More trashy tourism proposals

LantauDevMap1

Two years ago, the Hong Kong government set up the Lantau Development Advisory SCMP-LocalsAngryCommittee. The body represents landlord and construction interests that have been lobbying for some years to smother Hong Kong’s largest island with concrete, nasty attractions and Mainland tourists. It has now submitted its first Work Report, titled Let’s Wreck the Countryside so Our Buddies Can Make a Ton of Money.

The lobby’s premise is that Lantau has a large amount of unused available space, which can be used for tacky tourist theme-concept zone hubs. This is a two-edged sword for the government. On the one hand, officials naturally favour anything to do with concrete-smothering and swamping-by-Mainlanders, especially if it helps find a purpose for such white-elephant projects as the Zhuhai mega-bridge. On the other hand, the ‘spare space’ idea contradicts the Hong Kong government’s official line that we have a dire shortage of land, which of course means we cannot have affordable housing.

A further complication is the obsessive-compulsive nature of the parasitical ‘tourism’ industry. The more Mainland mass-tourism makes Hong Kong uninteresting or unpleasant to visit (let alone live in), the more the tourism lobby screeches for more of the same tawdry crap attractions and facilities in the hope of cramming ever-larger numbers of the bewildered peasant shopper-wretches into the city.

Needless to say, public opinion comes bottom of the list of priorities for decision-makers. It will, of course, be hostile.

The report goes beyond visionary to grandiose and probably absurd. It proposes everything from pitiful and desperate-sounding tourist attractions (spas, for heaven’s sake) to entire new islands to be reclaimed east of Peng Chau. It all comes with lots of ‘connectivity’, ‘nodes’ and ‘corridors’.

SCMP-LantauMap

Reasons to assume this is not intended to be taken seriously are two-fold. First, the full report is (so far) in Chinese only. This tends to indicate a document designed to appease particular, parochial, audiences – often Mainland officials, but in this case probably local landowners and other small-medium commercial interests. Second, the maps are crammed suspiciously full of arrows and oval-shaped zones. This superficially suggests impressive and intensive strategizing; the PLA’s plans to invade Taiwan aren’t this busy-looking. But on closer inspection the symbols denote vacuous nothings like ‘ecology’ and ‘heritage’. You can imagine a young civil servant drawing more and more of them on an overlay while the grubbier Committee members look on and salivate.

LantauDevMap2

So this is partly aimed at placating the usual New Territories mafia. But there is surely also an element of managing public expectations for the long term. The lobby to exploit the island includes big and international corporate interests (tourism, airport, engineering, retail, etc). They are smart – pitching development of the region as a means to meet local people’s housing needs, claiming to have great concern for the job prospects of the poor ragamuffins of Tung Chung’s public housing estates, and co-opting community groups. The trick will be to bundle things Hong Kong people need like homes with the tourist crap they don’t want.

LantauDevRep1

All of today’s pix are worth clicking on…

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6 Responses to More trashy tourism proposals

  1. Vee vill cover everyzink mit zer wonderful Beton…how you say..KONKRET! I vonce boated around zat Chek Lap Kok venn it was still an island. “Mehr bumsen in Beton” as vee used to say in Zurich. But I doubt if people really are doing zo.

  2. reductio says:

    Clicked on the pix Hemlock but all I got was Oral B toothpaste, L’Oreal face whitening creme [sic] and some kids singing about milk powder. Bloody ads.

  3. Tai O Bloke says:

    Can’t say I like the look of any of this…(then I went on a long rant which I subsequent decided to delete ‘cos it’s only Tuesday, innit?)

  4. Tai O Bloke says:

    I meant ‘subsequent…ly’ of course…let’s not forget Lee

  5. Stinkyfoot says:

    This report is a wish-list. The reality is that the infrastructure, I mean the real infrastructure, like sewerage, water quality is not any where near the blinky high-rise developer porn that may prevail. Maybe the Tung Chung airport/ Macau Zhuhai bridge boondoggle is their point of reference. How sad. They wish to allow wind-surfing at a breeding ground for the endangered horseshoe-crab at Shui Hau. This report should be subject to rigorous and sustained objection. I encourage your readers to do so.

  6. David Blowie says:

    Bowie: I grew up with that newt. Liked “Space Oddity”. The rest was mostly pretentious pap. Didn’t realize he was still alive.

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