A System Dynamics Model For The Sustainable Land Use And Urban Development In Hong Kong

Hong Kong, to maintain and consolidate its position as an international financial center, a service center, a hub for information and logistics, a premier tourist destination, is facing formidable challenges of sustainable land use, in a synchronized eco-socio-economic environment. On a basis of brief review of various research methodologies implemented to investigate the issue of sustainable land use and a concise introduction of operation mechanism of system dynamics, this paper proposes a system dynamics model for the sustainable land use and urban development of Hong Kong, which consists of five sub-systems, respectively, population, economy, housings, transport and urban / developed land. After the simulation of the model and explanations / analysis to the results under two distinctively different development schemes, respectively, high urban population density and the contrary, two validations are undertaken to verify the model, separately, through comparison with historical data and sensitivity check. Consequently, some policy suggestions are proposed through the observations from the model, which is the ultimate goal of most system dynamics models. In the discussion, the time axis is spanned from 40 years to 300 years, ensuring a simulation period long enough to observe and study the"limits to growth"phenomenon and the potential for development of Hong Kong. The modeling results are directly useful to compare different dynamic consequences brought by various policies / decisions, and thus of great significance to achieve the goal of sustainable land use.