Citizen Centric Cities The Sustainable Cities Index 2018

UTILIZINGINNOVATION

TO CREATESUSTAINABLE

GROWTH

BALANCED INNOVATORS

PART OFASIA LIVEABLE CITIES SERIES

TRANSITIONING ECONOMIC HUB

HONG KONG

Hong Kong is in a similar position to Singapore with both being leading Asian cities ranking in the global Top 10. Hong Kong’s position is underpinned by its high scoring in the Profit sub-index and supplemented by its reasonable performance across People. However, it does less well in the Planet sub-index, which is partly due to resilience risks associated with its exposure to natural disasters.

Hong Kong has long been famous for its world-class infrastructure, but as one of the planet’s most densely populated cities, it faces unique challenges in providing an efficient transportation system to meet the needs of its 7.4 million citizens. These factors include limited land, a growing and aging population, rapidly increasing cross-boundary traffic with China and increasing public concern about the environment. With neighboring Greater Bay Area (GBA) cities undergoing rapid development, to retain its competitiveness in the region and globally, Hong Kong seizes the opportunity to deal with its environment, wealth-gap, and affordability challenges, as well as cultivating smart technologies and innovation.

In the government’s 2018 policy address, various measures to deliver on the “Striving Ahead Rekindling Hope” vision were announced, including increasing land supply to avail

R anking #9, technology remains key to boosting Hong Kong’s economy, competitiveness and quality of life. To re-invent itself and progress as a sustainable city, Hong Kong needs to address further its affordability and

environmental challenges and embrace smart city technologies to fulfil its city archetype of a Balanced Innovator.

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Our report also features new work on city archetypes and clusters based on an analysis of the citizen experiences of city living combined with the Index data. The four city clusters; Balanced Innovators, Post Industrial Opportunists, Evolutionary Cities and Fast-growing Megacities seek to profile the citizen experience in correlation to the Index ranking.

As a Balanced Innovator, there lies an emerging need for Hong Kong to embrace smart technology to improve its citizen experience and sustainability. In total, 35 cities fit this profile, all of which are in the top half of the Index.

The key citizen experiences associated with this profile are convenience and security associated with Automation and Sensing and high quality of life associated with an absence of Disruption as well as the infrastructure, necessary for a Connected city.

The challenges that these cities face include addressing an aging population – which requires affordable housing and a diverse range of services.

City Cluster One |Balanced Innovators

affordable housing and diversifying economy via closer collaboration with foreign countries and China. As many of Hong Kong’s challenges are culturally deep-rooted and multi-faceted, it will require strong advocacy and sustainable policies to resolve them.

Hong Kong has always been a top performer in the Profit sub-index and to sustain its position as an economic hub, the city has many opportunities to further transition economically by collaborating with the surrounding GBA cities. Key infrastructure such as the West Kowloon Railway Station and Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, both opened in October 2018, are meant to bring closer economic integration between Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta. Another major project being developed is the Hong Kong International Airport third runway. These significant investments highlight the strategic role the city has to connecting mainland China with the rest of the world as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Hong Kong’s future is evolving and as our report highlights the city has ample opportunities to cultivate smart technologies and innovations with its GBA neighbors for a citizen centric city.

Francis Au Head of Hong Kong and Macau

The Sustainable Cities Index is a broad measure of sustainability, encompassing measures of the social, environmental and economic health of cities. It ranks 100 global cities on three pillars of sustainability: People, Planet and Profit. The three pillars are closely aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and track progress against UN SDG commitments.

Hong Kong’s three pillar rankings:

The three pillars

People

Social

Reflects social mobility and quality of

opportunity and life

Planet

Environmental

Describes management of energy use, pollution and

emissions

Profit

Economic

Assesses business environment and economic

performance

#21 #50 #3

European cities dominated the top quartile of the 2018 Sustainable Cities Index with the exception of Singapore representing Asia by ranking #4 globally, closely followed by Hong Kong at #9. Other Asia cities are represented in the bottom quartile of the rankings with Profit performance, particularly related to ease of doing business and output contributing to their weak relative performance.

Asia results

BalancedProsperous, healthy and has a good work-life balance

InformalUnplanned cities where citizens create their own services and structures

DisruptedFacing economic decline and needing to re-invent

Using integrated sensors to manage city services

SensingResilientAt risk from disruption and heavily invested in mitigation measures

AutomatedRun to an increasing extent automated processes and AI

EnterpriseAligned to the needs of businesses and their employees

Accessible Using accessible infrastructure to enable all people to go about their daily lives

arcadis.com/asia© Arcadis 2018

CON

TACT

John Batten Global Cities DirectorE cities@arcadis.comT +852 2911 2000

Francis AuHead of Hong Kong and MacauE francis.au@arcadis.comT +852 2911 2000

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