Mei Foo Sun Chuen or simply Mei Foo is a large

private housing estate A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex or housing development) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Popular throughout the United States a ...

Lai Chi Kok Lai Chi Kok is a neighbourhood in Kowloon, Hong Kong, east of Kwai Chung and west of Cheung Sha Wan. Mei Foo Sun Chuen is the largest housing estate in the area and also the largest in Hong Kong with 99 blocks. Administratively, it belongs t ...

Kowloon Kowloon () is an urban area in Hong Kong comprising the Kowloon Peninsula and New Kowloon. With a population of 2,019,533 and a population density of in 2006, it is the most populous area in Hong Kong, compared with Hong Kong Island and t ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. Mei Foo Sun Chuen was the first large scale

in Hong Kong and at the time of completion, the 99-tower complex was considered the largest private housing development in the world, accommodating some 70,000 – 80,000 people in 13,500 apartments. It is considered to be one of the world's largest privately financed residential condominium projects.

History

The 40-acre Mei Foo Sun Chuen, with a total of ninety-nine blocks, was completed from 1968 to 1978 in eight separate but interconnected stages. It is located on the

reclamation Reclaim, reclaimed, reclaimer, reclaiming or reclamation means "to get something back". It may refer to: * Land reclamation, creating new land from oceans, riverbeds, or lake beds * Dedesertification, reversing of the land degradation in arid ...

that had been a large petroleum-storage facility of

Mobil Mobil is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil. The brand was formerly owned and operated by an oil and gas corporation of the same name, which itself merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil in 1999. ...

(now part of

ExxonMobil ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...

) in Hong Kong (Mobil's Chinese trading name in Hong Kong is ; Mei Foo) from the 1920s. The redevelopment was carried out by Mei Foo Investments Limited, a subsidiary company of Mobil Oil (Hong Kong) Limited. The name, Mobil, was translated into 無比 ( mou ⁴ bei²) before the Sun Chuen (Estate) completed. Mei Foo Sun Chuen was conceived to meet the housing needs of Hong Kong's middle-income families, an emerging and growing group at the time.Chan, Chi-kau, Johnnie Casire
"Community development and management of private sector housing estates in Hong Kong"
,

University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong (HKU) (Chinese: 香港大學) is a public research university in Hong Kong. Founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, it is the oldest tertiary institution in Hong Kong. HKU was also the fi ...

, August 1995 At the time, a flat in Mei Foo cost around

HK$ The Hong Kong dollar (, sign: HK$; code: HKD) is the official currency of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It is subdivided into 100 cents or 1000 mils. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is the monetary authority of Hong Kong and ...

40,000. When built, the estate was adjacent to the sea and to

Lai Chi Kok Bay Lai Chi Kok Bay ( Chinese: 荔枝角灣) or Lai Wan ( Chinese: 荔灣) was a bay west of Lai Chi Kok in Hong Kong. North of the bay is Kau Wa Keng. The bay was largely recreational during its history. In the early and mid 20th century, bathing pav ...

, with a waterfront walkway and flats with waterfront balconies. However, this changed due to the West Kowloon reclamation scheme (starting in 1990) and the estate now borders

Lai Chi Kok Park Lai Chi Kok Park () is a large public park in Hong Kong, on the reclamation of former Lai Chi Kok Bay adjacent to Mei Foo, stretching along the Kwai Chung Road motorway. The park is managed by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of t ...

Buildings

The residential complexes of Mei Foo were considered very affluent for the standards at the time they were built; every flat offers a balcony, at least two rooms and one bathroom. The apartment sizes vary from . Every apartment complex has a 24-hour uniformed, unarmed security force. Entry to a residential block requires an entrance code, which changes periodically. Mei Foo Sun Chuen has several schools, medical clinics, beauty salons, newspaper kiosks, supermarkets, shopping arcades, restaurants and food markets within its vicinity, making the area very convenient for residents. The private secondary schools in particular were notable for academically poor students. However, some schools have evolved into multicultural ones. The once largest owners' corporation with legal status in Hong Kong, the Incorporated Owners of Mei Foo Sun Chuen – Stage I, was formed in 1997. The founder of the corporation, Yiu Chi-Wai, served as the Chairman of the Management Committee from 1997 to 2000. The other seven stages' owners' corporations were also formed during the period.

Demographics

In the 2016 by-census, the population of Mei Foo Sun Chuen was recorded as 37,303. The median age of the estate's residents was 42.7.

Transport

Mei Foo is on the crossroad between

and

Tsuen Wan Tsuen Wan (formerly also spelled Tsun Wan) is a town built on a bay in the western New Territories of Hong Kong, opposite of Tsing Yi Island across Rambler Channel. The market town of Tsuen Wan emerged from the surrounding villages and flee ...

. It is also considered part of the west border of urban Kowloon.

Kwai Chung Road Kwai Chung Road () is a throughway in Kwai Chung of the New Territories in Hong Kong. It is one of the busiest roads in Hong Kong. The Transport Department has classified it as a trunk road. It was built in the 1960s for the two main developm ...

and

Lai Chi Kok Bridge Lai Chi Kok Bridge is a Hong Kong bridge that carries the Kwai Chung Road, part of Route 5, linking Kowloon to Kwai Chung, New Territories. The bridge, once the longest in Hong Kong, spanned Lai Chi Kok Bay, which was later filled in. I ...

are the major roads in the area. A major

bus terminus A bus terminus is a designated place where a bus or coach starts or ends its scheduled route. The terminus is the designated place that a timetable is timed from. Termini can be located at bus stations, interchanges, bus garages or bus stops. Te ...

is located under the

underpass. serving as a terminus for multiple bus routes. The MTR rapid transit railway services

Mei Foo station Mei Foo () is a Hong Kong MTR station located in Mei Foo Sun Chuen, Lai Chi Kok, New Kowloon. It is the only interchange station between the and the , situated between and stations on the Tsuen Wan line and and stations on the Tuen Ma ...

is connected to the

Tsuen Wan line The Tsuen Wan line is one of the eleven lines of the metro network in Hong Kong's MTR. It is indicated in red on the MTR map. There are 16 stations on the line. The southern terminus is Central station on Hong Kong Island and the nor ...

, completed in 1982, and to the

Tuen Ma Line The Tuen Ma line () is a rapid transit line that forms part of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system in Hong Kong. Coloured brown on the map, the Tuen Ma line is in length, making it the longest line of the MTR network. It has a total of ...

, operational since 2003. Alternate forms of public transport like

minibus A minibus, microbus, minicoach, or commuter (in Zimbabwe) is a passenger-carrying motor vehicle that is designed to carry more people than a multi-purpose vehicle or minivan, but fewer people than a full-size bus. In the United Kingdom, th ...

es and

taxi A taxi, also known as a taxicab or simply a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice ...

s also service the estate. In 2009, the new Route 8 tunnels opened near Mei Foo, providing a much more direct road link to the eastern New Territories.

Events

* DBS Bank safe deposit box destruction incident (2October 2004)

Gallery

A collection of photos pertaining to Mei Foo Sun Chuen is shown below: File:Mount Sterling Mall Interior 200806.jpg, Mount Sterling Mall before renovation (2008) File:Mei Foo Sun Chuen Shopping Arcade Atrium 201304.jpg, Mei Foo Sun Chuen shopping arcade atrium (2013) File:Mei Foo Sun Chuen Podium 2011.JPG, Podium (2011) File:Mei Foo Sun Chuen Waterfront 2011.JPG, Waterfront (2011) Image:Mei foo sun chuen04.jpg Image:Mei foo sun chuen06.jpg Image:Mei foo sun chuen07.jpg Image:Mei foo sun chuen08.jpg

References

External links

* S.K. Hui, A. Cheung, J. Pang
"A Hierarchical Bayesian Approach for Residential Property Valuation:Application to Hong Kong Housing Market"
''International Real Estate Review'', 2010 Vol. 13 No.1: pp. 1 – 29 * Yu, Pui-kwan, Robin
"A study on quasi-public space in large scale private residential development, case in Hong Kong"

, 2007 {{coord, 22.3380, N, 114.1390, E, source:zhwiki, display=title Private housing estates in Hong Kong Lai Chi Kok 1968 establishments in Hong Kong ExxonMobil history Housing estates with centralized LPG system in Hong Kong