Reclaiming The City: How Youth Culture is Redefining Hong Kong
These days, a walk down any Hong Kong street will likely take you past shuttered shops and restaurants. Television ad breaks are filled with offers of instant cash loans, and malls and markets that used to be busy and bustling throughout the week are now lively only on the weekends.
But, how did we get here?
In 2019, widespread protests brought parts of the city to a standstill, and by the latter half of the year, the city was in recession. Instability meant a slowdown in sectors that have been core to Hong Kong’s economy, such as finance, property, and tourism. Just as things seemed to turn a corner, the world was met with Covid-19. Shops and restaurants that had only just reopened were once again forced to shut their doors, many of them remaining closed ever since.
Aside from these tangible, observable signals of economic downturn, the sentiment amongst young people especially is downbeat. Many are leaving the city for the likes of the Mainland, Western destinations like the UK and Canada, or elsewhere in the region like Taiwan and Singapore. Though Hong Kong retains its status as the world’s third most competitive global financial centre, the city’s youth are not benefitting from the effects of its prosperity. In the boom years of the 80s and 90s, Hong Kong was a place where young people could go to ‘make it’. Today, there’s a sense that young people are not sure what Hong Kong has to offer them anymore.
So how might Hong Kong get young people excited about their lives in the city? How might they convince them to stay? And how might other places learn from this?
Cultural placemaking tends to focus on traditional cultural verticals: music, film, literature, visual arts, performing arts, heritage, etc. and how related cultural events, activities and experiences can improve quality of life, especially when in keeping with the heritage and identity of the local area.
But as people, thinking about how we experience culture every day, it’s less a sector and more ‘the sea we swim in’. Culture is about shared meaning and how changing ideas and narratives exert influence on what we want, need, think, do. By taking this broader view of culture and applying it to youth culture in Hong Kong specifically, we can explore a range of spaces – from food and drink to fashion and media, health and wellbeing to retail and entertainment – to understand how young people themselves are interacting with and shaping the city. When we can understand how young people are fulfilling their own wants and needs through the city, we can identify the opportunities in which placemaking can help them form deeper connections to their environment and community.
What emerges are three cultural themes that show how young people in Hong Kong are fulfilling core human needs for connection, belonging and fun. As such, they provide inspiration for ways that placemakers might look to fulfil those needs for young people in Hong Kong, to reignite a sense of excitement and optimism for their lives in the city. At a broader level too, these platforms show us different and alternative visions for what Hong Kong can mean and ‘be about’.
As major cities across the world also struggle with uncertainty, economic downturn and dampened youth opportunity, these platforms may well have resonance beyond Hong Kong too.
Lowkey Connection
L-R: Critical Mass’ House Party; Gentle Pause; Coffee & Laundry
Dominantly, Hong Kong is a place of big events and big cultural moments. This is no accident, but part of a government strategy to promote “mega events”. The city’s Kai Tak Stadium, opened in early 2025, is a vast multi-purpose complex designed to draw world-class music, sports and more to Hong Kong, making the city a regional hub for event tourism. Open for barely three months so far, the stadium has already played host to the first North London derby outside of England between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. In other examples, the city is also host to regional editions of art fair Art Basel and global pop culture and streetwear festival ComplexCon.
Alongside this, a new trend is emerging in youth culture: Lowkey Connection. This marks a shift away from big ticket, high-energy events and hyped-up socialising, towards looser, more casual, unstructured ways to socialise. As inflation and a sluggish economy are pushing young people to forgo fun and entertainment, and lasting lifestyle changes post-Covid mean that people are happier to embrace low energy downtime, Lowkey Connection offers connection without the price tag and without rules or pressure, instead opening the door to spontaneous and unexpected moments of kinship. This is a refocusing on the foundations of social life: simply taking a moment to connect with other people.
Examples include:
Critical Mass’ House Party events are loosely defined ‘social spaces’. With open decks, mahjong, chess, free entry and permission to bring your own food and drink, these House Parties are emphatically ‘not a rave’. They simply ask that guests bring ‘friendly energy and vibes’.
Gentle Pause hosts pop-up cinema events centred on ‘slow living’ and ‘poetic romance’. They don’t reveal the film in advance, instead taking a lowkey approach to marketing and promising guests a ‘timeless getaway’ and ‘opportunity to create lasting memories’ with loved ones.
Coffee & Laundry is a 24/7 self-serve laundrette and coffee bar in one, a space for casual, down tempo hangouts. They hold surprise DJ sets in the day, creating the feel of a spontaneous neighbourhood block party for passers-by.
Drawing inspiration from Lowkey Connection, cultural placemakers might consider:
More relaxed music venues with trusted programming, where people can spontaneously discover new shows and artists (in contrast to huge stadium shows)
Flexible arts and community spaces not limited to one creative vertical, but facilitating meeting and socialising in ways that can be defined and redefined over and over by the people who use it
Public spaces designed to facilitate casual connection amongst people in the local community
Heritage Remixed
L-R: Lan Fong Yuen @ Heath; StreetsignHK; Taboocha
Hong Kong has long been positioned as a place where ‘East meets West’ – open, outward-looking, and cosmopolitan, as encapsulated in its branding as ‘Asia’s world city’. Of course, just under the surface of this glossy positioning is Hong Kong’s complex past as a British colony. But today, dominant culture is more focused on the city’s present and future as a special administrative region of China. We see this forward-looking, future-facing attitude in the government’s decision to move away from the iconic mid-90s Toyota Comfort taxi, doing away with this long-standing and well-loved symbol of the city in favour of five new operators emphasising digital connectivity, accessibility, and electric power. While this may seem like a small move, imagine London doing away with its black cabs.
Instead, youth culture is where explorations of Hong Kong’s specific culture, heritage and history take place. These are alternative visions for the Hong Kong identity that look ahead while acknowledging and respecting the city’s complex past. It’s not just about preserving traditions and old ways of life, but progressing and evolving them for the modern day. Through the eyes of a proud and confident youth, Hong Kong is not just a place where larger forces converge (East meets West), but a cultural powerhouse in and of itself. Hong Kong doesn’t just import international trends wholesale, but stays open to and absorbs global influences, remixing them with its inventiveness and resourcefulness, resulting in imaginative innovations in food and drink, and clever use of the city’s limited space.
Examples include:
Heath is a retail, dining and culture destination. Their food and drink offering includes new outposts for legendary, old-school Hong Kong eateries like Lan Fong Yuen and Six’s Noodles, giving them a new place and relevance in modern life.
StreetsignHK is an Instagram account showcasing examples of Hong Kong’s iconic neon signage. They take discarded signs and find them new homes in bars and restaurants, mixing Hong Kong’s heritage with its evolving culinary scene.
Taboocha, a locally brewed kombucha brand, puts a Hong Kong spin on the global trend with flavours like snow chrysanthemum black tea
Drawing inspiration from Heritage Remixed, cultural placemakers might consider:
Projects that bring the city’s past to the present and future, both celebrating its artistic heritage and reimagining its applicability to today and tomorrow.
Creating opportunities to develop local music scenes and genres and specifically, exploring how they can attract new audiences
Taking local traditions and festivals and finding a place for them in the wider city today
Pensive Play
L-R: Twenty-one from Eight; Yudei; Leeeeeetoy
Dominantly, Hong Kong is known for its strong consumerism and mall culture. Malls are central to life in the city, both as a place for leisure, entertainment and socialising, and as a refuge from the heat and humidity outside. Hong Kong’s consumerism has its roots in the 80s and 90s, booming decades of growth during which ideas of aspiration and status became centred on wealth – and in turn, demonstrated at a personal level through spending power. Many foundational parts of Hong Kong identity stem from this period and are reflected in the very structures of the city. Some of its most expensive real estate is famously perched atop The Peak. From the tallest hill on Hong Kong Island, the city’s wealthy look down (literally) on the rest of the people.
Today, like in many wealthy economies now struggling to grow, there’s disillusionment with work and the accepted wisdom that it leads to fulfilment. Hong Kong’s youth are questioning where meaning and fulfilment are truly found, and reconfiguring the role of retail and consumerism in the process. What emerges are deeper, more active ways to engage in mall culture, moving away from an emphasis on financial capital and towards creative, cultural and intellectual capital. These are brands and retail experiences that take you behind the scenes and bring you onboard, in ways that spark creativity, imagination and reflection, turning passive consumers into co-creators with agency.
Examples include:
Twenty-one from Eight, furniture designers and makers bringing people into the craft with workshops where they can make furniture themselves
Yudei is a vegan café inviting people to engage with a wider lifestyle of mindfulness and connection with Hong Kong’s natural, agricultural tradition – with sound baths and meditation, and opportunities to buy direct from the local farmers that supply them
Leeeeeetoy, an indie art toy maker crafting collectibles that on that surface appear childish and silly, but are actually expressions of the chaos of our times, offering both escapist relief and a prompt to engage with and consider what's going on in the world
Drawing inspiration from Pensive Play, cultural placemakers might consider:
Retail destinations that also include opportunities for learning, e.g. creative studio space for workshops and classes
Shopping and hospitality offerings that combine escape and entertainment with deeper, more meaningful benefits for mind and body - e.g. also offering health and wellness, connections with nature
Supporting local artisans and makers to create work that tackles the chaos, uncertainty and difficult emotion of our times, in turn giving people a way to engage more deeply with what’s going on in the world
Overall, by taking a broader view of culture that goes beyond traditional cultural verticals, we can gather inspiration for placemaking that’s rooted in the people it serves and how they live today. The hope is also to expand our thinking by looking for fresh ideas outside of the spaces that placemakers usually operate in. For Hong Kong and other major cities looking to re-excite young people about life in these places, this kind of ‘stretchy thinking’ might be exactly what’s needed.
