Great write up. I found your table extremely interesting, more proof that urbanizing and living in cities is a better solution then sprawl.

Cheers.

There are a number of background reasons to make Hong Kong an efficient city as what you have commented. Having a finite land area of 1,078 sq.km. and 44% of our land is conserved, we develop vertically. Unlike Tokyo, Seoul, New York or other metropolitan areas in the world, Hong Kong has a pretty rigid boundary (we have to ‘cross border’ to mainland China) so we are, at least at the moment, not that integrated with neighbouring regions and must find every corner of Hong Kong to develop and suit the needs of the city. Given this uniqueness, I am not sure if Hong Kong is really a lesson learn for being efficient because other cities could have chosen to spread.

The 5.5 MT CO2-e figure is no doubt reflecting the fact that Hong Kong in very efficient in commuting and provision of utilities. But when we considered embodied carbon that supports the lifestyle of the city, Hong Kong’s carbon footprint come second globally in a per capita basis using 2001 data, according to a Norwegian study published back in 2009. Perhaps we are no longer the second but the fact that we rely a lot of imports is still true. Primary industry still exist in Hong Kong but that’s an insignificant scale. In my opinion, this is not what a health economy should look like.

Reference: Edgar G. Hertwich and Glen P. Peters. Carbon Footprint of Nations: A Global, Trade-Linked Analysis. Environ. Sci. Technol., 2009, 43 (16), pp 6414–6420

In paticular, the comparative data for wealth creation Vs carbon emission is very interesting from economics point of view. I agree, HK may not be the finest example of “Pretty City” but its an epitome of density planning integrated with transit development.

Good read.

Harpreet
PDD-Econ
India