Tomorrow’s City – Mechanisms in Creating Better Urban Places

President and Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Urban Design, a UK Chartered and Hong Kong Registered Landscape Architect, Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Landscape Architects, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Building Engineers, an accredited Construction adjudicator and CEDR Accredited Mediator. A long standing Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Hong Kong, he sits on various HKSAR Government Advisory Committees, Mediation Panels and International Arbitration Courts in both Hong Kong and China. He received award from the China International Urbanization Development Strategy Research Committee in 2012 for his contribution to China’s urbanisation transformation and the 2019 Reed & Mallik Medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers for his paper “An Outline to Futureproofing Cities with Ten Immediate Steps”. A long-term advocate of sustainable, forward thinking development approaches, his consultancy practice – Barry Wilson Project Initiatives has been tackling urbanisation issues in Hong Kong and China for nearly 30 years. His book – Futureproof City : Ten Immediate Paths to Urban Resilience was published by Routledge in 2021.

My Sustainability Goals for 2024:

1. Hong Kong Government to appoint an “Urban Champion”, acting like a mayor across silos, to generate a new vision for renewal of the urban realm that prioritises citizen’s health, safety, and equity; promotes innovation, quality and renewal and rejects traditional fastest, biggest, cheapest development scenarios.

2. Adopt new quality and impact based metrics to assess societal development and success – phasing out the use of one-dimensional, consumption-lead economic growth measured by GDP.

Matthew leads the Hong Kong office and has played a pivotal role in many of the practice’s award-winning projects in the region. He recently completed the ‘Sky Bridge’ at Hong Kong International Airport, the world’s longest airside bridge. He is currently working on the restoration of the Grade I listed State Theatre; new conservatories for the China National Botanical Garden; and a state-of-the-art campus on Pokfield Road for the University of Hong Kong.
Before moving to Hong Kong, Matthew worked on a number of landmark projects including London King’s Cross Gasholders; Guangzhou International Finance Centre; and was the project architect for the Cooled Conservatories at Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay, working on the project from its inception to its successful completion in 2012.

My Sustainability Goals for 2024:

1. Our buildings to have a more considered relationship with the outside: much more use of passive means of environmental control before using highly-efficient active systems powered by renewable energy. Buildings that have shaded, outdoor amenity spaces from which users can feel, see and hear changes in the day, and not always find themselves hermetically sealed into highly-glazed, artificially-lit air-conditioned boxes.

2. ⁠More and better use of our existing buildings: less ‘slash and burn’ new development and greater use of what we already have. Discussions about embodied carbon are at their early stages in Hong Kong and there are huge gains (and huge carbon savings) to be made by refurbishing and retrofitting existing buildings.

3. ⁠More greening of our city’s buildings: amazingly, 70% of Hong Kong is green but the city and its streets remain hard and artificial. To encourage people to connect more with nature, to walk to work and to open the windows of our buildings we need to incorporate more greening on, in and over our buildings.

Louie is an urban researcher on how value is created through place governance. She has worked across university, government and private sectors in the UK, Hong Kong and ASEAN countries. Projects have dealt with: performance management for design quality in public services, specifically the operation of planning systems; the case for private sector investment in public design; the management of long term value in the built environment; project evaluation in placemaking. Louie has been Programme Director of three flagship built environment design programmes at Cardiff University and the City University of Hong Kong.

Louie’s current research is on decision-making and placemaking in Hong Kong, London, Singapore and Malaysia. Her most recent book is Providing Public Space in a Contemporary Metropolis: Dilemmas and Lessons from London and Hong Kong (2024, Policy Press), co-authored with Claudio de Magalhaes.

My Sustainability Goals for 2024:

Mainstream and enable co-design for the public realm, developing methods that are tailored for Hong Kong.

A public realm design approach that gives pedestrians greater priority than they currently have.

Confident and creative municipal leadership that takes, evidence-based, strategic, coordinated cross-bureau and departmental decisions to deliver public spaces fit for a world city.