Treating the Symptoms - A Critical Review of ... - Civic Exchange

The URA Ordinance was drawn up according to theseprinciples and brought before LegCo in 2000. However,what was not deeply considered when drafting thelegislation was what the community wanted to achieve inurban renewal, and how best to go about it. Nor did policymakersconsider the deeper questions of what role, if any,the government ought to play in urban renewal; whetherpaying above market-value compensation would distortthe market; and how to remedy the underlying problemswhich made private developers reluctant to participate inurban renewal in the first place. While some participantsin the public consultation suggested different approachesto urban renewal — some argued the government shouldavoid becoming involved in property development andlimit itself to a facilitating role — these suggestions weredismissed. 37 The URA was envisioned as a more robustversion of the LDC.Meanwhile, the community’s attitudes towards urbanplanning, design, and renewal had been evolving. Policymakersincreasingly recognized that building maintenanceand heritage preservation had long been neglected. Theseideas were incorporated into the Planning Department’s1999 study on Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Strategy.In addition to “improving the built environment byreplacing old, run-down and underutilized areas with newdevelopments which are properly planned” and “achievingbetter utilization of land...to meet various developmentneeds”, the study set the goal of “[promoting] rehabilitationand preservation of buildings, and improvement of placesof local, architectural, cultural or historical interest.” 38Yet while it was decided that the URA would be given newresponsibilities in these areas, they did not play a greatpart in shaping its structure or its mode of operation. ThePlanning Department study would be used as the basis of aformal Urban Renewal Strategy to guide the new Authority,yet this document was not finalized until a year after thelegislation had been passed.Few of the legislators in the Subcommittee to Study theURA White Bill turned their attention to fundamentalpolicy questions either. Many were concerned with technicaldetails — the structure of the URA’s board, mechanisms fordisclosure and public consultation, compensation terms foraffected property owners — but few considered whetherthe right mechanism was being proposed to accomplish theright goals.The major exception was Christine Loh, who was at thattime a legislator in the (now defunct) Citizens Party. Shewas one of two legislators to vote against the bill, theother being Leung Yiu-chung of the Neighbourhood andWorker’s Service Centre. 39 Loh believed that the URAwould not work. At the debate on the second reading ofthe URA Bill, Loh argued that the government did not infact have a clear strategy for urban renewal. In her view thegovernment was setting up the “hardware” of the Authoritybefore developing the “software” (the strategy) to run it. 40Describing the URA as “a cosmetic attempt to patch up thephysical manifestations of market failure”, Loh went on tourge the government to first address the causes of marketfailure at their root before trying to intervene directlyin urban renewal. 41 (The causes of market failure will beexplored more deeply in Part II).17