Wild boar and water buffalo are not an image most people associate with one of the world's great global financial centres.
Yet in Hong Kong, where more than 7 million people are packed into just 30 percent of the territory, the green belts, country parks, woodlands and wetlands that take up the rest of the land provide ample space for such animals to roam.
That could be about to change. As officials scour the territory for new places to build, the prospect of going underground, creating man-made islands or developing the city's cherished parks are all among the options being discussed.
One idea is to build a cross-harbour pedestrian corridor - with shops and entertainment facilities along the way - underneath the city's kilometre-wide Victoria Harbour.
Encroaching onto the green spaces has strong support from Hong Kong's powerful property tycoons, who are feeling the heat from a series of tightening measures aimed at reining in prices that have jumped 120 percent since 2008.
But some business executives say the rural habitats that make up the bulk of the former British colony's roughly 1,100 sq km (425 sq miles) help give the city an edge over rival global finance centres in the eyes of many expatriates.
ew World Development Co Ltd's chairman Henry Cheng Kar-Shun and billionaire Lee Shau Kee, chairman of Henderson Land Development Co Ltd , also see country parks as an ideal solution to the city's housing problem.
The government forecasts it will need to build one new town that would house roughly 600,000 people per decade over the next 30 years due to the continuous inflow of people to the city, both from mainland China and elsewhere.
Sea reclamation is another option. Hong Kong's 6,800 hectares of reclaimed land - about 6 percent of its territory - already houses 1.9 million people.
Six areas for future reclamation have been proposed by the Development Bureau to potentially create up to a further 3,100 hectares of land.
Another plan on the drawing board is man-made islands close to the city's financial district, where the Development Bureau aims to create up to 2,400 hectares of "extension of urban area" to accommodate large-scale community and industrial facilities.
Source: Reuters
