by Lakshmi Jacota
Living in a city surrounded by water, where does the future lie, especially for young people?
Hong Kong is a city born of the sea, with over 250 islands, of which only 23 are currently inhabited. Before the skyline, street markets and mass transit system, there were fishing boats, sampans, junks, ferries, frigates and naval vessels. The first settlers here didn’t look inward to the mountains; they looked outwards over the water. The sea was their livelihood, their protection, and their way of seeing the world.
Walk along the narrow lanes of Sai Kung, the waterfront at Aberdeen, or the pedestrianised streets of Cheung Chau island, and you can still feel traces of the old maritime cultures. The fisherfolk who once lived on boats and the floating communities saw the sea dictate the rhythm of their lives, through the festivals they celebrated, the gods they worshipped, and even the food that defined their identity. This living heritage is a memory map of how Hong Kong learned to adapt in resilience and cooperation.
Today, it’s easy to forget that the street where we stand was once the ocean. The harbour that shaped Hong Kong also gave it its name, hoeng1gong2 (香港), meaning “fragrant harbour”. But as we’ve crowded the waterfront with towers, container terminals and malls, our daily relationship with the coast has changed. It’s become a view, a luxury asset rather than a shared, lived space.
This is a shift that matters. Because if we forget that Hong Kong is a coastal city, we also forget how future stories can be written.
Officially, Hong Kong still talks about itself as a leading logistics and tourist hub, with the nine major container terminals moving goods across the world, and the cruise terminals at Kai Tak and Ocean Centre bringing visitors into the city. These are not outdated industries, as they support the wider economy. However, if we only see the harbour through the lens of cargo and cruise ships, maybe we are thinking too small.
What would it mean for young people to look at these same spaces and see something more? Could there be low-carbon ports, or ships guided by local tech? Could cruise tourism give back more than it takes? Could waterfront jobs care more about the environment than profit? Could our waterfronts be places of learning, not just leisure? And most of all: could young people see themselves not just as users of the harbour, but as its future caretakers, builders and critics?
“If we only see the harbour through the lens of cargo and cruise ships, maybe we are thinking too small.”
In recent years, the government has promised to open up more of the harbourfront, blending promenades, and creating more public waterfronts and harbourside public spaces, whether from Chai Wan to Kennedy Town or in West Kowloon. The language is familiar. The real test is whether these places become more than just Instagram backdrops at a safe, decorative distance.
Are they designed in ways that invite young people to do more than walk and shop? Perhaps we could be imaginative and innovative by turning the city’s extensive shorelines into open classrooms, or by canoeing through wetlands to learn about biodiversity, or by mapping sea temperatures as citizen scientists, or by holding art and music exhibitions on the piers. These opportunities could provide us with a new relationship with coastal life and contemporary meaning.
“Every city chooses which parts of itself to remember.”
Right now, many young Hongkongers meet the coastline through activities like beach clean-ups, school trips to wetlands or coral surveys, and weekend paddling sessions. These activities are often framed as something extra to their lives, as a project, a club, a hobby. But what if we treated them as the start of something much bigger and more intrinsic to their lives?
Picking up plastic might be the beginning of a career in environmental law or circular design. A school snorkelling trip might grow into work in marine science, coastal engineering or climate communication. A part-time job at the cruise terminal might lead someone to ask hard questions about emissions, waste and better ways of welcoming visitors. These are the areas to which we could direct young people’s attention. Teaching them that the coast is a living laboratory and has the potential for new kinds of work and new kinds of responsibility.
Hong Kong’s future economic development doesn’t always have to mean offices, especially if there is an entire blue edge to this city waiting to be reimagined.
To many, the sea also means escape from study stress, work fatigue or the density of city life. Whether swimming, rowing, diving or fishing, dragon boating, windsurfing, yachting, or even stepping onto a ferry deck, there is an enjoyment of space that Hong Kong often hides, while, more importantly, reconnecting, even subconsciously, with the city’s history as a coastal city.
Most of us don’t think of that feeling as “heritage”. But it is, and young people growing up can inherit that story, whether they claim it or not.
Every city chooses which parts of itself to remember. Right now, Hong Kong talks loudly about finance, shopping, food and skylines. The sea is usually the background to the picture, not the subject. If young people can see the coast, not as the end of the city but its beginning, then perhaps Hong Kong can rediscover what made it exceptional in the first place: the courage to face the open sea and see opportunity in uncertainty.
For this generation, the choice is clear: treat the sea as mere scenery, or make it part of the foreground. The tide will not wait. ■