"What is the Future of Digitally-Empowered Cities?", experts discuss at the Berkeley Breakfast Series in Hong Kong

In January 2019, the Hong Kong SAR Government announced the publication of 650 new datasets on their Public Sector Information portal (data.gov.hk) covering "economy and livelihood, real-time meteorological data, geospatial data, digital maps...and data that can enhance city management". By year end, the goal is to have 4,000 datasets available in popular machine-readable formats, such as CSV, JSON, XML, RSS and KML (but not enough API).

Open data forms an important part of the official Smart City Blueprint (published in Dec 2017) which "maps out development plans over the next five years, aiming to enhance the effectiveness of city management and improve people's quality of living as well as Hong Kong's attractiveness and sustainability by making use of innovation and technology". The Blueprint lists out various strategies and initiatives in six major areas, namely "Smart Mobility", "Smart Living", "Smart Environment", "Smart People", "Smart Government" and "Smart Economy". The announcement received a healthy dose of scepticism in the South China Morning Post.

Nevertheless, Hong Kong is still ranked 18th (jointly with Seattle, just behind Chicago) in the Top 50 Smart City Government Rankings 2018/19.

In keeping with commitment to open data, I'd suggest that the HK Gov make their own performance publicly accountable, much like the "Mayor's Dashboard" used to check the progress of Los Angeles in its journey towards becoming a smart city.

In search of our own answers to the "Future of Digitally-Empowered Cities", we invited a select group of executives to join the third Berkeley Breakfast held in the plush offices of the Berkeley Group in central Hong Kong on Monday 6th May, 2019. We kicked off the morning with a double espresso wake-up call from Emil Chan, Chairman of the Fintech Committee at the Smart City Consortium, who pushed for "open-sourced, shared city plans, much like GitHub does for software" and cited cashless payment and its ensuing data as being a fundamental need for a successful smart city.

This led to a lively conversation with often eye-opening opinions around the table (left to right in the photo above): Kath Wong (Berkeley Group), Emil Chan (Smart City Consortium), Andrew Ip (Softhard.io), Piers Brunner (Knight Frank), Tom Banwell (Knight Frank), Josef Puchinger (Lalamove), Harris Sun (Raspect), Sam Gellman (ex-Uber, now Moving Capital), Michele Bina (Relisuco Renewables), Dr. Jonathan Beard (Ernst & Young), Oscar Venhuis (theDesk), Marcos Chow (KPMG), Mei Wong (Knight Frank), Napoleon Biggs (Web Wednesday) and Houghton Wan (Net-Makers); later joined by Bruce Kong (China Unicom) and Elke Kornalijnslijper (CLP), see photo below (4th from left and 2nd from right).

In the spirit of the Chatham House Rules, we cannot disclose the full conversation but would like to share the participants' predictions for life in smart cities in 2021:

• "A world that works together." (in preparation for the upcoming visit of an alien nation!)
• "Digital, connected, sustainable and more conscious."
• "Highly dysfunctional collections of campus environments across different continents."
• "Going more green." (more wellness-centric life)
• "Frictionless mobility and connections, leading to more happiness."
• "Banks will be the driving force and their new openness will change the nature of smart cities."
• "HSBC's PayMe won't last!" (Contentious prediction)
• "Fun, innovative and trusting." (spot the tech vendor)
• "Stop following me!"
• "Hong Kong won't change. It favours the incumbents. SAR government needs to be more pro-market and digitally minded."
• "Embrace the global community before President Trump breaks it up!"
• "Mobile warehouses, as we don't have enough storage space."
• "Paradox. Very high returns."
• "Less work, more data, better insights."
• "Not just 5G. China may lead on 5G but US will lead in 6G".

A big "thank you!" to the generous folk at the Berkeley Group for supporting this endeavour and providing a stylish venue for this budding community of pioneers and future city builders.

Sometimes the best ideas come from the most unusual places. This series of events and the idea of reaching out to a new community was born from an inspiring conversation with the forward thinking CEO of Knight Frank Greater China, Piers Brunner. My deepest thanks to you!