Urban Renewal Authority 2018-19 Annual Report

5 CHAIRMAN ’ S STATEMENT Gear up and Usher in a Bright Future of Urban Renewal As I retired from the Chairmanship of the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) at the end of April 2019 and looked back, nothing was more gratifying than seeing the URA had achieved what I set out to do when I first joined — that is more urban renewal projects on a larger scale and magnitude with greater urgency. It is indeed a great honour to have taken on the leadership and steer the URA’s urban renewal work in bringing a sustainable Hong Kong through improving the living environment for people living in older districts. Eighteen such redevelopment projects were launched during my six-year tenure as Chairman. Upholding the “people first” principle, the URA stepped up the communications with residents living in these project sites to better understand their aspirations, ultimately helping over 4,200 families enhance their living environments. I am also pleased to see that the URA has adopted a district-based approach in recent years to undertake urban renewal from a more holistic perspective, thereby maximising the benefits that can be brought to the community on a larger scale through enhanced open spaces, road networks and facilities. In this fiscal year, the URA made significant progress on the relocation arrangement of the unauthorised building structures on private land in Development Area 5 of the Kwun Tong Town Centre Project, breaking the decade-long impasse and enabling this single largest project ever undertaken to proceed. The URA has also been actively promoting and facilitating building rehabilitation in the hope of slowing down the ageing of buildings, so as to alleviate the pressure on urban renewal. The past decade- and-a-half has seen a total of 4,200 building blocks, involving around 140,000 flats, undergo rehabilitation with the support of the URA. Focussing on just the past six years, by way of implementing an array of building rehabilitation subsidy schemes and the offer of technical assistance, such as “Smart Tender” Rehabilitation Facilitating Services, the URA has assisted owners of about 1,700 building blocks, comprising a total of around 58,000 flats, to organise maintenance works, thus facilitating improvement of the conditions of these buildings. These flourishing accomplishments, together with the various preservation and revitalisation projects implemented over the past six years, would not have been achieved without the concerted efforts of my colleagues at the URA. As Chairman, I am grateful to all the work done in realising the objectives set forth in the Urban Renewal Strategy.