Tseung Kwan O New Town
Tseung Kwan O New Town is one of the nine new towns in Hong Kong, built mainly on reclaimed land in the northern half of Junk Bay (known as Tseung Kwan O in Chinese/Cantonese language) in southeastern New Territories, after which it is named. The town/land area is usually known simply as Tseung Kwan O.
Development of the new town was approved in 1982, with the initial population intake occurring in 1988. As of 2016, the town is home to around 396,000 residents. The total development area of Tseung Kwan O, including its industrial estate,[failed verification] is about 17.18 square kilometres (6.63 sq mi), with a planned population of 445,000.[1] Major residential neighbourhoods within the new town include Tsui Lam, Po Lam, Hang Hau, Tseung Kwan O Town Centre, Tiu Keng Leng (also known by its English name Rennie's Mill) and Siu Chik Sha, etc.
Administratively, the new town belongs to Sai Kung District in southeastern New Territories, although it is often incorrectly regarded as part of Kowloon / New Kowloon due to its close proximity to the city — the new town is bordered by Kwun Tong District, a high rise built-up area, to Tseung Kwan O's west.
The land where Tseung Kwan O New Town now stands was, until the 1980s, a long narrow inlet named Junk Bay, with small fishing villages (such as Tseung Kwan O Village and Hang Hau Village, etc.) and a few small shipbuilding establishments dotting its coastline.[2] The present-day neighbourhood of Tiu Keng Leng (then known as Rennie's Mill) was, from the 1950s to 1990s, a refugee village housing Kuomintang loyalists who fled to Hong Kong after their party's defeat in the Chinese Civil War.
The Hong Kong Government had long been interested in developing a new town at Hang Hau because of its proximity to the urban area. The project was postponed for a long time owing to the extensive scale of reclamation in the bay, which is rather deep. The project finally took off under the name of Tseung Kwan O in 1983, when the development of the new town's Phase I was endorsed by the Governor-in-Council.[3] This was followed by the decision to proceed with Phase II, which entailed further reclamation and the clearance of the Kuomintang refugee village at Rennie's Mill (later renamed Tiu Keng Leng), with a view to increase the planned population from 175,000 to 325,000.[3] The first families moved in to the new town in 1988 when public housing at the Head of the Bay (Po Lam Estate) was completed.[3]
The New Town was developed in three phases. The first phase encompasses Northern Tseung Kwan O, which includes Po Lam MTR station and Hang Hau station, while the second and third phase comprise Southern Tseung Kwan O, which includes Tseung Kwan O station (Town Centre) and Tiu Keng Leng station.
