The University of Hong Kong Centre of Urban Studies and Urban Planning Lecture Series
"Global Power City Index: New Tool for Urban Planning"

Institute for Urban Strategies at the Mori Memorial Foundation presented the research findings on the Global Power City Index (GPCI) at a special lecture sponsored by the Centre of Urban Studies and Urban Planning at the University of Hong Kong. Director Hiroo Ichikawa and Researcher Takayuki Kubo were invited to offer the lecture. It was the second time for the Institute for Urban Strategies to visit HKU since the summer of 2009 where the Asian Urbanization Conference was hosted by the Center of Urban Studies and Urban Planning.

Date and Time

December 16, 2009 12:45 - 14:00

Venue

Room 829, Knowles Building, The University of Hong Kong

Title

"Global Power City Index: New Tool for Urban Planning"

Presenters

Hiroo Ichikawa
(Dean, Professional Graduate School, Meiji University / Director, the Mori Memorial Foundation)
Takayuki Kubo
(Researcher, Institute for Urban Strategies, the Mori Memorial Foundation)

Coordinators

Roger Chang
(Associate Professor, Centre of Urban Studies and Urban Planning, The University of Hong Kong)
Peter Cheung
(Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong)
Yasuyuki Miwa
(Senior Researcher, Institute for Urban Strategies, the Mori Memorial Foundation)

Firstly, Prof. Ichikawa presented the research summary and findings on GPCI-2009 as a keynote lecture. Especially, major cities competing with each other in Asia such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, and Shanghai were focused and each profile of city was featured. Among those cities, Hong Kong’s current situation with strong economy yet relatively low level in livability was exposed. Furthermore, it was introduced that Hong Kong is highly evaluated from managers but is poorly evaluated from artists.

Secondly, Researcher Kubo presented "Hong Kong vs. Tokyo," which is customized for the HKU special lecture, utilizing 69 indicators of GPCI. Profile of each city such as the scale of cities and their population were introduced and a precise comparison of both cities was attempted to identify each strength and weakness. For instance, the fact that each city has different types of strength even both are well evaluated in the economy field as the 2nd place for Tokyo and the fourth place for Hong Kong, were presented visually with data and diagrams: Tokyo maintains its strength in market value such as GDP while Hong Kong raises its score with ease of regulations and risks. Comparisons in other five functions were also made showing the raw data of indicators and it endorsed the results of Tokyo as 4th and Hong Kong as 10th in the comprehensive ranking to the audiences.

As the conclusion from the Institute for Urban Strategies, Hong Kong was evaluated as one of the most competitive cities in the world with its high number of foreign visitors following London and its good openness to the international investors. Meanwhile, it was pointed that there are still amount of room for improvements in the working and living environment such as the long annual working hours and high cost of living, as one of the advanced cities in the world. More improvement in cultural aspects besides shopping and dining was also suggested. Hong Kong has a strong potential in raising its position to the top group if these indicators appear to show substantially high scores in GPCI.

For this lecture at HKU, Institute for Urban Strategies attempted to focus on the visiting city utilizing the data of GPCI as done at Columbia University in New York City. With these experiences, it is decided to establish a new program to do more detail analysis in more cities as well as New York and Hong Kong. This lecture was also very fruitful in reinforcing the connection with HKU to proceed with further research relative to GPCI-2010.

Related Website

HKU Centre of Urban Studies and Urban Planning WEBSITE
December 16, 2009 Lecture Brochure (195KB)