Rosario: Urban renewal policy not restricted to redeveloping old residences

Secretary for Transport and Public Works Raimundo Arrais do Rosário said that the city’s ‘urban renewal policy’, yet to be drafted as a bill, will not be one that targets only the terms allowing renovation or reconstruction of old residential buildings of 30 years of age or more. The Secretary revealed the news when attending the programme ‘Macau Forum’ on public broadcaster TDM Radio’s Chinese channel yesterday. “Our past policy [of old neighbourhood rejuvenation] has centred on the concerns about the old buildings here, involving questions about whether residences aged 30 years or more should be rebuilt or not,” he said. “But our new concept is that with the urban renewal policy it will not only look at old buildings,” the Secretary added, “but at buildings that are five or ten years old; if the owners agree, a renovation or a reconstruction should be fine.” The Secretary did not offer further information about the urban renewal policy. Currently, the Civil Code requires all flat owners in a residential building to agree to any redevelopment, even if grave structural problems make redevelopment imperative. Upcoming bill Following the dismissal of the city’s advisory body for old neighbourhood regeneration, Chief Executive Fernando Chui Sai On pledged in March that he would introduce the policy of urban renewal to the city soon. Mr. Chui further noted in a Legislative Assembly session earlier this month that the government would work towards delivering the bill or urban renewal policy within half a year, in tandem with the formation of a special committee working on the issue. The head of the Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau, Li Canfeng, also responded to legislator Chan Meng Kam this month, saying that the government would look at the city’s overall urban plan, land bank issue, the target group of this new policy, and other stamp duty arrangements when forming the urban renewal policy. The city saw the formation of a consultative committee on old neighbourhoods rejuvenation in 2005. But subsequently the bill on old neighbourhoods reform, which the committee also offered opinions on, was scrapped by the Legislative Assembly in August 2013 following years of fruitless discussions. Sufficient supply However, speaking to the audience yesterday Mr. Rosário expressed confidence that the city will have a sufficient supply of residential units to cope with future population growth “with or without the urban renewal policy”. “The biggest [housing] problem is surfacing in the short term as we cannot complete the [public] housing projects on time,” the Secretary said. “In the coming two to three years, we’re going to face a housing supply problem,” he said in response to a listener’s question. “But as the Chief Executive mentioned before the new urban reclaimed zone A is going to see the construction of 32,000 housing units, of which 28,000 are public housing. So, in the long term, it [the housing supply] will not be a big problem.” Mr. Rosário acknowledged that the completion schedule delay was the “most serious” problem for public infrastructure projects, and apologised for the failure of the Ilha Verde public housing project not being completed next year – although he cannot give a new timeframe for the project’s completion. The delay issue common in public infrastructure projects has been caused by incorrect estimates of completion time, or the inaccuracy of soil investigations, the Secretary said. He also noted that most public infrastructure projects suffer from budget overrun issues, whereby budgets balloon 10 per cent or less on the agreed cost.