I just got back from a business trip in Hong Kong and can’t help but join the chorus of voices that are raising the red flag: The U.S. is being left in the 20th century as Asian cities forge the progress of the 21st century.
I have been to Asia twice before — once backpacking through India and once to study circular economy study in Japan, I’m not under the wide-eyed naivete of an innocent abroad, and I didn’t travel to Hong Kong intending to make the point that the Hong Kongese are outpacing us. Although the “special administrative state” of China is justly renowned as a leader in international trade and commerce. But what stood out to me about day-to-day life in Hong Kong were three things.
The transit system of Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s public transit system should be the envy of every commuter in Philadelphia. I noticed this first when I was in the cab from the airport. After 20 hours of travel, my business partner and I lacked the wherewithal to navigate public transportation in a new city. We cruised through the city in the cab at 7:30pm — and hit no traffic. This is a city of 7.5 million people — a global metropolis nearly five times the size of Philly. And zero gridlock, no angry drivers.
I soon found out the simple reason: Most people in Hong Kong take public transit — which is plentiful, accessible, clean, efficient, safe — and extremely cheap. A ride on Hong Kong’s MTR (their subway) costs about $1.50. A bus all the way to a beach town one hour away cost $1. Our favorite was the Ding Ding, a trolly that breezily takes you through the streets of the city and at each stop makes an endearing bell sound (hence the name) … for 40 cents.
All these modes run every 5 minutes and are packed with people. Again, worth noting: A corporation that’s 75 percent government-owned and 25 percent private runs Hong Kong’s public transit, as opposed to an all-publically funded entity like SEPTA. That 25 percent is enough to create a healthy feedback loop of investment and ridership income to fund the operation, while having a majority public stakeholder prevents short-term investor thinking. The result: Last year, they turned a $2 billion profit. A business-oriented approach literally keeps Hong Kong’s trains (and buses, and Ding Dings) running smoothly.
You better believe we went back to the airport on a train. It cost about a quarter of the price of a cab and got us there in a half hour.
The electric cars
Of course, some Hong Kong residents — about one-third of them — drive. And, in a city of 7.5 million, I was expecting the air quality to be like Delhi, where just a short walk through the streets have left me with black snot and aching lungs. But Hong Kong’s air is cleaner than L.A.’s, Chicago’s, or New York’s. Not coincidentally, almost every private car I saw was electric.
As a bonus, there’s very little on-street parking because the city invested in adequate, charger-equipped parking garages. A colleague we met for drinks drove his electric car to our meeting because he needed to drive outside of the city right after. He arrived late because his 10-year-old Tesla’s battery was now throttled down to 30 percent efficiency (conveniently after the warranty was up).
To ease the transition of trading in his car for a sleek Chinese-made BYD, he’ll receive a $10,000 government incentive — much better than Tesla’s trade-in offer. The reason for the subsidy: Spur purchase of modern domestic electric automobiles to fuel the economy and keep their air and environment clean.

Hong Kong’s pristine streets and sidewalks
And finally, speaking of clean, as the former Director of Zero Waste and Litter for Philadelphia, I still can’t help myself from judging a city’s cleanliness and waste management practices. In this area, Hong Kong gets an A. Streets have little to no litter. Trash cans are fairly ubiquitous, although not on every corner, and while I saw municipal employees from time to time sweeping the streets with dustpans and brooms, I didn’t see any mechanical street sweeping.
I attribute the lack of litter to the built environment. There are virtually no single family homes in the city, so a vast majority of the population lives in high-rise apartments with designated trash storage — no out-in-public dumpsters. When trash is set out in front of mixed use mid-rise buildings, it’s a small quantity and picked up almost immediately.
Throughout the handful of neighborhoods I traversed, I must have seen a dozen recycling centers resembling convenience stores where people can take their recyclable waste. So smart. (For comparison, Philadelphia has six recycling centers for the whole city — and you need to drive to a majority of them.)
These are only three points, but I could make many more that all seem to benefit from the same three themes that lead to a level of systemic functionality that I wish my dysfunctional hometown could embrace. Here are those three attributes in no particular order:
- Embrace progress. Philadelphia, along with what seems like the rest of the U.S., has an unhealthy relationship with progress. In one respect, we’re steeped in our myth of American exceptionalism, with a too-long-to-list number of U.S. innovations, from the steam engine to AI. But as Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson so aptly point out in their book Abundance, when it comes to developing our cities, we suffer from death by committee. Before we can do anything in our city from renovating a rec center to improving our transit system, Philly has what feels like hundreds of focus group meetings with hundreds of interest groups.
But in a city that was built for 2.5 million people and has only 1.6 million residents, not to mention 42,000 vacant lots and a regional housing shortage, we must create the housing and amenities that attract newcomers. Growing our population also means that conservatives in Philly (yes, they exist) must welcome more immigrants, and the left needs to be OK with wealthier people moving here.
My impressions of the Hong Kongers I met with was that they felt proud — and a part of — the progress of their city over the past few decades. They feel this progress has benefited them.
- Accelerate technology. Despite being the home of Comcast, one of the largest technology corporations in the U.S., and Penn, one of the largest research facilities in academia, our City systems are woefully antiquated.
According to State Scoop, the City has been working for 10 years to modernize our traffic lights so they’re more intelligently timed — and probably won’t finish the project for another 15 years. Our transit system just recently began allowing tap payments, and riders still don’t consistently know when trains, trolleys or are arriving. Too many residents and city facilities lack reliable Wifi. If Philly was a person, they would be a luddite. Sure, there’s a certain charm and romanticization of the past and forgoing automation for the analog (I grow my own food and still read print books, so I get it), but we can’t afford to not integrate technology every chance we get to make municipal systems run smoother, including incorporating AI.
In Hong Kong, both the young and the old use apps that integrate everything from their city services, social media, banking and transit. As a result, life there flows much easier.
- Expect outcomes. No matter your opinion about the future of the economy and relations with China, most Hong Kongese I spoke with seemed generally happy with the system where the majority of people are getting wealthier, the infrastructure is getting more sustainable and communities are staying safe. Sounds a lot like Mayor Parker’s “Cleaner, greener and safer city with economic opportunity for all.”
But if our Mayor wants everyone to keep sticking their fingers in the air and repeating “One Philly, a United City” upon command, then she should ensure the $800 million she’s requesting to build or rehab 30,000 homes doesn’t incur the same sluggish pace that Rebuild has suffered. Rather than touting that her Clean and Green Office is finally getting around to cleaning the alleyways as some monumental municipal achievement, how about we put in the policies that actually end illegal dumping and install the infrastructure to stop littering?
The people of Philadelphia should be able to expect that our streets aren’t dumped on, and live in thriving neighborhoods with accessible working amenities. What if we stopped accepting excuses about why it’s not happening? What if we stopped shrugging and demanded better?
Just as Philadelphia can no longer afford the scarcity thinking that stops us from dreaming big and achieving more, the U.S. can no longer delude its people by making countries like China out to be the boogeyman in order to diminish the advancements of places like Hong Kong. We should recognize progress is possible on a much larger scale than we see today, but that it can only come by taking an abundance mindset that leads us to expect that we can do more.
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