Hong Kong's Northern Metropolis Four New Development Areas Break Ground, Aiming for 240,000 Homes and 500,000

Hong Kong's Northern Metropolis development continues to advance. Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan posted on his blog on July 26 that four new development areas in the Northern Metropolis have started construction, with over 520 hectares of land resumed and about 120 hectares leveled. Over the next five years, the Northern Metropolis will provide more than 70,000 housing units and 1 million square meters of economic floor space. Over the next ten years, about 240,000 housing units and over 10 million square meters of economic floor space will be completed. The allocation of public housing floor area is being optimized, and requirements for private housing unit sizes are also being raised. For public space, the standard adopted in the Northern Metropolis is about 30% higher than the current city-wide standard, reaching 3.5 square meters per person. At the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park in the Lok Ma Chau Loop, over 90 innovation and technology enterprises have moved in, and five more buildings will be completed within this year.

Park companies such as San Tin Technopole and Hung Shui Kiu Industrial Park have been established and are accelerating their work. Together with the large-scale Northern Metropolis University Town, this will achieve integrated development of government, industry, academia, research, and investment, and create more job opportunities. Previously, Secretary for Education Christine Choi publicly stated that the government will advance the construction of the Northern Metropolis University Town, reserving three plots totaling 100 hectares in the Northern Metropolis for its development. The Hong Kong SAR government is not simply counting the number of schools, but aims to promote the integration of industry, academia, and research. The government is dynamically adjusting the plan based on actual conditions to generate maximum industrial synergy. The Northern Metropolis University Town targets 'industrial synergy', closely related to the Greater Bay Area's goal of building a 'globally influential international science and technology innovation center'.

Shenzhen and Hong Kong will continue to plan coordinated actions in spatial layout, technology enterprises, research platform carriers, joint core technology breakthroughs, open sharing of research resources, transformation of scientific achievements, and linkage of science parks. This will promote the gradual emergence of innovation synergy effects among Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, and other cities in the Greater Bay Area, gradually forming a science and technology innovation industry chain corridor.