Tai Po New Town

Tai Po New Town, or Tai Po Town (Chinese: 大埔新市鎮), is a new town (satellite 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 of Tai Po Market and Tai Po Old Market, 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 the present day, Tai Po New Town is simply known as Tai Po.

The new town is largely covered by the government Tai Po Outline Zoning Plan, which legally regulates 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 elections, the town has a different zoning scheme for the election constituencies.

The new town was designed to be expanded from and incorporate the previously existing areas of Tai Po Market and Tai Po Old Market, traditional market towns that served both rural villages of Tang clan Tai Po branch and non-Tang's village alliance Tai Po Tsat Yeuk 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 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 in order to create land for the new town.

The new town was a planned area, which had "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 new railway stations, which are now part of the mass transit system of the city, new Tai Po Market station and Tai Wo station respectively. The already existing Tai Po Kau and old Tai Po Market railway stations, however, were closed in 1983. The latter which had 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 [zh] circa the 1960s to 1970s. The housing estates, known as Luk Heung San Tsuen [zh] were served as the compensation for villages that were suffered from the construction of the Plover Cove Reservoir, whose farmland would be under water after the construction of the reservoir. Despite that, those buildings are now much older than other buildings of the new town, and make up the Tai Po District Council Election Constituency of 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 (陸鄉里), a namesake of Luk Heung (lit. "Six Villages"), as well as an ancestral hall. Those villages from Luk Heung conducted their business activities in Sha Tau Kok in the past. The Lane-Square in Tai Po [zh], 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–Sheung Shui-Shek Wu Hui and Yuen Long as new towns.

In 1976, Tai Po New Town project was formally announced. Differing from Luk Heung San Tsuen, which was a relocation of rural population to the rural town centre, the new town project was to be an influx of urban population from the existing built-up area of the city.