Concrete Analysis | Hong Kong's rising status and shrinking homes

Hong Kong is an affluent society by many standards, whether in terms of per capita income, total reserves, household income or number of high-net-worth individuals. This is becoming more so if one takes into account the continuous inflow of successful businesspeople having their second homes in the city, or even settling down in Hong Kong.

However, when it comes to living quality, what I have observed or heard is growing discontent over the deteriorating state of its various components. Some of my friends even suggest that over the past decade we have fallen behind many other cities at a significantly faster rate.

The quality-of-life aspects which are becoming more and more undesirable include extremely high property prices; rapidly shrinking living spaces; worsening pollution; less interesting public spaces; high work pressure and long working hours; insufficient international schools; decreasing number of old or traditional shops, replaced by more and more monotonous shopping malls. These have caused a lot of concerns among local people, mainlanders and foreigners who live or plan to live in Hong Kong.

Good quality of living can be an effective lubricant for society or even a strong incentive for the local people to contribute and commit to the future of society in positive ways. For foreigners, it gives them appealing and encouraging reasons to participate in our economy or other social aspects of society.

On the other hand, poor or deteriorating living quality will foster grievances among local people against the government and discourage foreigners to come here, or force them to leave.

Quality living, in fact, should be one of the most important goals of a society - a crucial agenda that no government should take lightly.

This simple mission is almost like a breadwinner's goal of earning money to improve the living standards of his or her own family and give them a better future. If a government just emphasises economic parameters like increasing GDP, accumulating reserves, strengthening political power, seeking higher global rankings, etc, it will lose focus on its ultimate aim of providing its people with a better quality of life.