Maybe we’re not dense enough to fix the global warming problem…

I have been shifting gears lately from bemoaning my own personal state of affairs to contemplating the state of the world. Global warming is the hot topic of the day, and I having been trying to think of a way to bring fresh air to the discussion. Well, so here’s a question…what if the U.S. lived like Hong Kong? Why make comparisons to Hong Kong? Besides the obvious reasons (i.e. it’s my current home), it is one of the world’s most densely populated cities. And there are a lot of interesting ramifications that come from just this simple difference of density.

First, let’s look at some basic stats:

	U.S.	Hong Kong
Total Density (ppl/sq. km)	31	6,407
Total Area (sq. km)	9,629,091	1,099

This chart shows that Hong Kong is more than 200 times more dense than the U.S. But these numbers are a little skewed because the great size difference between the two places. Plus, a lot of space in Hong Kong is green. It might sound like a contradiction, but Hong Kong is actually made up of mostly green spaces (almost 80%) and very little urban space. Click on the map below if you don’t believe me or visit Google Maps…

So let’s redo the numbers by built up land area instead.

	U.S.	Hong Kong
Built-up Density (ppl/sq. km)	754	30613
Built-up Area (sq. km)	395377	230

That’s more like it, Hong Kong’s density has jumped up nearly five fold.  At an average of 30,000 people per square kilometer, you can imagine that we have no place but to go up in Hong Kong.  The U.S.’s density also increased by these calculations, but Hong Kong is still 40 times denser than the U.S.  So what does all this difference in density mean?

First of all, there are dramatically less cars per person in Hong Kong. In fact, the overwhelming majority of people do not own car. They take the public transport instead. And despite the fact that there are more cars per kilometer of road in Hong Kong, we have far less fatal or injurious accidents. I would speculate that has to do with the fact that we are traveling at slower speeds and the comparative safety of public tranport (e.g professional drivers, bigger vehicles, etc).

	U.S.	Hong Kong
Number of motor vehicles (per 1000 ppl)	806	77
Automobile fatalities (per 1000 ppl)	0.15	0.03
Automobile injuries (per 1000 ppl)	11.56	3.01

Speaking of public transport, Hong Kong has it all: ferries, buses, rapid transit (MTR or KCR), minibuses, tram, taxis, cable cars, and maybe some other things I am forgetting. Most of the transportation charges according to the distance traveled. And nearly all (except taxis) accept the Octopus card: a stored value card. And contrary to the supposed “universal facts” of public transportation believed in the U.S.: Hong Kong public transport turns a profit, it’s fast, it’s safe, and it’s clean. How can it turn a profit when the best systems in the U.S. are lucky to get 50% of costs back through fares? Density. A lot of people need to go a little ways. And these profits help build up a system which is a pleasure to ride because of the cushioned seats, head/feet rests, and plasma TVs. It also leads to more routes and big investments in extending the rapid transit system. And the transportation feeds into other parts of the economy: people pay top dollar for real estate on top of transport stations.

Ah, yes, real estate. Of course, if Hong Kong is so dense, there must be some real sacrifices in personal space. Without a doubt, the notion of a “yard” or “single family house” is completely foreign here. We live in flats, usually in high rise residential buildings. The most extreme is estates like Whampoa Garden which has 88 virtually identical high-rise residential buildings. It is a world unto itself, as Goldie said when we stepped foot in the Whampoa once, “It’s like going to a foreign country.” So what about the flat sizes? Well, unfortunately, I can’t find overall averages for Hong Kong. But Whampoa well-illustrates the usual range of flat sizes throughout the territory: 350 sq. ft. to 1,110 sq. ft. That covers classes A-C of the Hong Kong real estate divisions. The highest class is E which is for flats 1720 sq. ft. and above. Those are otherwise known as luxury flats. In the public housing sector, which comprises 50% of Hong Kong housing there is an average of 130 sq. ft. per person. Compare these numbers to the U.S. where a new single family house is on average 2,349 sq. ft. and luxury houses can soar to 10,000 sq. ft. and above.

So what am I getting at with all this talk of automobiles and houses? Well, the two biggest sources of greenhouse gases are automobiles and power plants. For the average citizen of the U.S. this translates to their car and their house. In Hong Kong, it’s our flat and the collective public transport. But although both regions are considered part of the industrialized world and full of rabid consumers, the average person in Hong Kong spews only 25% of CO2 of the average person in the U.S. This is despite the fact that Hong Kong people generally lack the environmental consciousness that the U.S. has built up in the last few decades. The government is just beginning programs to educate people about the importance of energy conservation. Now you could say that the sub-tropical climate of Hong Kong helps lower heating/cooling costs. That does help, although you can also point out the majority of Americans live in the warm southern locales of California and Texas. Plus, up until last year most Hong Kong people were convinced that we need to set our air-conditioners to 16C all year long.

So imagine, if the U.S. was living like Hong Kong:

• the entire population would fit on less than 10,000 sq km. of land which would mean that 99.9% of the U.S. would be green space
• 90% of the cars would be off the road
• every urban center would have a fast, efficient public transportation system and it would be turning a profit
• the carbon emissions of the U.S. would be 6% of the world’s total instead of 24%

So, maybe, what the world needs is a little more density…

Links

• Consultancy Study to Analyse Broad Land Use Pattern of Hong Kong
• Measuring constraints on land suppy: the case of Hong Kong
• Hong Kong transport statistics at a glance
• Hong Kong Housing Authority statistics
• Behind the ever-expanding American dream house
• Wikipedia: List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per captia
• Major uses of the land in the United States