HONG KONG, May 30, 2014 — Asia Society Hong Kong Center presented a luncheon program — "Hong Kong, London, New York: How Resilient Cities Minimize Disruption, Recover, and Adapt" — that started with a short presentation by Robert Lane, Senior Fellow for Urban Design at the Regional Planning Association of America, followed by a panel discussion featuring Christine Loh, Under Secretary for the Environment with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Lane, and Thomas Tang, Director for Sustainability at AECOM Asia, representing the three metropolises. Sponsored by Siemens, the program attracted over 100 business leaders, professionals, and academics in the region across different sectors.

The vivid and inspiring discussion emphasized that infrastructure is the most important element of city resilience, which needs to be rebuilt by design with multidiscipline that enables various opinions and ideas to be expressed from all experts, at the same time, engaging different stakeholders in the community to reach a consensus. Being evidence-based is truly essential for these cities to be ahead of others in terms of resilience in maintaining social well-being and economic vitality. WIth regard to key factors of being resilient, technology and money do play an important role in the face of natural disasters. It is hoped that with more and diverse insights from different experts, their ideas can be well integrated into planning, investment and maintenance of infrastructure, thus creating a shared future.

Video: Watch the complete program (57 min., 23 sec.)

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