2014年，我曾經出版《以銀為本：7評香港的產業及⼈⼝政策》的⼩書，可說是⼩弟最具「經濟學」養分的著作之⼀。當年之所以「有膽量」挑戰經濟學的領域，原因無他，是因為我找到了我的「靠⼭」——Jane Jacobs。她對城市經濟的識⾒和視野，⾄今仍「贏出幾條街」，後⼈望塵莫及。
在以下的各個環節，我會⾸先重溫Jacobs的經典學說，特別是她那本《The Economy of Cities》（1969）為何⾄關重要。然後，我將⼤致按《以銀為本》的原有思路，闡述其學說對香港的啟示。最後，我會分析這對宏福苑災難、以⾄整體香港的困窘，能夠帶來什麼洞察。
城市作為知識傳播系統
《The Economy of Cities》是Jacobs本⼈最珍視的代表作，甚⾄較諸無⼈不曉的《美國⼤城市的死與⽣》（The Death and Life of Great American Cities，1960）為甚，但前者亦是最廣為⼈忽略的作品。中⽂版的《與珍雅各邊走邊聊城市經濟學：城市，是經濟發展的溫床》（2016），⾜⾜遲了近40年才在台灣出版。
第⼀次翻閱原版的《The Economy of Cities》，是在中⽂⼤學崇基學院的建築圖書館，距今有⼗多年，但亦已是該書出版逾40年之後的事。打開那本塵封已久的泛⿈舊書之際，紙張還發出了「割裂、割裂」的聲響。那就好比⼀次挖掘寶藏的旅程，⾄今歷歷在⽬。
作為⼀本薄薄的⼩書，《The Economy of Cities》為何⾄關重要？這倒並不是我在⾃說⾃話， 1995年諾⾙爾經濟學獎得主Robert Lucas、這位2023年逝世前堪稱「芝加哥學派」最具代表性的⼈物，在他1988年⼀篇關於⼈⼒資本、廣為傳誦的重要論⽂〈Mechanics of Economic Development〉中，卻罕有地挪⽤了Jacobs的想法，強調⼈⼒資本的集體累積，以及知識轉移的「動態界外效應」，對城市發展舉⾜輕重的作⽤。
Lucas在論⽂中直⾔，他的理論深受Jacobs的啟發，遂得以解開了困擾經濟學家的創新增長源頭之謎，「New Growth Theory」、「dynamic externality」甚或「Jacobs externality」等述語便不逕⽽走。
但亦正如我在《以銀為本》中⼤加鞭撻的，Lucas對Jacobs的理解，卻極盡斷章取義甚⾄是蓄意歪曲，硬搬亂套在他的新古典主義和微觀經濟學論述中，⽽忽略了Jacobs所真正重視的產業結構演化的過程。Lucas強調⼈⼒資本的投資，如教育及技術⽔平的提升，除有助提⾼個⼈的⽣產⼒和收入外，亦啟動了⼈與⼈之間相互學習和模仿。這些無疑都是經濟發展的重要因素，但卻對Jacobs焦點所在的市場動態適應和調整（真正的 mechanics！），竟完全不置⼀詞。
問題亦是簡單明⽩不過：主流經濟學家不願觸碰敏感的市場及產業結構問題，便把所有事情都說成是教育和⼈才的問題，包保沒有錯！
香港⼈之所以有機會廣泛接觸Jacobs，⾃然亦要拜Lucas知名⾨⽣、長期擔任香港⼤學⾸席副校長的王于漸所賜。尤其要數同樣在2013年出版的《Diversity and Occasional Anarchy: On Deep Economic and Social Contradictions in Hong Kong》，便不無弔詭地提出了「偶爾無序」的觀念，強調「⼀些城市之所以偉⼤，正因為多元，甚⾄看似無序」，由此帶來強⼤的動態界外效應，正是經濟蓬勃發展的秘訣。
平情⽽論，王于漸⼤概沒有看過 Jacobs的原著，只是機械地複述了Lucas對Jacobs的詮釋。正如在Jacobs百年歸老之後，Desrochers and Hospers（2007）所作的回顧中指出，Lucas由於無法解答為何⾼增值⾏業，總是要滙聚在如紐約這些成本最⾼的地⽅，於是借⽤ Jacobs的理論來打圓場。「但必須指出的是，Lucas基本上並無觸及原著的內容，⼜或Jacobs任何關於資訊傳遞過程的具體描述。對於那些並不熟悉Jacobs的讀者，還會誤以為她在談論城市，正如何變成⼀所巨型的免費⼤學！」
反饋和調整的系統性失效
然則，Jacobs本⼈在原著中，⼜是怎樣看待城市作為⼀個巨⼤的資訊系統，對市場的動態演變會產⽣什麼作⽤？正如我在《以銀為本》⼀書中早已指出，城市乃完全基於對資訊的反饋和適應，藉⽽令經濟不斷維持有效運作（或反過來說步向失效）。簡⽽⾔之，必須通過產業結構的不斷適應和調整，⼀個城市才能維持源源不絕的經濟活⼒；⽽能否形成如此⼀種持續的良性循環，關鍵因素便落在這城市能否取得真確的資訊反饋。
也就是說，對⼀個城市經濟⾄為重要的是：能適時淘汰那些不合適和⽋競爭⼒的業務，並同時識別適切本地情況和具發展潛⼒的產業。只要從Jacobs 的分析框架出發，我們便可異常清晰地發現，香港經濟的資訊反饋和結構調整機制，正長期⾯對著系統性失效的困境：
⼀、北南貿易（advanced-backward trade）：⼀味和較為落後的地區做⽣意，最容易收到「錯誤的資訊」。
Jacobs指出，城市要進步，最好和⽔平接近或更先進的城市互相學習——就好比學⽣和成績好的同學合作做專題，會更有挑戰性，思考也更深入。但如果⼀個比較發達的城市，總是跟較為落後的地區做⽣意，便遲早會出現另⼀種情況：對⽅要求的產品很便宜、很普通，競爭壓⼒很低；城市以為「這樣已經⾜夠」，不需要增值升級。結果是城市只會⼀直⽣產低質素、低創意的產品，甚⾄把⾃⼰的標準越拉越低，變成所謂的 「向最低標準競逐」（race to the bottom），令產業提升的訊息反饋功能無法實現。
關於中港融合成為香港經濟主調之後，如何錯失向⾼質素、⾼創意產業升級改造的機會，造成香港經濟失去長遠競爭⼒，可參閱已故浸會⼤學經濟學系教授曾澍基在2007年發表的相關研究。
⼆、政策集中造成的錯置（biases of policy centralisation）：國家政策偏向少數政治中⼼城市，令其他城市失去⾃主發展的空間。
在她另⼀本重要著作《Cities and the Wealth of Nations》（1984）中，Jacobs指出國家的經濟政策往往不是以城市為單位，⽽是以「國家戰略」作為假想對象。然⽽同⼀國家、不同城市發展階 段、產業結構和需求完全不同，政策集中因此經常造成錯置。
最典型的是單⼀貨幣與統⼀稅制。⼀種強勢貨幣可能有利於⾦融型城市，但對仍需出⼝升級的⼯業城市造成壓⼒。國家稅制亦往往偏向已成功的⼤城市，令更多資源與⼈才集中在少數「政策偏好城市」，其他城市則被迫模仿，失去⾃主發展的空間。
當政策偏向少數城市時，經濟表⾯的繁榮，往往掩蓋了其他城市的結構性衰退；更嚴重的是，就連這些少數城市也無法取得真實反饋，因為它們同樣必須配合國家政策，適應⼀套「不屬於⾃⼰」的政策環境。
三、負向的反饋循環（negative feedback dynamics）：當政策造成的錯置累積，城市便會進入 Jacobs所說的，每況越下的反饋循環。
第⼀步通常是虛假的繁榮。地價上升、⾦融活動活躍、⼤型建設項⽬頻仍，使城市看似發展良好。然⽽這些經濟活動並沒有真正提升城市的⽣產⼒和多樣性，反⽽掩蓋了⼯業、創新、科技等核⼼⽣產部⾨的萎縮。
第⼆步則是反饋的弱化。當少數強勢⾏業（如⾦融、地產、旅遊）佔據城市主體時，政府與市場的資訊來源變得過度集中。城市無法清楚聽⾒其他產業的需求，也無法察覺⾃⾝的結構性衰退。結果是：
- 應被淘汰的產業被延命，不應被淘汰的反⽽被淘汰
- 需要⽀持的產業得不到空間，多樣性下降，經濟越來越單⼀
- 適應調整速度逐漸變慢，甚⾄出現帶來負⾯影響的調整
在這個關鍵性的階段，城市會陷入「反饋弱 → 適應調整慢 → 反饋更弱 → 適應調整更慢」的惡性循環。Jacobs直⾔：⼀旦城市失去創造新⼯作的能⼒，就極少能夠⾃我恢復。
四、經濟再⽣能⼒的枯竭（cease to generate new economic life）：Jacobs最深刻的洞⾒在於：城市真正的經濟⼒量，來⾃它⾃⾝的學習及再⽣能⼒，⽽非經濟的規模或財富的⼒量。必須注意：這裡指的並非⼈才或個⼈的學習能⼒。
城市之所以能持續不斷適應和調整，是因為它擁有⾼密度互動的產業、多元化的職業與技能、隨機的邂逅與跨界別合作等，構成讓多元觀念能被快速測試的空間。對此Jacobs稱之為「技能鏈接」（concatenation of skills）：多元化的產業環境並非憑空出現，⽽是不同技能相互碰撞的結果。
然⽽，當城市的產業越來越單⼀、政策越來越集中、壟斷越來越強勢時，其學習能⼒便會變得枯 竭：跨界別的合作減少、多元創意無法⽣根、技能無法再被重新組合，長此下去，城市遂變成「只會做⼀件事」的⽣態系統。對Jacobs⽽⾔，科技園區、⼤學園區和⼈才樞紐固然重要，但若缺乏整個城市的⽀持性⽣態，它們便無法促進城市本⾝的學習機制。當城市變得封閉、僵化和單⼀化，它便失去原有的適應和調整動⼒。
五、⾏業集中（specialised economies）：城市越多樣化，它對外界變化的感受也越敏銳，⾯對外來衝擊亦能快速適應、及時調整。
Jacobs認為，城市經濟和⾃然⽣態系統具有很多相同之處，當⼀個城市能提供更多空間，容許各⾏各業百花齊放，則與⽣物多樣化的⾃然⽣態⼀樣，整個系統亦更彈性、靈活性和具可持續性，更簽抵禦外部環境的波動變遷。這主要有賴於更多「內在平衡資訊反饋」（homeostatic feedback loops）的建立，令系統更能洞悉外部的細微變化，並產⽣混雜繁複的連鎖反應，能因應新的形勢及時作出修正。
相反假如城市經濟的⾏業集中，則會像侏羅紀時代恐⿓的遺傳基因⼀般，適應和調整的能⼒隨之⼤⼤削弱。⽽當此等⾏業⼀旦受到致命性的打擊，則整個城市都可能像「⾻牌效應」般倒下。
六、集團壟斷（monopolies）：壟斷企業最⼤問題不是「賺太多」，⽽是「妨礙適應」。
對Jacobs來說，集團壟斷對城市經濟的最⼤損害，並不在於價格操控和暴利，⽽在於它作為既得利益者，必然會刻意⼲擾資訊反饋，阻礙適切產品和服務的出現，以及拒絕淘汰不合適和⽋缺競爭⼒的產品。
「在歷史上，停滯不前的城市很少能夠復元。它們⾄今亦很少如此；但那只是因為城市經濟極少能作出修正，無論是通過⾃動的資訊反饋作⽤，抑或取得恰如其分的扶助…恰如其分的精粹乃在於開放流動，讓能⽣存的得以⽣存，應被淘汰的便快點海汰，也就是不能預先度⾝訂造、尤其是從別處挪⽤過來、以為能夠維救城市經濟的成功⽅程式。」
簡單來說：城市不能靠僵化的規劃或模仿別⼈的模式⽣存，⽽是要讓真實的反饋⾃由流動，讓市場⾃然找到⽅向。
七、「富⼈的尷尬」（embarrassment of riches）：這是Jacobs最為獨特的⾒解，指城市達到⼀定的發展⽔平後，已經累積了⼤量財富，卻無法找到（更確切應是刻意排斥）適切的投資機會。
在這種情況下，累積的財富唯有⽤於⼤量炫耀性和形式化的事情上，包括進⼝⼀些昂貴但沒⽤的產品，推動⼀些沒有社會效益的基建項⽬，⼜或利⽤⼤筆公帑投入救濟⼯作……但就是不願把資⾦投放在具實效的產業——尤其是那些低層社會成員主催的新業務之上。最終城市則進入停滯不前的狀態，那亦是this city is dying的時候！
毫無疑問，特區政府也經常把創新和創意掛在⼝邊，但那底是屬於誰的新興產業呢？是能夠讓普羅市⺠參與分享，抑或只是少數權貴壟斷的玩意呢？當官員誇誇其談⼈⼯智能發展⼤棋盤，有多少能和本地實際需要相結合？數以百公頃計的新⽥科技園區，內裡到底⼜盛載着些什麼實質產業，和我們的城市⽣活⼜有多少關聯呢？
（以上這幾段論證，在逾⼗年前《以銀為本》⼀書中早已出現，絕非現在才編造出來。）
從宏福苑到香港悲劇的根源
假如你讀到這個章節，仍然不願放棄的話，⼼中⼤概已經產⽣⼀個疑問：上述這些造成城市衰敗的因⼦，對香港⼈來說已是老⽣常談，再拿Jacobs出來討論⼜有什麼意義？
我想答案可以分為三⼤⽅⾯。其⼀，是只有對症、才有機會下藥。⼤家當然都⼼知肚明，香港的⾏業過於集中、集團壟斷嚴重，還存在種種官商勾結、利益輸送的問題，早已構成窒礙香港蛻變進步的主要絆腳⽯。但Jacobs更加明⽩無誤地告訴我們，城市主要依靠的是學習及再⽣能⼒，既得利益者之所以⼗惡不赦，正是由於刻意⼲擾資訊反饋，令城市無法看清未來發展的⽅向。
宏福苑災難之所以具指標性作⽤，除了由於悲劇性的傷亡狀況外，更在於它提供了⼀個極盡誇張的案例，突顯了從地產霸權、⼯程專業、維修⾏業、建制黨派、功能組別以⾄政府⾼層，構成謊話連篇的「欺詐鏈條」（concatenation of deception），竟能完全妄顧事實、甚⾄指鹿為⾺，置所有香港⼈雪亮的眼睛不顧，接連不斷地編造各種荒誕無稽的理由。⾒微知著，它反映了香港經濟作為⼀個資訊系統，反饋和適應過程是如何全⾯崩壞，此亦正是香港衰亡的最關鍵原因。
相信Jacobs在泉下有知亦會⼤呼，想不到她當年提出「富⼈的尷尬」，竟能醜陋狼狽不堪⾄如此⼀種境界！
其⼆，是頑疾的根源除了官商，尚有學界。⼤概⾃⼆⼗年前起，香港便⼤步踏進中港融合的懷抱，然後是⼤灣區、⼀帶⼀路、國際創新科技中⼼……沒完沒了的國家戰略、經濟規劃、全國⼀盤棋。問題是繼前述曾澍基教授2007年的研究之後，整個香港的經濟學界，除了顏無耻地為權貴搖旗吶喊以外，⼜有誰願意站出來說句公道話，有誰稍能充當⼀下社會的良知？
同樣如前所述，根據那些「芝加哥學派」的診斷，焦點⾃然應該放在⼈才和技術輸入，放是香港當然應該⼤⼒「搶⼈才」，全⾯開放香港⼤學學額、推動⾼端⼈才通⾏證計劃、促進⼤灣區⼈才流 動……諸如此類，並宣稱這便帶來Jacobs描述的動態界外效應，普遍教育及技術⽔平⾃會提升，香港產業⾃然便會升級改造……
早在三年前特區政府剛換屆之後，我已在《信報》專欄⽂章中⼤⼒質疑，問題並非香港到底能搶到多少⼈才，⽽是政府帶頭妄⾃菲薄，⼤⼒貶低本⼟培育⼈才的價值——假如你是個真正的⼈才，還有必要留在香港升學嗎？出去繞個圈回來充當「海歸」，不就可以⼀登⿓⾨、⾝價⼗倍嗎？抑或索性選擇離開香港，找⼀個知道⾃⼰在做什麼的政府，和更加珍惜⼈才的地⽅呢？當然，那也已是我在《信報》長達⼗年的專欄、最後⼀篇⽂章了。你懂的。
國之將亡，必有妖孽。這句話放諸香港的經濟學界，⼀點也不過時。
其三，毋庸多⾔，對症，也不⼀定能下藥。既是如此，知道問題所在⼜有何⽤？
不禁想到魯迅的名句：「絕望之為虛妄，正與希望相同。」Jane Jacobs個⼈的故事，正好成為這句話的最佳註腳。她作為紐約蘇豪區的⼀名普通居⺠、家庭主婦、三個幼童的⺟親，竟能憑⼀⼰之⼒對抗整個紐約市的官僚機器，成功推翻移平蘇豪區、建設⾼速公路的官⽅規劃，成為六⼗多年來全球保育運動的先驅，甚⾄可說是隻⼿改變了紐約市的歷史。
Jane Jacobs本⾝就是⼀個奇蹟。因此我們仍然可以相信，這個世界會有奇蹟。
延伸閱讀：《經濟學？講呢啲！告別學者堅離地，回到經濟學經濟》。嶺南⼤學⽂化研究及發展中⼼。2022。
Wang Fuk Court Disaster: The Information System Failure of a City Economy
In 2014, I published a small book titled “Money Centric: Seven Critiques of Hong Kong’s Industrial and Population Policies”, arguably the work of mine with the strongest “economic” flavour. The only reason I had that “courage” to challenge the economics profession, back then, was I had found a powerful intellectual anchor—Jane Jacobs. Her insight and vision of urban economies remain “miles ahead,” unmatched even today.
In the following sections, I will first revisit Jacobs’ classic ideas, especially why “The Economy of Cities” (1969) is such an essential text. I will then broadly follow the original logic of “Money Centric” in explaining what Jacobs’ framework reveals about Hong Kong. Finally, I will discuss what insight this gives us on the Wang Fuk Court disaster—and the deeper predicament facing Hong Kong as a whole.
Cities as Knowledge-Propagation Systems
“The Economy of Cities” was Jacobs’ most cherished work—she valued it even more than the world-famous “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1960). Yet it is also the most overlooked. The Chinese edition did not appear until 2016 in Taiwan—almost forty years after the book was first published.
The first time I read the original English edition was over a decade ago at the Architecture Library at Chung Chi College, CUHK—already more than 40 years after the book’s publication. When I opened that long-neglected, yellowing volume, its brittle pages made crackling sounds as though being torn apart. It felt like embarking on archaeological dig for an intellectual treasure—an experience still vivid today.
Why is this slim book so important? This is not merely my personal opinion. Robert Lucas, the 1995 Nobel laureate and the most representative figure of the “Chicago School” before his passing in 2023, drew heavily from Jacobs in his influential 1988 paper “Mechanics of Economic Development”. In that paper, Lucas emphasized the collective accumulation of human capital and the “dynamic externalities” of knowledge transfer—both crucial for urban development.
Lucas openly acknowledged that his theory was inspired by Jacobs. His work helped solve a long-standing puzzle about the origins of innovative growth, giving rise to terms like “New Growth Theory,” “dynamic externality,” or even “Jacobs externality.”
Yet, as I argued forcefully in “Money Centric”, Lucas fundamentally misread—and even distorted—Jacobs. He forcibly grafted her ideas onto neoclassical microeconomics, focusing on human capital investment, education, skill upgrading, and peer learning. These are undoubtedly important for economic development, but he almost entirely ignored Jacobs’ true concern: the evolutionary dynamics of industrial structure, the actual “mechanics” of market adaptation and adjustment.
The reason is obvious: mainstream economists prefer to avoid sensitive issues such as market structure, power concentration, and industrial evolution. It is far safer to claim everything is simply a matter of “education” and “talent”—an explanation that is never wrong.
Hongkongers became widely aware of Jacobs largely thanks to Lucas’ famous student, Andrew Wong Yue-chim, who had long served as HKU’s Vice-Chancellor and championed
Lucas’ ideas. In his 2013 book “Diversity and Occasional Anarchy: On Deep Economic and Social Contradictions in Hong Kong”, he put forward the notion of “occasional anarchy,” arguing that “some cities are great precisely because of their diversity and occasional disorder,” which creates strong dynamic externalities and fuels economic vitality.
To be fair, Wong very likely never read Jacobs’ original texts. His interpretation was essentially a mechanical repetition of Lucas’. As Desrochers and Hospers (2007) noted in their review after Jacobs’ passing, Lucas was unable to explain why high value-added industries cluster in expensive cities like New York, so he borrowed Jacobs to patch up the theory. But, they added, “Lucas barely engaged with Jacobs’ actual writings or her detailed descriptions of information flows. Readers unfamiliar with Jacobs may even mistakenly believe she was describing cities as if they were massive free universities!”
Systemic Failure of Feedback and Adjustment
So how did Jacobs herself actually said about the city as a massive information system, and what role does this play in the dynamic evolution of markets? As I argued long ago in “Money Cnetric”, cities rely entirely on feedback and adaptation to maintain economic functionality—or, conversely, to drift into dysfunction. Put simply, a city must continually adjust and renew its industrial structure in order to stay economically vibrant. Whether this positive cycle can persist depends on whether the city can obtain accurate feedback.
In other words, what matters most is the ability to:
- eliminate uncompetitive or unsuitable industries in a timely way; and
- identify new industries appropriate to local conditions and development potential.
Through Jacobs’ analytical lens, we can see with remarkable clarity that Hong Kong’s information feedback and structural adjustment mechanisms have long suffered from systemic failure:
- Advanced-backward trade: receiving “false signals”
Jacobs observed that cities improve most when they interact with peers or more advanced cities—like students improving by working with stronger classmates. But if a developed city trades mainly with less developed regions, it will soon receive distorted signals: low-quality standards, weak competition, and a false impression that “this is good enough.”
The result is “a race to the bottom”, with no impetus for upgrading or innovation. After Hong Kong’s economic integration with mainland China became the dominant policy direction, it missed crucial opportunities to move into higher-quality, higher-creativity industries—exactly as the late Professor Tsang Shu-ki warned in his 2007 study.
- Policy-centralisation biases: national policies misaligned with city needs
In “Cities and the Wealth of Nations” (1984), Jacobs argued that central economic policies are framed around “national strategy,” not the actual conditions of individual cities. But cities within the same country differ enormously in development stages, industrial structures, and needs. Centralised policies therefore often produce misfits.
A strong national currency may suit a financial city but suffocates an industrial exporting city. Unified tax systems also tend to favour already successful cities, concentrating resources and talent in a few “policy-favoured cities,” while forcing others to imitate without room for autonomous development.
Even those favoured cities fail to obtain true feedback, because they must still conform to national policy frameworks—systems not designed for their real needs.
- Negative feedback dynamics: the downward spiral
When policy misalignment accumulates, cities fall into what Jacobs described as a self-reinforcing negative cycle.
Stage 1: false prosperity-rising land prices, booming finance, and flashy construction projects create the illusion of progress, masking the decline of manufacturing, innovation, and technological capacity.
Stage 2: weakening feedback-dominant sectors (finance, property, tourism) monopolise attention. The city becomes deaf to the needs of other industries and blind to structural decay:
- Industries that should die are kept alive
- Industries that should grow are starved
- Diversity collapses
- Adjustment slows to a crawl, or even turns harmful
Jacobs warned: once a city loses the ability to generate new work, it almost never recovers.
- Cease to generate new economic life: losing the ability to learn
Jacobs’ deepest insight is: a city’s true economic strength lies not in its size or wealth, but in its capacity for collective learning and renewal—not individual talent, but the ecology of skills interacting.
Cities thrive because they generate dense interactions, diverse skills, chance encounters, and cross-sector collaborations—a space where new combinations can be rapidly tested. Jacobs called this the “concatenation of skills.”
But when a city becomes overly specialised, policy-centralised, and industries being monopolised, these recombinations collapse. Creativity cannot take root, skills can no longer recombine, and the city becomes a one-trick ecosystem. Science parks and talent hubs cannot substitute for a citywide learning ecology. A closed, rigid, homogenous city loses the capacity to adapt.
- Specialised economies: the fragility of monocultures
Jacobs likened urban diversity to biodiversity. Cities with many industries are flexible and resilient, able to detect subtle external changes and adjust quickly. Diverse feedback loops create internal stability.
But specialised economies resemble dinosaurs—large, powerful, but evolutionarily fragile. A single shock can bring down the entire system, producing a “domino effect.”
- Monopolies: the worst damage is blocking adaptation
Jacobs argued that the greatest harm of monopolies is not excessive profit, but the deliberate distortion of information feedback—blocking appropriate products and services and preventing obsolete ones from being eliminated.
She wrote: “Stagnant cities rarely recover… because their economies seldom manage to correct themselves, whether through automatic feedback or appropriate support. The essence is openness and flow—letting what can survive survive, letting what must die die… and not relying on formulae imported from elsewhere.”
In short, cities cannot survive by rigid planning or copying others, but by letting genuine feedback flow freely.
- The “embarrassment of riches”: wealth without renewal
One of Jacobs’ most unique insights is the idea of an “embarrassment of riches”: a city that has accumulated huge wealth but cannot—or refuses to—find effective investment outlets.
The result is spending on prestige projects, useless imports, symbolic infrastructure, and even large-scale welfare relief—anything but the practical, grounded industries driven by ordinary citizens. This leads to stagnation—the moment when “this city is dying.”
Hong Kong officials frequently extol innovation and creativity—but whose innovation? Whose creativity? Do these new industries allow ordinary citizens to participate, or are they reserved for the monopolistic elite? When officials boast about AI master plans, how much aligns with genuine local needs? What substantive industries inhabit hundreds of hectares of the Northern Metropolis “innovation zone”? And what does any of these have to do with the daily lives of Hongkongers?
(All these arguments appeared in “Money Centric” more than a decade ago. None of this is newly fabricated.)
From Wang Fuk Court to the Roots of Hong Kong’s Tragedy
If you have read this far, you may already be wondering: these factors behind urban decline are familiar to every Hongkonger—so what is the point of bringing Jacobs back into the conversation? My answer consists of three parts:
- Only by diagnosing accurately can one even hope to treat the illness
Everyone knows Hong Kong’s industries are overly concentrated, monopolies entrenched, and plagued by collusion and rent-seeking. But Jacobs tells us something deeper: cities depend on learning and regeneration, and vested interests are harmful precisely because they deliberately block feedback, preventing the city from seeing its future development paths.
The Wang Fuk Court disaster is symbolic not only for its tragic casualties, but for revealing that astonishingly grotesque chain of deception—from developers, engineers and contractors to pro-establishment parties and functional consistencies to top government officials—everyone ignored the evident facts and fabricated absurd excuses. This “concatenation of deception” exposes, in microcosm, the collapse of Hong Kong’s information-feedback system. This is the most fundamental reason for Hong Kong’s prolonged decline.
Jacobs, if she knew, would likely exclaim in disbelief at how her idea of an “embarrassment of riches” could manifest in such an ugly and farcical form.
- The root of the illness lies not only in officials and business elites, but also in academia
For twenty years Hong Kong has marched head-first into Mainland integration—Greater Bay Area, Belt and Road, Innovation and Technology Hub, and endless “national strategies.” Yet since Tsang Shu-ki’s 2007 study, the entire economics profession in Hong Kong has remained largely silent, except when cheerleading for the powerful. Who among them stands as a moral conscience?
Following Chicago-School logic, their diagnosis is predictable: talent input, skill upgrading, “talent admission schemes,” “Top Talent Pass,” GBA talent flows—supposedly producing the dynamic externalities Lucas and Wong had claimed.
Three years ago, right after the new government took office, I argued in my Hong Kong Economic Journal column that the real issue is not whether Hong Kong can “attract talent,” but that the government actively devalues locally cultivated talent. If you are truly talented, why would you stay to study in Hong Kong? Why not leave, return as a “sea turtle,” and instantly multiply your market value? Or simply never come back at all? Naturally, that became my final column after a decade of writing for HKEJ. And you understand why.
As the old saying goes: “When a nation is about to fall, monsters and demons appear.” Few expressions describe Hong Kong’s economics profession more accurately.
- Knowing the diagnosis doesn’t guarantee a cure—but knowledge is still necessary
If treatment is uncertain, what is the point of diagnosing the disease?
Here, Lu Xun’s words come to mind: “Despair is as groundless as hope.” Jane Jacobs’ own story had forcefully exemplified this. As an ordinary SoHo resident, a housewife with three young children, she single-handedly defeated the entire New York planning apparatus and stopped the highway scheme that would have destroyed SoHo—setting a global precedent for conservation movements over the next six decades, and literally altering the historical trajectory of New York City.
Jane Jacobs herself was a miracle. And because of that, we might still believe: miracles are possible.
Recommended reading: “Economics? I Can Do! Farewell to Ivory Tower Economists and Return to Real-World Economies”, Centre for Cultural Studies and Development, Lingnan University (2022).
