Urban Development in Hong Kong - Part 3: Pok Fu Lam, Waterfall Bay and Lamma Island

     Greetings, and welcome to the final part of my Urban Development in Hong Kong series.  Today I will be talking about our class tour through Pok Fu Lam Village, Waterfall Bay, and Lamma Island.

     Pok Fu Lam Village is a small but densely populated town of low-income workers.  Normally, most people would refer to this place as a slum, but I don’t see it that way.  For starters, usually there is very little distinction or separation between private and public spaces in slums.  However, in Pok Fu Lam Village there are very distinct differences between spaces that are private and those that are public.  The private spaces are very tight and have a sense of a close community.  The public spaces are open and facilitate social and recreational activities.  Examples of each can be seen below.

The public space in the village is open to all of the
surrounding homes

The private sections of the village give off a sense that
if you don't live there, then there's no room for you.

Secondly, slums tend to have a lot of litter and graffiti because no one in the community has a sense of responsibility to where they live.  Here, however, there is very little of that.  In fact, when I saw the concrete wall in the village below the main road, I was surprised at the stylized artwork that had been painted on it (shown right).  This is an excellent example of taking a dead space and turning it into something worthwhile.

     The next stop on the tour was Waterfall Bay (shown left, bottom).  Waterfall Bay used to be a watering station for British ships because of the fresh water that could be collected from the waterfall.  Today, however, it has become nearly abandoned due the fact that the new building developments in the area have virtually cut off access to the bay.  The biggest of these developments is the Bel Air tower (shown left, top), which is situated right above the bay itself.  Personally, I cannot understand why the developers didn’t want to incorporate Waterfall Bay into the landscape design of Bel Air.  If you could provide easy access to the bay, or even integrate into the building’s design, I would assume that would cause the retail value of the development to skyrocket.  Alas, that didn’t happen and I doubt anyone will do anything with this place, which is such a shame.

     The final stop on the tour was Lamma Island, which houses all of the electricity generating facilities for Hong Kong Island proper (there are other facilities for Kowloon and the New Territories).  The main attraction of Lamma Island is the windmill generator (shown right), which stands at about 71m.  It generates about 800 kW of electrical energy.  It also has an exhibition area at the base where tourists can learn about wind energy and the windmill itself.  Also on the island is a small temple nearby (Wikipedia says it’s a Tin Hau temple, so I’ll go with that) that also sees a lot of tourist traffic.  We didn’t see it, so there’s not much I can say about it.  Lastly, there’s Hung Shing Yeh Beach, a spot for relaxing, sun-bathing and swimming in the ocean.  Unfortunately, there’s so much trash in the ocean at this spot that swimming becomes really unpleasant (as well as unhealthy).  Just take a look at the pictures below, I'm not kdding about the shear amount of trash at this place.

This is especially bad considering that there are signs along the beach asking people to keep the area clean.  Overall, I’d say that Lamma Island, as a tourist spot, doesn’t do a good job appealing to the general public.  If you’re into hiking the mountains and checking out an alternative energy site, then you might enjoy this place.  Otherwise, I’d say it isn’t worth it, especially considering the conditions of the beaches.

     So that’s the end of the Urban Development series.  I’ll still continue blogging about this trip (I’ve got trips to Macau, Guangzhou and Shanghai that I’ll be writing about), so stay tuned for those and I’ll try to post them as soon as possible.  Or at least, as soon as the internet decides to cooperate again.  Until then, thanks for reading and I hope to see you back again.