Contrived Laissez-Faireism by Fujio Mizuoka

Author:Fujio Mizuoka
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

4.5.2 Shek Kip Mei: The Construction of Permanent High-Rise Resettlement Estates to Ensure Living Space for Reproduction of Labour Power

Despite the shift from entrepôt to industrialisation as the economic base having been advocated, the macro-economy of the colony did not recover readily. As there were no statistics on national income at the time, Szczepanik examined well prepared maritime statistics pertaining to ships entering Hong Kong as a surrogate. The tonnage of ships entering Hong Kong slumps after peaking in 1949–1950 with 27.35 million tonnes, to levels of 23.63 million tonnes in 1952–1953 and 25.85 million tonnes in 1953–1954.65 It was reported that “many enterprises are just able to break even. Losses in business have become quite common”, indicating the necessity for a rapid transformation of the structure of the economy.66

On Christmas Eve 1953, the largest squatter fire to date broke out in Shek Kip Mei, consuming 3351 structures and burning out 58,203 people.67 In direct response, the Urban Council convened an ‘Emergency Sub-Committee on Resettlement’, and began to review then-existing squatter policies. This Sub-Committee, claiming that then-existing policies were dysfunctional, especially for Kowloon, proposed to house the squatters in publicly-built high-rise buildings that would occupy less space of the precious urban area. Furthermore, the Sub-Committee warned that unless the problems were not rectified, large fires would continue to break out thereafter, creating a menace for health and public safety, the problem of the lack of space would go unresolved and that these unsightly stains would tarnish the dignity of colonial Hong Kong.68

These recommendations faithfully traced the lines of the budget address that Governor Grantham had delivered to the Legislative Council meeting before the Shek Kip Mei fire broke out in March 1953. In this address, the Governor criticised the conventional resettlement policies as follows:69

The building of cheap bungalows in resettlement areas is not, therefore, the fundamental solution to our housing problem. For one thing, land in the urban areas is so scarce and so valuable that one-storey development in resettlement areas must be regarded as only a temporary palliative to reduce the menace of fire and pestilence which hangs over the illegal squatter areas. The main housing problem is the provision of multi-storey permanent housing at low rental for not less than 100,000 families now living in unhygienic and over-crowded conditions.

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