Old vs New - Wah Fu Estate

Hong Kong public housing is a great and long history. While there many aged public housing estate, the Hong Kong government have been planning to rebuild them to

In some sense, the Hong Kong public housing estate is another form art - or this is an art of city planning. When you are off from work, heading home through the noisy and crowd street in Mong Kok, them back to the estate, and you would never feel any better.

Wah Fu Estate, built in 1960s to 1970s, is one of the most famous public housing estate in Hong Kong, because of the environment. As some of the residence can see the sea view and the adjacent Residence Bel-Air, therefore it is commonly known as "civilian mansion"

3 years ago, they government planned to rebuild the whole estate, new residence building will be finished in less 10 years. There are a lot of concern from Hong Kong people regards the rebuild, whom afraid the environment and design will be too different and lost the flavour that the original one had, and even concerns regards collective memory.

We had a walk inside estate and talk a bit with the resident there.

This is my second time visiting Wah Fu Estate. The first time was too young. It does feel great when we get off from the bus nearby the mall. the road and the bus stop were surrounded by those Old Slab and Twin Tower design residence, which we would not usual to see closely. The place is very clean, hardly to know it is a 40 something years old estate.

We met someone who live in there. “I’ve been living here for 16 years, there are fresh air and quiet environment” The man doing exercise said. “But to be frank, i support the rebuild, after all it’s been 40 years. New public housing would provide better equipment and support.” He think it’s time to renew the estate.

We were lucky enough to meet Henry Chai,

the member of Southern District Council, and we did a short interview with him. “Wah fu estate has changed a lot when i first reported to here” He said. “Before the lifts were install, they have to walk up and down every day which is very tough” Back when the old days there are not much elderly yet time flies people get old, so does the place need to be improved. “But old facilities are difficult to add new stuff, and as we can see that the maintenance is hard to be continued, so we wish as government said we would be able to see the housing in 2025”