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Greater Bay Area
CommentHong Kong

Where does Hong Kong’s container port fit into the smart city vision and Greater Bay Area initiative?

Peter Levesque says with container traffic falling at Kwai Tsing in recent years, the container port should be included in the city’s modernisation drive, to create a new operating model that can be part of the regional integration plan

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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Peter Levesque
Under the leadership of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, Hong Kong is at last embracing tech and innovation to move our maturing economy up the value chain and remain competitive. This is a bold vision for a city that has historically thrived on trade and finance.
Recently, the American Chamber of Commerce launched its inaugural Smart City Conference, which highlighted the role of technology and design in enhancing Hong Kong’s position as a world-class city. It also underscored the critical role of human capital in bringing the government’s smart city initiative to fruition.

Tom Murphy, the former mayor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who was seminal in transforming his city from a dying steel producer into a research and development tech centre, gave a compelling keynote address at the conference.

He stressed the need for Hong Kong to tear down the conventional barriers to progress, and think differently to achieve transformative smart city development. “The challenge is for cities to be intentional about reaching the future, not to drift into it or be protective of the status quo”, he said.

The idea of a “smart city” covers a wide range of opportunities, but the essence is to merge advanced technology and infrastructure to improve the places and spaces where people live and work.

Watch: Hong Kong’s MTR by the numbers

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