It is widely known that Hong Kong is a small city but densely populated. Almost everyone in HK lives in a congested flat with little space for domestic activities due to Hong Kong’s inherent weakness of lacking flat land for residential use, which makes property prices go through the roof. We, the citizens of such an affluent city, can only feel envious of the people living in spacious and well-facilitated houses with gardens and backyards in the U.S. and other European countries. However, a reasonable area of activity should not be seen as a kind of luxury which has no realistic implication on everyday life as overcrowding can seriously damage the quality of life in a community.
Regarding damage in physical form, overcrowding is greatly associated with poor hygiene, the spread of disease and nuisance, which adversely affects our health and aggravates the quality of life. It is not difficult to comprehend that keeping a congested but small area clean and hygienic is far more difficult than a large area with few persons because it requires much management effort to restrain the behaviour of numerous kinds of people, of which some may ignore the well being of the whole community. Poor living condition is resulted as it is what we can see in the overcrowded area like Sham Shui Po and Yau Ma Tei. To worsen the case, it can become the breeding ground of germs and any outbreak of super disease can mean a complete disaster as people are living too close to each other, making these undesirable visitors sweep across the community easily. The SARS incident and frequent occurrence of flu cases are some of the valid examples of this view. In short, overcrowding deprives Hong Kong people of the right to sustain their physical health.
When we have a closer look into the overcrowding issue, apart from health, interpersonal relationship should also be one of our concerns. Conflicts and arguments are always easily inflicted when people are squeezed into a small community with poor living environment as the possibility of nuisance and disagreement tend to be proportional to the number of neighbours. In sparsely populated area like villages and suburbs, what people do can hardly cause troubles to others as the space gives promise of privacy and reasonable distance between people. On the contrary, in Hong Kong, especially in public housing estates, poorly maintained private old buildings and slums, complaints about trivial matters, like the high volume of Hi-Fi and noise at night, make people’s relationship poorer but not close. As a result, Hong Kong people become more apathetic and neighborhood spirit in the past no longer exists as in a congested building, neighbors tend to be trouble makers instead of good helpers.
Last but not least, overcrowding is not only detrimental to us at physical and interpersonal level, but also most importantly, our mental life. Ideally, our home and the community we live in should be our relief for the suffocating pressure everyone faces in a competitive city, hence refreshing us every day and giving us mere energy to cope with daily challenges. However, this thinking is only true in foreign countries where sufficient space is available for various relaxing activities. In Hong Kong, there is even not enough land for basic recreational use. As a consequence, it is not surprising to read about surveys suggesting many Hong Kong people are suffering from different forms of mental problems like insomnia. Consequently, Hong Kong people seldom enjoy good mental health.
In conclusion, the affluence and overwhelming GDP of Hong Kong actually make us overestimate our quality of life as overcrowding stands in the way. To raise our living standard, prompt and effective policies should be implemented without any hesitations.