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hong kong has a problem there are not
enough homes and too many people
for the 11th year in a row it's been
ranked as the world's most expensive
city to live in
housing prices have ballooned to well
over 20 times the average income and a
staggering one in five residents now
lives in poverty
to tackle this hong kong's ever popular
chief executive kari lam has announced
an ambitious plan to create an entirely
new city within a city it's a 2.5
million person new metropolis that's
going to be built on the border of hong
kong and shenzhen
but the idea isn't exactly an easy one
to turn into reality
there's a lack of infrastructure to the
proposed site it's all extremely
expensive and there are growing
anxieties among hong kongers about their
ever-blowing border with the chinese
mainland
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the so-called northern metropolis is set
to develop the u.n long and north
districts that border shenzhen
essentially transforming rural farmland
into what's hoped will become a thriving
regional powerhouse over the next 20
years a total of 926
000 flats are gonna be built driving the
area's population up to about two and a
half million people
the new city will also take advantage of
its close proximity to shenzhen just
across the water
now that's often been described as
china's answer to silicon valley and
it's where many of the country's biggest
tech companies are based
the northern metropolis is set to be
developed into its own international
innovation and technology hub offering
more than 650 000 new jobs including 150
000 in it according to the hong kong
government
building a new city is rarely easy but
this project does face some particularly
daunting hurdles
first the government's gonna have to
claim the land which means lengthy and
expensive court battles with the current
landowners villagers and property
developers
and as most of the areas currently rural
there's very little transport
infrastructure in place brand new rail
stations and lines are going to have to
be built as well as new roads streets
and highways the total cost for the
project has also yet to be announced but
given what's involved it's likely to be
well into the billions placing pressure
on a city that's been in recession for
two years there's also the question of
how logistically this new region of hong
kong will interact with shenzhen when as
of right now the two cities are
separated through special visas and
permits and even drive on different
sides of the road
so why is the hong kong government
pushing for what seems like such a
complicated and expensive new scheme
well right now the city's close to
breaking point
hong kong is the world's most
unaffordable urban area by some distance
the average house price is a whopping
1.6 million dollars while the average
monthly income is just 3 800
living costs are also extremely high
with the cost of fuel more than double
what you'd pay in sydney while the
average cost of utilities is almost
triple that of new york a place that's
not exactly known for being cheap
year after year hong kong tops the list
of the most expensive cities to own
property in with the latest data set
putting it at nearly twice that of the
next most expensive city
now on average 29 000 public and private
flats are put on the market every year
but that's not nearly enough to meet the
city's growing population which rose by
8.6 percent in 2019 alone
the result is shrinking apartment sizes
put on the market at an increasing cost
forcing the population to live in
sometimes extreme conditions
it's not unusual for low-income families
to live in micro apartments like this
it's barely bigger than a parking space
more than 200 000 people live in what
are colloquially known as caged flats
tiny claustrophobic spaces that are
carved out of subdivided apartments
meanwhile families in need of public
housing are typically put on waiting
lists that have been known to last six
years
the situation's got so bad that beijing
has given hong kong a 2049 deadline to
solve the crisis
the chinese mainland also views the
housing shortage as one of the main
contributing factors to the mass
protests of 2019 and 2020
announcing the northern metropolis not
only provides an answer to the housing
crisis but plays into china's ambitions
to create a regional powerhouse out of
the greater bay area a region that now
includes macau guangzhou shenzhen hong
kong and several more
the mainland wants to economically tie
hong kong's fate with these other
chinese cities and creating a massive
new development on its border will
probably do just that
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