The Kowloon City district seen of International Trade Center, in Hong-Kong, on May 16th. | ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP

Hong Kong was a pioneer in urban modernity well before the concept of ‘smart city’ was invented. It is an ultra-modern, vertical and electric city which still owes part of its reputation to its past audacity. It broke the codes, openly displaying its frenetic ambition to be a global city and began to attract the youth of the world to the Pearl River. Since then other key cities have overtaken it. Hong Kong now ranks 14^th in the Global Innovation Index having fallen a further three places. In the South China Morning Post, Regina Ip, an elected member, sees this as an insult, an affront to its pride and the ultimate proof that “Hong Kong has lost its know-how”. This downgrading which has been ongoing for several years finally resulted in an outburst of political mobilization. The government of the Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China has doubled its efforts and set innovation at the forefront of its development strategy. A big ‘smart city’ plan, based on the findings of a public consultation is being prepared and will be revealed in the summer. Several large scale building sites have been launched.

Octopus card

In the 1990s, when Hong Kong envisioned equipping 800 metres of very steep narrow little streets with escalators and moving pavements, this initiative was favourably received all over the world. In the morning the escalators and moving pavements bring the workers down to the offices in the lower part of the town and, as from 10 a.m. they go into reverse and take the pedestrian, not the slightest out of breath, back up to 135 metres above sea level (roughly the altitude of Montmartre). The introduction of the Octopus Card also dates back to 1997: the first prototype of plastic money in the world, copied everywhere since, this little magnetic card primarily enables holders to access all the public transport. Its applications have proliferated. Octopus now dominates the micro-payments network: purchases in the 7-Eleven, cafés, the post office, dry-cleaners, fast-food chains. It enables access to car parking facilities, public swimming pools and even to the race course on Wednesday evening and Saturday morning. The Octopus card is recharged with cash or automatically if it is connected to a bank account and can be incorporated in a SIM card. In this case, it is not the card but simply your mobile phone which you present next to the little orange Octopus boxes to pay for your purchase.

A new trans-Pacific submarine cable

“In keeping with our principle of an open economy, the government has recently allowed thirteen ‘e-wallet’ operators (electronic payments using mobile phones) to offer their services to the people of Hong Kong” states David Chung, the Vice-Minister for Innovation and Technology. As a result, in the business area, Central, you can now buy your newspaper with your telephone. David Chung reminds us that a new trans-Pacific submarine cable, with a capacity of 120 terabytes will link Los Angeles to Hong Kong in 2018. Hong Kong aims to be a regional telecommunications hub and to become the ‘blockchain’ (a type of paperless general ledger) capital, providing important technology in the financial services or ‘fintech’ sector. By 2019, the city should also be able to provide 34,000 Wi-Fi hotspots to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the people of Hong Kong who are compulsive users of their telephones from a very young age. Most operators already provide 4G and are preparing the move to 5G.

Hong Kong’s hilly and mountainous terrain and its subtropical climate are additional major constraints in the management of this city which is, moreover, one of the densest on the planet. With 7.3 million inhabitants distributed amongst four main islands – of a total of 260 – and a continental part known as the ‘New Territories’, this anthill of a city has long prioritised vertical architecture – 50,000 buildings of which almost 350 are over 150 metres high – and public transport, used by more than 90% of the population. Hong Kong has thus become a model of efficiency in this respect. ‘The MTR (the local RATP) is second to none in matters of performance’ states Ludovic Lang, the head of sales and offers at Thales Hong Kong, which supplies MTR in particular with signalling and automatic train control systems.

Public dissatisfaction and discontent

‘To be suitable for Hong Kong, many technological innovations have to be pushed to the limit. That is why we are an excellent breeding ground for start ups’ states Charles Ng, the deputy director of Invest Hong Kong, the bureau promoting Hong Kong to foreign investors. He considers that no other major city in the world has embarked simultaneously on as many major ‘smart’ projects. In particular, he highlights the new airport terminal which aims to be the most ecologically friendly in the world, the huge Kowloon Cultural District, comprising several museums and theatres, which have been in gestation for the past twenty years but are now beginning to emerge and the project for the creation of a second city centre, ‘CBD2’, which is due to be delivered in 2025. CBD2 should double the present capacity of Central, the historical area of banks and offices on the island of Hong Kong which is completely saturated. According to Charles Ng, there will be a multitude of new technologies in all these projects.

Jayne Chan, head of the Startmeup programme at InvestHK explained, “Given our proximity with the Chinese factory-province of Guandong and our own tradition as a financial and commercial hub, Hong Kong is going to focus on new technologies in the sectors of the Internet of Things (IoT), finance, health, logistics and trade”.

Christine Loh, Deputy Minister for the Environment, observed that “The possibilities provided by new technologies are almost limitless”; amongst other examples, she mentioned the implementation of anti-pollution sensors to detect polluting vehicles. The Minister is also studying the possibility of using drones to control the toxicity of the smoke from ships entering and leaving the port of Hong Kong. But Christine Loh points out that all these new technologies are only meaningful if they are aimed at improving the well-being of the citizens. Now the level of dissatisfaction and discontent of the people towards the government is dangerously high in Hong Kong. Who will invent a ‘smart app.’ to deal with public discontent?