Abstract：

The Hong Kong Housing Authority （HKHA） is a statutory body committed to providing affordable quality housing to people who cannot afford private housing. About 30% of the 7 million population in Hong Kong is living in public rental housing, and another 15% of the population are living in subsidized sale flats provided by HKHA. Currently, we have a stock of about 720 000 flats in our public rental estates. To meeting the rising demand for public housing flats, we are building an average of 15 000 new flats every year with a rolling 5-year programme. Although we are striving hard to meet the quantitative flat production target under severe land, community and environmental constraints, we have never set aside our established qualitative goals for sustainability, which include providing homes for safe, green and healthy living in harmonious communities, developing properties that are functional and cost-effective, environment-friendly and people-oriented.
Over the past decade, we have been progressively developing and implementing a series of new initiatives and tools in the planning and design stages so as to foster a quality living environment for our residents. Such footsteps are worth recording and sharing among the planning profession so that the lessons learnt can spur further improvements. This paper makes reference to HKHA’s experience of the initiatives adopted in the feasibility study stage, the conceptual layout planning stage and the scheme design stage. It covers how HKHA makes use of its sustainable planning and design approaches to keep pace with the rising public aspiration for quality living environment of public housing in Hong Kong. The HKHA also works closely with the local community to foster the concept of harmonious society. In short, our public housing programme has been the keystone to the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong, and an anchor of our public administration for more than half a century.