Housing Estate - Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Due to dense population and government control of land use, the most common form of residential housing in Hong Kong is the high-rise housing estate, which may be publicly owned, privately owned, or semi-private. Due to the oligopoly of real-estate developers in the territory, and the economies of scale of mass developments, there is the tendency of new private tower block developments with 10 to over 100 towers, ranging from 30-to-70-storeys high.

Public housing provide affordable homes for those on low incomes, with rents which are heavily subsidised, financed by financial activities such as rents and charges collected from car parks and shops within or near the estates. They may vary in scale, and are usually located in the remote or less accessible parts of the territory, but urban expansion has put some of them in the heart of the urban area. Although some units are destined exclusively for rental, some of the flats within each development are earmarked for sale at prices which are lower than for private developments.

A private housing estate is usually characterised by a cluster of high-rise buildings, often with a shopping centre or market of its own in the case of larger developments. Mei Foo Sun Chuen, built by Mobil, is the earliest (1965) and largest (99 blocks) example of its kind. Since the mid 1990s, private developers have been incorporating leisure facities which incorporate clubhouse facilities: namely swimming pools, tennis courts, function rooms in their more up-market developments. The most recent examples would also be equipped with cinemas, dance studios, cigar-rooms.

There is currently some controversy over the "wall effect" caused by uniform high-rise developments which adversely impact air circulation. In-fill developments will tend to done by smaller developers with less capital. These will be smaller in scale, and less prone to the wall effect.