OBSERVATION: Hong Kong suffers from a lack of land that can be readily developed for urgent housing needs — which many blame as a major factor behind the city’s social ills.
SOLUTION: Send the Mouse Packing, and Let’s Get Cracking … Redevelop the loss-making Disneyland into new housing in a prime area that is already provided with sufficient infrastructure and transport links.
Hong Kong Disneyland is surrounded by extensive tracts of flat land that are sitting idle and are conveniently accessible by pedestrian walkways, MTR, roadways, and ferry.
HOUSING AT DISNEY? What if the vacant land surrounding the existing Hong Kong Disneyland were to be developed into housing? Is the idea really so outlandish? 26,000 low-rise residential flats could be developed for 75,000 residents in a very short period of time, while allowing the theme park to remain in operation and preserve its sight lines from within the Park. This prime urban area is served by MTR, highway, and is blessed with an unused ferry terminal hungry for passengers.
WHAT IF DISNEY DISAPPEARED? As a more radical alternative, what if the existing Hong Kong Disneyland were to be completely dismantled in favor of a new and improved cross-border Mega-Disney Theme Park, and the entire site were to be redeveloped for housing? This could yield at least 120,000 residential flats in a community for 350,000 residents with MTR, ferry and road access.
If a wholesale redevelopment of this area also included ADDITIONAL LAND RECLAMATION, a 150 m wide strip of reclaimed land along the majority of the existing waterfront could produce another 50 HA of buildable land for housing and water recreation areas. This could yield another 26,500 flats at the proposed density. A selective reclamation of foreshore areas would arguably have a lower environmental impact than the creation of new off-shore artificial islands as some have proposed in recent years, and take a fraction of the time.
With minimal reclamation along its edge, the entire Disney site could be redeveloped affordably in a concentrated effort to provide an accessible community of almost 500,000 residents in just a matter of years … not decades.