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Face to Face with
Deputy Director for Planning Ava Ng

Metroplan was approved in 1991 to guide development of the Metro Area. It seemed to be forgotten about until March 1999, when it was dusted off and the Planning Department began to review it in tandem with the Planning Study on the Harbour and its Waterfront Areas. As part of the government's public consultation on Metroplan, Deputy Director for Planning Ava Ng outlined the framework of the plan at the Chamber's June 8 roundtable luncheon. Following are excerpts from the Q&A session following her talk.

In terms of this question of commercial premises, and planning at the fringe, to what extent have you allowed for the transfer of back office functions across the boundary into Shenzhen in your planning?

Looking at the larger scope of development of businesses in Hong Kong, such as businesses moving to Shenzhen, that will be covered by another study.

Can you then really look at the Metroplan in isolation? Shouldn't you be looking at all of the territory and north of the boundary as part of this study? Aren't you in danger of creating artificial boundaries when there are none there?

If you look at Hong Kong it is very difficult to define metro or New Territories, but for the sort of infrastructure planning we just identify different catchment areas to assist our planning.

We got our population studies strategically very wrong in the early 1990s. To what degree of certainty are we looking towards our 2016 population studies? Secondly, the statement that sewage capacity cannot be improved in the short or medium term worries me a little bit. Can you clarify that?

On the second point, there are many levels of sewage infrastructure. What we are talking about is the deep tunnel, the strategic one, because the tunnel has been constructed, because of its special nature, it would be very difficult for us to offer improvement in the short term. But for local network for other sewage, yes we could improve, but you have to remember that all the sewage from that network would then flow down to the deep tunnel, and there is a capacity limit.

You mentioned there were conflicting demands between the port activities and your artistic impressions of lovely waterfront activities. That really seems to be the crux of the problem, and it seems your study is not addressing that.

The mechanism is to achieve a more gradual rather than a radical way of telling cargo handlers that they must go, which could create tension. When we consolidate our public views, we will organise meetings with these companies to persuade rather than forcing them to move.

Isn't that the crux of the problem? Aren't you too nice? Haven't we got to get tough in some of these cases?

If views are clear, in that most people want this type of activity to be moved away from the inner harbour, your views will feature on our report when we go to high level a for decision.

Isn't one of the lessons of this perhaps that we shouldn't wait 10 years before reviewing Metroplan? Isn't it an ongoing process and Metroplan should be turned over every day of the week so to speak?

That is true. Because Hong Kong is really fast moving and 10 years is really a long time, yes I agree with you that we should look at it more often.

You can listen to Ms Ng's entire presentation and the Q&A session on the Chamber's Web site at, www.chamber.org.hk/streaming/metroplan.ram