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In her policy address last year, Chief Executive Carrie Lam proposed a Northern Metropolis Development Plan, which would cover an area of about 300 square kilometers and accommodate 2.5 million people upon completion. A survey conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) showed that about half of citizens agreed or strongly agreed with the plan, and 56.0% of them believed that the plan would be helpful or very helpful in solving the housing problem in Hong Kong.

The telephone survey was conducted in the evenings from 10 to 19 January 2022, and a total of 706 people aged 18 or above were successfully interviewed. According to the survey results, 49.1% of the respondents agreed (40.0%) or strongly agreed (9.1%) with the Northern Metropolis Development Plan proposed by the Chief Executive, while 35.7% of them disagreed (27.1%) or strongly disagreed (8.6%), and 15.2% said they did not know or it was hard to say.

The survey also found that 56.0% of the respondents believed that the Northern Metropolis Development Plan would be helpful (47.9%) or very helpful (8.1%) in solving Hong Kong’s housing problems in the long run, while 33.6% said it would be unhelpful (27.1%) or very unhelpful (6.5%). In addition, 53.4% of the respondents believed that the Northern Metropolis Development Plan would be helpful (47.3%) or very helpful (6.1%) in promoting the economic development of Hong Kong, while 35.6% felt it would be unhelpful (29.6%) or very unhelpful (6.0%).

However, as the Northern Metropolis Development Plan includes a number of huge infrastructure investments, 56.9% of the respondents were worried (38.8%) or very worried (18.1%) that the plan would cause financial problems for the government, while 33.9% of the respondents said they were not worried (29.0%) or very worried (4.9%) about it. At the same time, the Chief Executive proposed strengthening cooperation and ties with Shenzhen in the plan: 47.9% of the respondents felt that this development strategy would have no impact on them, 20.7% thought it would benefit them and 17.9% estimated that it would be to their detriment.

During her term of office, the Chief Executive has proposed two large-scale construction plans, the Northern Metropolis Development Plan and the Lantau Tomorrow Vision. The survey also asked the respondents about the choice between these two plans. The results showed that 29.0% of the respondents believed that neither plan needed to be implemented while 21.9% thought both plans were needed; 16.6% opined that only the Northern Metropolis Development Plan needed to be launched and 4.2% said that only the Lantau Tomorrow Vision was needed.

The survey employed a dual-frame sampling design that included both landline and mobile phone numbers. A total of 706 respondents (landline: 348; mobile: 358) were successfully interviewed, with response rates of 28.2% (landline) and 30.3% (mobile). The sampling error for a sample size of 706 is estimated at plus or minus 3.69 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Furthermore, the data in this survey was weighted based on the probability of the respondents being selected via dual-frame sampling design and relevant age-sex distribution of the population published by the Census and Statistics Department.