Hong Kong with its skyscrapers has not the best reputation in the matter of air quality. Many people say that Hong Kong’s air is polluted and one of the worst in the world. Well, according to plain numbers that’s actually true.
Back in 2010 I read a survey by the World Bank which stated that Hong Kong ranks #7 in the world by bad air quality / air pollution. In fact, 9 out of the top 10 and 16 out of the top 20 cities are from China (including Hong Kong). Not surprising, but still terrifying. Fact is, Hong Kong does not have any heavy industry that pollutes the air anymore. In the past 30 years pretty much all manufacturing industries moved across the border to China. While they remain Hong Kong-owned, lower wages and less environmental regulation were the main factors for their relocation.
According to the Hong Kong Observatory (which monitors Hong Kong’s air and publishes the Air Pollution Index for multiple districts on an hourly basis) most air pollution in Hong Kong is caused by normal car traffic. Though, over a decade Hong Kong’s more than 200,000 taxis and several thousand buses are running on liquefied petroleum gas LPG there are still many Porsche, Mercedes and Ferrari cars driving around.
Besides car traffic Hong Kong’s air quality very much depends on the wind. Just across the border in China lies a region inhabiting 42 million people (half the size of Germany; 90% of all mobile phone accessories; most notebooks and yes, your iPhones are built there) which is soon gonna be one city. In an industrial sense, this is the most significant region in Middle Kingdom and one of the most polluted ones — only topped by the main coal mine areas (AFAIR 70% of China’s electricity is generated from coal). So if the wind adversely blows towards Hong Kong, we can have some sort of hazy air which kind of gets stuck in urban areas.
Back to the good days. Today was such a day: warm, but not too warm; no rain, reasonable humidity (right now 75%) and overall pretty cozy. (No, I didn’t invent that word :)) Without our terrace roof (had to be dismantled according to the Hong Kong Buildings Department — for a reason I still don’t understand) I could look up and see the sky: no clouds and lots of sunshine were candy for my eyes. Check it out yourself:
So that’s how a sunny day can look like when you are living at the first floor in downtown surrounded by Hong Kong’s 7,600 high-rises (#1 worldwide, #2 New York counts 5,800). Time to look for a place with a terrace roof, less high-rises next door or located at a higher floor 😎
