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The Secretary for Transport and Housing, Ms Eva Cheng, today (May 31) visited Upper Ngau Tau Kok Estate, which provides a green and harmonious living environment for public housing tenants.
Upper Ngau Tau Kok Estate is a redeveloped public housing estate comprising 6,717 rental units in nine domestic blocks, which currently house a population of around 16,000. The estate is equipped with various communal and welfare facilities to cater for the needs of tenants of different ages. These facilities include elderly centres, a youth centre, kindergarten, family services centre, shopping centre, carpark, central plaza, playground and open garden.
At Heritage Corner, where a cultural exhibition gallery features a Hong Kong style cafˆm with an original shop sign of "Ngau Tau Kok Cafˆm", Ms Cheng talked to local tenants and listened to their anecdotes about the estate before redevelopment, as well as about their present daily life. There are also photos posted on the walls showing residents' daily lives in the former Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate. An old fashioned sliding gate donated by one of the old shops is also displayed.
Compared with the old estate, the new Upper Ngau Tau Kok Estate has not only seen the provision of much-improved indoor facilities, it also enjoys a beautiful and high quality outdoor environment. Initiatives include the planting of trees and flowering shrubs on level areas and slopes, green measures applied to covered walkways, roof tops and refuse collection points as well as the preservation and relocation of several large trees to the plaza. Such measures have helped increase the overall green ratio of the estate to 30 per cent.
Ms Cheng then walked through the wind corridor created by deliberate positioning of the six surrounding domestic blocks with the application of micro-climate studies. The wind corridor allows sufficient airflow across the whole estate, enabling good natural ventilation of the surrounding neighbourhood which in turn promotes healthy living. Upper Ngau Tau Kok Phase 2 and 3 redevelopment is one of the first public housing projects to make use of micro-climate studies to examine local airflow, wind speed, daylight provision, solar heat gain and ambient noise levels through computer stimulations at the planning and design stage.
Ends/Thursday, May 31, 2012
Issued at HKT 17:14
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