Tag: Hong Kong

Some good stuff from 2018

In many ways it’s been a horrible year. The slow car crash of British politics, the gradual uncovering of how badly the tech sector has misjudged ethics and privacy concerns, the growing evidence that climate change is worse than we thought and the ongoing disaster in the White House have made for a year of depressing news. I hope all those things get better in 2019, but as it’s New Year’s Eve I thought I’d go through a few personal good things from 2018.

Food and drink

My favourite meal was in a small neighbourhood noodle and dumpling place in Hong Kong. I’d had a cold that I couldn’t shake off for a couple of weeks and their soupier version of dan dan noodles cured me.

Books

I read 30 books this year, not quite a book a week yet but not too bad. They ranged from the future of food to the history of grime music, taking in scandal in Silicon Valley and ultra running along the way. I think my favourite five were:

If I had to choose one, I’d say Nervous States. It’s bleak about the causes of Brexit and Trump but it’s the most sophisticated analysis I’ve read — and the fact that we’re starting to understand what’s happened a little better gives me hope that we can eventually sort things out.

Films

I don’t feel like I’ve watched anywhere near as many films this year. One that sticks in the mind though is my friend Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers — an amazing story, brilliantly told. The other isn’t really a film — it’s a Netflix recording of a comedy show… sort of. Nanette defies all categorisation but is fantastic.

Travel

I’ve been to Italy, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Portugal the USA, China, Hong Kong and Singapore in 2018. I feel incredibly lucky to get to travel with work and agree with Michael Skapinker’s piece about business travel — it’s a privilege not a chore. The stand out experiences weren’t business though, they were backpacking around China by train and particularly visiting Chengdu and Xi’an — incredible food and the Terracotta Warriors are staggering.

Gadgets

My favourite gadget of the year has been my Garmin Forerunner 235 watch. It’s genuinely got me doing more exercise and paired up with Strava and Run an Empire, makes running a lot more fun.

What if we all lived at the same urban density as Hong Kong?

Hong Kong (source: Wikicommons)

There’s an interesting little stat in the FT today. If the whole world population lived at the same density as Hong Kong we’d all fit into an area the size of Egypt.

Now of course that might bring it’s own problems but if you look at the trends, it might not be crazily unrealistic. The world’s urban population was 54% of the total in 2015 and the global rate of urbanisation is currently estimated at 2.05% per year (says the CIA). If that continues, the percentage land area occupied by humans looks set to decrease considerably over the next 30 years. We could see total depopulation of many rural areas in our lifetimes.

We’ve got a lot of work to do to create the tools that will help us live sustainably in cities. Whether it’s aquaponics, lab meat or vertical farming it looks to me like we’ll need to become less dependent on rural food production. We’ll also need new solutions to housing, transport and democracy that are able to cope with higher levels of density.

When I think about it, it’s one of those mega-trends that creeps up on you over decades but is driving so much of the way that things are changing.