Md. Mahmud Hassan Talukdar

Since the enactment of the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance in 1971 and the establishment of Antiquities and Monuments Office in 1976, the Hong Kong Government has set up several institutions with particular ordinances and schemes for Heritage Conservation. With the set-up of government initiatives, yet the protection of physical and cultural heritage is still limited due to the ambiguity of policy and planning. So, the main aim of this paper is to identify the loopholes of existing policy and planning of heritage conservation and to suggest revised policy framework. After a thorough review towards the existing policy framework of heritage conservation in Hong Kong, together with the lessons learnt from international case studies (Singapore, Australia and Macao), it is found that six major deficiencies affecting the different aspects within the process of heritage conservation in Hong Kong. They are: Insufficient coverage of heritage’s context; inadequate institutional capacity; limited conservation approaches for privately-owned buildings; inadequate incentives; shortage of funding sources; and lack of transparency. After the identification of deficiencies from the existing heritage conservation policies and institutional arrangement, a new set of recommended policy is suggested to improve the deficiencies. The recommended policy framework contains four aspects: Revision of political system; provision of integrated conservation approaches and incentives; diversification of funding sources and widening of public participation.

To cope with the urban congestion problem resulted from rapid urbanization some cities are successfully using Electronic Road Pricing policy as a demand management measure. In 1982, Hong Kong Government took initiative to experiment electronic road pricing in Hong Kong. Though, the project outcome reveals that Electronic Road Pricing could bring tremendous economic, social and environmental benefit for the city, it was not possible to run Electronic Road Pricing successfully due to huge public protest. Present paper aims to reveal the reasons of Electronic Road Pricing not being implemented in Hong Kong. This paper also scrutinizes the impact of Electronic Road Pricing in Hong Kong and will also suggest some policy guidelines for the government for the successful execution of Electronic Road Pricing in Hong Kong. This paper ends with a concluding remarks of Electronic Road Pricing can be an effective solution for long term success but the government need to take some public inclusion strategies to gain public support in favor of Electronic Road Pricing.