Hong Kong’s malls must evolve into green sanctuaries to stay relevant

Retail is making a comeback in Hong Kong. Deloitte China reported an encouraging HK$203 billion (US$25.9 billion) in sales volume in the first half of 2026, beating expectations. Accordingly, they forecast the retail market to reach HK$412 billion by the end of this year.

A retail revival should directly translate into reduced vacancies for the city’s bricks-and-mortar stores. However, while high street vacancies dropped to 9.1 per cent, the lowest since 2020, vacancies in prime shopping centres rose to a record high of 13.7 per cent, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

How do we explain these underperforming malls in a robust retail market? The phenomenon is rather disturbing, given that urban life is synonymous with shopping centres and consumer culture in the city.

According to Stefan Al, editor of Mall City: Hong Kong’s Dreamworlds of Consumption, we have about one mall per square mile. As such, it is the world’s uncontested “mall-densest place”. “[The mall’s] tentacles reach deep into the ground to attach to subway systems, or bind to other malls with an ivy-like mesh of sky-bridges,” Al wrote.

To Hongkongers, malls are not just for shopping; they are the fabric of our urban realm, our go-to places for socialising, dining, entertainment and de facto public spaces, blurring boundaries within private developments. Mixed-use developments can be found across town, especially where the MTR Corporation has capitalised on “air rights” above their stations to develop retail podiums and superstructures.

It is not unusual for residential or commercial lobbies to be directly accessed from malls. With air-conditioned shopping centres, people can leave their homes or offices to reach remote districts without ever setting foot on the street, thus avoiding the rain, heat or even typhoons.

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As well as MTR stations, shops and restaurants, there are often supermarkets, theatres, ice rinks, playgrounds, podium gardens and flexible spaces open to multi-storey atriums. Shopping malls define our urban lives and stand at the core of our economy. The retail and wholesale sector employs about one in four workers in Hong Kong, compared with New York City, where the figure is one in 11.

Our winning formula has been widely emulated on the mainland, and it would not be an exaggeration to say their malls have now leapfrogged Hong Kong’s by providing more than just shops. Brand diversity alone no longer drives foot traffic.

Instead, the mainland’s new models offer holistic and integrated experiences, from theme parks and ski slopes to petting zoos and aquariums. As Deloitte said of the cultural shift, “As the industry enters a relationship economy defined less by units sold and more by the depth, intimacy and fluidity of brand-consumer connections, mainstream e-commerce and direct-to-consumer channels will underpin global expansion.”

Most of Hong Kong’s shopping centres, in contrast, are losing their appeal. Recently, there have been some changes to the mix of tenants, mostly from the infiltration of mainland brands, pop-up stores and claw-machine arcades that add little value to our livelihoods and experience. With the newer and bigger cross-border competition, abundant online shopping platforms and local consumers’ high expectations, Hong Kong developers need to reinvent their malls to create a sustainable model.

Change is difficult and threatens to be an expensive experiment. If the world is shifting from superficial shopping to genuine consumption, we should move away from status-and-logo-driven purchasing towards personality, meaning and originality.

At the same time, we should care about our health and the responsible life cycle of products and services that define our urban spaces. While new shops and experiences rely on developers’ calibration of the tenant mix, shopping malls’ hardware must evolve and offer healthy and comfortable public settings.

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The best example of this could be The Jewel, near Singapore’s Changi Airport Terminal 1, where shops and restaurants are positioned around a rain vortex with cascading landscaped terraces and nature trails. The operator has treated it like a green sanctuary, dotting the 21,000-square-metre indoor garden with more than 2,000 trees and 100,000 shrubs.

The Jewel does not merely offer good optics; it also harvests rainwater, reduces heat from the sun and utilises solar panels, radiant cooling slabs and double-skin glazing. The garden is free to access and does not generate revenue on its own. However, it does generate tremendous foot traffic – more than 80 million visitors annually – and attracts consumers to shop, dine, watch films or attend events and weddings.

The Jewel sets a high benchmark, not only blurring the boundary of shopping malls being urban spaces, but also blending nature as part of the consumer economy. Not everybody appreciates art or luxury goods, but most of us enjoy nature. This is where we find authenticity, originality and enhancements to our livelihoods, comfort, and physical and mental health.

With no sales tax and a wide range of goods and brand names, shopping used to be a compelling enough reason to visit Hong Kong. We were seen as a shoppers’ paradise. But we can no longer claim that legacy title with any confidence. Even so, the evolution of retail malls remains critical in our urban development as the infrastructure is in place and deeply integrated with our mobility and living environments.

Visitors and expats go out of their way to praise Hong Kong’s hiking trails, mountains, beaches and country parks. So it stands to reason that we should seek to enhance our shopping malls by including more of the natural environment to ensure they survive as everyday urban spaces. We could become a paradise again; one that brings us closer to nature.