The Sea Ranch

The Sea Ranch is a 1970’s luxury residential development in a remote area of Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. After initial boom, it experienced fall in prices, decline in occupancy and mismanagement. In 2008, “TimeOut Hong Kong” compared it to a city hit by a neutron bomb. It wrote: “The southwest Lantau ghost town is shabby, crumbling, and crushingly depressing to visit.”

I made this documentary to explore what the developer’s initial vision was, what The Sea Ranch was like when it opened, what went wrong and what it is today.

This is a Documentary Film Production project completed as part of the 2014 Master of Journalism program at the University of Hong Kong, under the guidance and supervision of Ruby Yang. The project was completed in three weeks.

by Piotr Zembrowski