TABLE OF CONTENTS - The Professional Green Building Council

Theme B: Creating a livable, healthy and environmentally viable citiesdemand for housing and gradually changing eligibility criteria which exacerbateddemand still further. Increased demand meant making better use of the landavailable and as a consequence development densities were rising. In the 1980s,development to over 2,500 persons per hectare became the norm.Figure 2:The dilapidated building blocks (left) and the market stall (right)Larger flats and more flats in each new site meant that buildings were increasing inheight from the seven storey walk up designs of the 1950s to buildings of overtwenty storeys in the 1960s and 1970s and to 35 storeys in the early 1980s. By thetime that the CRP had been announced, the Housing Authority was planning evenhigher blocks of 39 storeys with even larger flats.From the formation of the Housing Authority in 1973, and the adoption of thehigher standards of facilities, the planning and design of more comprehensiveestates naturally brought with them far greater site planning constraints.The condition of the buildings in Kwai Chung Estate had deteriorated badly,maintenance demands were growing, and the blocks had no lifts which werecausing greater problems for the aging population. Non self-contained flats withshared toilet and washroom facilities had been phased out in new estates from thelate 1960s and conversion of this type of building into self-contained units was notpractical when considered alongside the demands of rising standards, increasingproduction and greater development densities.The old estate also had no planned public transport facilities, and the existingstreets split the estate into small irregular sites and made access between themdifficult. Car parking spaces were insufficient and not well planned nor segregatedfrom pedestrians. Local open spaces were also isolated and uncoordinated with269