders’ interest. In the following essay, I would like to find out different stakeholders’ needs and suggest some solutions for the government on how to deal with different stakeholders in urban redevelopment. Firs of all, there are many stakeholders, including indigenous villagers, non-indigenous villagers, landowners and government, whose interest and needs are to some extent different. Take an example of New Territories. For development, the government has been requisitioning farmland in the New Territories, which has stirred up both satisfaction and objection. For indigenous villagers, some of them can’t accept the requisition because they have deep emotion and precious memory on this land where they have lived for decades and want to continue to enjoy their rustic life while some of them prefer a reasonable amount of compensation to afford another residence. As for non-indigenous villagers, they feel it is unfair to be divided by the development being planned and they want to have the same right as indigenous villagers. For landowners, they pursue profit as more as well. Finally, the government aims at redevelopment and boom of the whole city. Obviously, different interest given above will lead to many conflicts between the government and other stakeholders. Handling these conflicts well is an important and urgent problem for the government. In my opinion, one of the most important things for the government is to consider about citizens’ needs and adopt their appropriate suggestions. For example, the government can hold more consultations to communicate with people before making a decision, as well as public forums and community workshops. As villagers in the case of New Territories claimed, “all land planning should be done with the people as the base”, the government should hold several rounds of consultation, in which every stakeholder has equal rights. Those poor people should also be ensured to have rights of speech. Among this process, the government should guarantee the transparency of the project, which means allowing people clearly know the details of redevelopment rather than hiding some facts. Secondly, Urban Renewal Authority should be reformed to represent ordinary people’s interest and improve the working efficiency. Different from Land Development Corporation, URA has easier forms of land resumption through the government. So, URA should guarantee that renewal is unprofitable, avoiding the corruption of officials. However, in reality, URA is not satisfactory because in a way it seems like a profit maximizing company in line with developer interests. For instance, the old buildings on the LEE YUNG Street have become luxury mansions that were sold 5 times of the past purchase. The profit is so large, but people still cannot get satisfactory compensation. This is why there are many objections in the plans of URA. Citizens appeal to fairness and democracy and in their opinion, the government should work for the public good rather than make profit for itself. However,due to the decisions that URA has made and its close connection with developers, actually, citizens have gradually lose the confidence of URA. In the case of New Territories, URA might corporate with private developers, which arouse worries of many citizens that it may become another incident of transferring of benefits. To relieve worries, it is a must to improve the credibility of URA. URA should give more reasonable compensation to stakeholders and strengthen the transparency of its property. What is more, after rounds of consultations, once URA and citizens agree on a plan, URA should carry it out efficiently. Thirdly, in general, the government should balance all sides’ interest and deal with different stakeholders in different ways. It seems hard, but if the government or social groups can do more detailed surveys by classification of different stakeholders before making a decision, things will become easier. In a conclusion, the government should not only consider about varieties of indexes and profits, but also people’s real needs in urban redevelopment. In doing this, the most important thing is to listen to different stakeholders opinions firstly, reform the government agency to improve the working efficiency and also make more detailed surveys by classification of different stakeholders. (6041)
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 04:07:57 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015