GRM 2303 Urban Geography
Book reading report

book name: Planning Rules and Urban Economic Performance - The Case of Hong Kong

Author: Samuel R.Staley

Publisher: The Chinese University Press

Publishing Year: 1994

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Introduction

The writer of the book teaches urban and regional economics in USA. He worked with local governments as well as university-based research centres. In this book, he mainly aims to analyse the town planning and urban economic development. Here, Hong Kong is used as a case study, to show the relationship between them.

This book explains the contractual basis of the Hong Kong urban and land planning system, and how it encourages growth by protecting private property rights and ensuring economic markets work smoothly and efficiently. It includes a critical assessment of the recommendations proposed by the Hong Kong Government in its Comprehensive Review of the Town Planning Ordinance.

The book is divided into 8 chapters
chapter 1 - Planning Rules and Economic Growth: An Overview
Chapter 2 - Town Planning and Economic Growth
Chapter 3 - Local Planning and Economic Development
Chapter 4 - Economic Development and Land Use
Chapter 5 - Town Planning in Hong Kong
Chapter 6 - Costs of Delays in Development
Chapter 7 - Compensation, Betterment, and the Regulatory Impact of Planbning Decisions
Chapter 8 - Conclusions

Content

The writer raised many points to against the reforms of government in 1992 in the proposal in the Comprehensive Review of the Town Planning Ordinance. It is because the reforms are suggested to be economically disruptive as they increase uncertainty in property markets, weaken the constructual nature of land development, and provide more opportunities for planners and the general public to delay development.

In the writer's point of view, imposing such a non-market order on development through planning have resulted in significant resource dislocations within urban economies, reducing their flexibility and competitiveness, according to his experience of studying major countries like the UK and USA. Historically, the ability of Hong Kong entrepreneurs to adjust their resources to fit the changing needs of the historical markets have given them an advantage in the global market place. However, under the government reforms, the automatic adjustment mechanism that has allowed Hong Kong o achieve startling improvemnets in its standard of living and quality of life, is constrained.

In fact, by the experiences of other countries, attempts to promote efficient land development will be disappointing because planning is fundermentally incapable of hernesing the information necessary to coordinate complexdecisions over landuse and resource allocation. Smoothly functioning markets are more capale of ensuring privately and socially beneficial land use allocation.

While the proposed system aims to shortens the delays during the development application process through statutory guidelines and limitations, the experience of other countries suggests that delays will be much greater than the statutory time limit ot the expectations of the public officials. Thus, at a minimum, developers can expect delays of between 3-12 months. The proposals of government fail to provide guidelines concerning the appropriateness of objections or which parties are permitted to raise objections.

According to him, the most disruptive thing in the reform is