page_title: Tai Po New Town
section_title: History of developments
hierarchical_section_title: Tai Po New Town / History of developments
caption_attribution_description: Yuen Chau Tsai
context_page_description: Tai Po New Town, or Tai Po Town, is a new town and non-administrative area in Tai Po District, in the New Territories, Hong Kong. The area is a planned town that surrounding the existing indigenous market towns Tai Po Hui and Tai Po Kau Hui, as well as east of the existing indigenous villages that located on the Lam Tsuen Valley as well as west of those villages in Ting Kok and Tai Mei Tuk and south of those villages in Nam Hang, Fung Yuen and Sha Lo Tung. Most of the lands of the new town were obtained by land reclamation. In present day, Tai Po New Town was simply known as Tai Po. The new town are largely covered by the government Tai Po Outline Zoning Plan, which legally regulated the land use of the area, on top of the terms in the land lease contract with the government. Some of the land lease within the area, were known as Tai Po Town Lot № foo. In election, the town had a different zoning scheme for the election constituencies.
context_section_description: The new town was designed to be expanded from and incorporate the previously existing areas of Tai Po Market (Tai Po Hui; formerly known as Tai Wo Shi) and Tai Po Old Market (Tai Po Kau Hui, the former site of Tai Po Hui), traditional market towns that served both rural villages of Tang clan Tai Po branch and non-Tang's village alliance Tai Po Tsat Yeuk (literally Tai Po Seven Alliances) as well as people by water route from Ma On Shan and other places. The market towns were established in the Qing dynasty. After the concession of the area now known as the New Territories and New Kowloon to the British Empire, the colonial Hong Kong government also established the District Office North (founded as District Office which also oversee villages that belongs to the present day Sha Tin District), an administrate department, in the area that belongs to the modern day Tai Po New Town in 1907. The building was next to the former site of the Tai Po police station, as well as the Island House, the residence of the District Officer. The market towns received expansion in the 1960s, due to the relocation of indigenous villages to the newly reclaimed land that next to the Tai Po Market, as well as the construction of Tai Po Industrial Estate which started in 1974. From 1976, [sic] extensive reclamation work was carried out near the mouth of the Lam Tsuen River in Tolo Harbour (or known as Tai Po Hoi, literally Tai Po Sea) in order to create land for the new town.
  The new town was a planned area, which " suitable sites have been reserved for various types of land-uses including residential, commercial, industrial and open space, and for the provision of different types of community and infrastructural facilities to meet the needs of the population." The new town was divided between residential and industrial areas, with a mix of public and private housing. The Tai Po Industrial Estate southwest of Ting Kok is one of the major industrial estates in Hong Kong. The gas factory of Hong Kong and China Gas was located in the estate. As of 2018, the estate also consists of tenants such as Asia Television, AsiaSat, APT Satellite, Oriental Press Group, South China Morning Post Publishers etc.. Tai Po New Town also had a smaller industrial area known as Tai Ping Industrial Centre.
  The new town was served by two railway stations (now part of the mass transit system of the city), new Tai Po Market station and Tai Wo station respectively. Tai Po Kau railway station and old Tai Po Market railway station, however, were closed in 1983. The latter which previously served the traditional market town Tai Po Market (Tai Wo Shi), became the Hong Kong Railway Museum, one of the public museums of Tai Po District. In terms of road transport, Tolo Highway was completed in the 1980s, which largely replaced Tai Po Road as the main road between the new town and city centre.
  One of the earliest development of the present day Tai Po new town, were multi-storied estates on newly reclaimed land on Kwong Fuk Road circa the 1960s to 1970s. The housing estates, known as Luk Heung San Tsuen were served as the compensation for villages that were suffered from the construction of the Plover Cove Reservoir (Chinese: 船灣淡水湖; lit.: 'boat bay fresh water lake'), in which the farmland would be under water after the construction of the reservoir. Despite those buildings are now much older than other buildings of the new town, as well as now part of the Tai Po District Council Election Constituency Tai Po Hui, the area could traced back to its origins in the Plover Cove by the name of the local street Luk Heung Lane (Chinese: 陸鄉里), a namesake of Luk Heung (literally Six Villages), as well as an ancestral hall. Those villages from Luk Heung conducted their business activities in Sha Tau Kok market town in the past. The Lane-Square in Tai Po, or known as the "Four Lanes" were also built circa the 1960s.
  In 1972, the Executive Council, the de facto cabinet of the Hong Kong colonial government, had approved a 10-year housing plan, which included a proposed expansion of Tai Po, Fanling
caption: former island Yuen Chau Tsai. Island House is located on the island. Park on the right was Yuen Chau Tsai Park
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