Most arts you can ignore if you prefer. But you can't ignore the design of cities, an activity which has never been as important as it is now.
Fifty years ago, London, Paris and New York were considered big and brazen. With urban migration in developing countries, they have been supplanted by smaller, younger cities. Hong Kong is one of these. This process has profound implications, not least for ecology, politics and culture.
It's been said that cities are the most complex man-made creations: a surprisingly mysterious process. Megacites 2000! Asian Vision! is Hong Kong University's timely attempt to monitor this process.
Not only are cities a means by which the users can contribute to the definition of their own environments; they also encompass the issues of food and water supply, waste disposal, housing, education, public health and transport. Hong Kong is a leader in some of these areas, while in others, it has much to learn from other cities.
The exhibition limits comparisons to Tokyo, Shanghai and Sao Paulo only, offering enough opportunities for new insight to justify a conference. Unfortunately, there is no attempt to analyse and interpret the issues through the exhibition.
Instead, this is an assembly of work by participants. There are real projects: office towers by Americans Cesar Pelli, Kohn Pedersen Fox and SOM, and Rocco Design from Hong Kong; housing contributions by the SAR's Architectural Services Department; new towns by Kun Lim of Malaysia and Hong Kong's Oval Partnership, and major urban interventions by Jean-Marie Charpentier of France.
There are also visionary proposals, with the Japanese dominating this genre. The text accompanying Hyper Building by the Hyper Building Research Committee talks about the obstacles to its realisation. The super vertical building of 1,000 metres will generate various problems which cannot be solved by existing technology. Hyper Spiral by Nobuki Furuma was a beautiful folly; an enormous structure like a Tapies sculpture. Hyper Tower by Shizuo Harada was a more straightforward high-rise development.