Mid-Levels residents are feeling the squeeze of unrestrained development, writes Sarah Fung.

The Mid-Levels have fallen out of fashion. To put it simply, the relentless development of cramped, expensive flats together with congested traffic conditions have driven many to seek homes elsewhere. “The Mid-Levels is meant to be a good area for the middle and upper-middle classes,” says district councilor Tanya Chan. “But recently, the building and traffic density has led to poor hygiene and bad ventilation. The living standards are simply unsatisfactory.”

Local resident Audrey Khong laments the decline of the area.  “Considering the premium prices people pay here, the quality of life in the area seems to be deteriorating,” she says. “There’s always development going on—even if you can’t see the drilling, you can always hear it.”

So how did it get like this, and can anything be done to stop the Mid-Levels from becoming even more overdeveloped?

The problem lies in a conflict between zoning and individual land leases. Much of the land leased to private developers has unrestricted development rights, albeit technically subject to the government’s Outline Zoning Plans, which establish frameworks for development across the city.

Paul Zimmerman of Designing Hong Kong says conditions need to change. “These leases shouldn’t be the last word in how an area is to be redeveloped,” he says, arguing that the area can no longer cope with development on the scale it has seen in previous years. “People just can’t do anything they want with the land they purchase; Hong Kong no longer has the capacity for infinite redevelopment.” Katty Law of the Central and Western Concern Group agrees. “The original leases were drawn up years ago; the original terms and conditions are no longer feasible, and the narrow streets can’t accommodate these dense, high-rise buildings.”

The scale, however, appears tipped in the favor of developers. Chan asserts that the Buildings Department grants permission for high-rise apartments to be built when the companies haven’t yet secured a 90 percent ownership of the land, the percentage required to begin construction works. “It’s unfair,” she says. “It makes it really hard for residents to fight against these plans. There are around 27-29 new projects that have been granted approval already, each one 40-50 stories high. All these buildings are simply ridiculous; there’s no control over development at all.” 

Congestion in the Mid-Levels is not a new issue. In 1972, the government imposed an indefinite moratorium on the area in a bid to ease traffic congestion. The moratorium included deferring public land sales, refusing to amend restricted leases to enable greater redevelopment opportunities, and for the Buildings Department to do everything in its power to control unrestricted leases. But an Ombudsman investigation published in 2006 revealed that “in terms of its stated objective, the Moratorium has clearly failed: the continued building developments and redevelopments have resulted in a rise in the number of residents and traffic volume in Mid-Levels.”

“The government has known about the Mid-Levels’ problems for more than 20 years,” says Chan. “But they did nothing.” Checks and measures, it seems, have been too little, too late. A new Outline Zoning Plan has been implemented, but only after developers were granted permission for the aforementioned towers.

Indeed, a spokeswoman confirmed that the “Buildings Department, in processing plans submitted for approval under the Buildings Ordinance, will not check if the applicant has secured 100 percent ownership of the site.”

In its response to the Ombudsman’s report, meanwhile, the government stated that the moratorium was “never intended to prohibit developments/redevelopments in the Mid-Levels area, but to restrict developments/redevelopments to what is permissible under the existing leases.”

Zimmerman finds such a statement hard to swallow. “The government’s zoning laws should take precedent over individual leases. Times change and the environment changes, but the leases don’t,” he says. “When they’re no longer appropriate for the area, the government should take a firmer stance to make sure the developments are controlled.”

The government also maintained that the moratorium, along with other measures including the Aberdeen Tunnel and Mid-Levels escalator, have helped contain traffic congestion in the area. “That’s rubbish,” says Zimmerman. “They look at traffic speeds, but they don’t take into account the facilities for pedestrians. The sidewalks are too narrow for the number of people using them.”

District councilor Chan also believes the congestion can only get worse. “As more people move into the area, they’ll be generating more and more traffic. There’s no space to widen the roads, and current traffic impact assessments simply aren’t realistic,” she says. “The government needs to think about the state of the area in 20 years’ time if they allow this construction to continue, and then make their judgments.”