Smart City Development in Hong Kong: An Ethical Analysis

Abstract

Like many cities in advanced economies, Hong Kong has embraced the "smart city" agenda. In this article, we engage with a number of ethical issues surrounding smart city development. We assess the ethical implications of four different smart city initiatives in Hong Kong -the use of a facial recognition system, the Smart Lamppost Pilot Scheme, the Free-flow Tolling System, and Electronic Health Records System -from the perspective of relational egalitarianism. Our analysis suggests that there are various moral risks -that a particular smart city initiative may fall short of some relevant normative requirements -depending on the levels of their voluntariness and transparency. Finally, we consider a number of strategies for mitigating these moral risks and maintaining socially egalitarian relationships among citizens of a smart city.

State-society relations and government technology: a survey of public awareness and communication in Hong Kong

“…This literature was originally narrow in scope, with a focus on the application of Miller (1974). Levi and Stoker (2000), Gilley (2006), Blind (2007), Grimmelikhuijsen et al (2013), Netelenbos (2016) (Chatterjee et al, 2017;Khan et al, 2017;Braun et al, 2018;Anwar et al, 2020;Julsrud and Krogstad, 2020;Tyagi et al, 2020;Cole and Tran, 2022;Ip and Cheng, 2022;Spicer et al, 2023). Issues examined include security and privacy, ethical dimensions of surveillance, creation of public value through digitization of public services, and the ability of technology to facilitate productive state-society interactions in smart city governance.…”

“…These early studies provided a foundation for deeper scholarly examinations of public trust in the context of smart cities. This line of inquiry has since been carried forward in numerous studies, as shown in Table 1 (Chatterjee et al, 2017; Khan et al, 2017; Braun et al, 2018; Anwar et al, 2020; Julsrud and Krogstad, 2020; Tyagi et al, 2020; Cole and Tran, 2022; Ip and Cheng, 2022; Spicer et al, 2023). Issues examined include security and privacy, ethical dimensions of surveillance, creation of public value through digitization of public services, and the ability of technology to facilitate productive state-society interactions in smart city governance.…”