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Soaring Towers Shape Hong Kong's Urban Landscape

Hong Kong has more than 550 buildings that are at least 150 meters (492 feet) tall. Dale DE LA REY / AFP
Hong Kong has more than 550 buildings that are at least 150 meters (492 feet) tall. Dale DE LA REY / AFP
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Soaring Towers Shape Hong Kong's Urban Landscape

Hong Kong has more than 550 buildings that are at least 150 meters (492 feet) tall. Dale DE LA REY / AFP
Hong Kong has more than 550 buildings that are at least 150 meters (492 feet) tall. Dale DE LA REY / AFP

Home to some of the world's densest living districts and tallest skyscrapers, Hong Kong has for decades mesmerized locals and visitors alike with its famed skyline.
The Chinese finance hub has more than 550 buildings that are at least 150 meters (492 feet) tall and is the "number one tallest city" in the world, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat skyscraper database, said AFP.
Hong Kong saw a construction boom in the latter half of the 20th century as its population skyrocketed, and development kept pace after the former British colony was handed over to China in 1997.
The city's two tallest buildings, the International Commerce Centre (484 meters) and the Two International Financial Centre (412 meters), stand gleaming on opposing sides of the Victoria Harbour and cast shadows on the rushing traffic below.
Meanwhile, many of the city's 7.5 million residents live in cramped flats, with households having a median per capita floor area of around 16 square meters in 2021.
A cluster of residential blocks nicknamed "Monster Building" in Quarry Bay was catapulted to international fame after it was featured in the 2014 blockbuster "Transformers: Age of Extinction".
Older public housing complexes, such as Ping Shek Estate and Lai Tak Tsuen, have well-like central courtyards whose dramatic visual signature has made them popular with photographers.
Constrained by natural geography and a restrictive land policy, Hong Kong's urban development in decades to come has nowhere to go but up, scholars say.

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Protecting 1.2% of Earth Would Prevent Most Extinctions, Study Says 

Mexican gray wolves, an endangered native species, are seen resting in their enclosure at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico July 1, 2020. Picture taken July 1, 2020. (Reuters)
Mexican gray wolves, an endangered native species, are seen resting in their enclosure at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico July 1, 2020. Picture taken July 1, 2020. (Reuters)
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Protecting 1.2% of Earth Would Prevent Most Extinctions, Study Says 

Mexican gray wolves, an endangered native species, are seen resting in their enclosure at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico July 1, 2020. Picture taken July 1, 2020. (Reuters)
Mexican gray wolves, an endangered native species, are seen resting in their enclosure at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Mexico July 1, 2020. Picture taken July 1, 2020. (Reuters)

Setting aside an additional 1.2% of the world's land as nature preserves would prevent the majority of predicted plant and animal extinctions and cost about $263 billion, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The world is racing to meet a goal to protect 30% of the world by 2030 to protect wildlife that is being decimated by climate change, pollution and habitat destruction.

Global policymakers will meet at a United Nations summit in Colombia in October to discuss plans for reaching that goal.

The study in the journal Frontiers in Science aimed to identify the highest value areas in hope that they be included in those protection plans, said Carlos Peres, a study co-author and conservation ecology expert at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

"Most countries do not actually have a strategy," Peres said.

"The 30-by-30 targets still lack a lot of details because it doesn't actually say what 30 percent should be protected."

The study's proposed protections would cover an additional 1.6 million square km (633,000 square miles) - an area about a fifth the size of the United States - across 16,825 sites globally that are home to rare and threatened species.

That's on top of the nearly 16% of the world that already have some level of protection.

The study estimated the $263 billion bill is how much it would cost to acquire the new areas, many of which include private property, at current value over the next five years.

"Time is not on our side because it will become increasingly more expensive and more difficult to set aside additional protected areas," Peres said.

Land acquisition makes up most of the cost of creating protected areas, and the study did not consider the upkeep costs for policing the reserves.

About three-quarters of the sites are tropical forests, as those are the world's most biodiverse ecosystems. The Phillipines, Brazil and Indonesia are home to more than half of the high-value sites.

Russia is the single country with the most high-valued area ripe for conservation with 138,436 square km identified in the study, an area the size of Greece.

Several African countries also topped the list with Madagascar having the fourth-highest number of sites overall while the Democratic Republic of Congo had the largest area targeted for conservation on the continent.

The United States is the only developed nation among the top 30 countries in the analysis, with 0.6% of the sites or an area twice the size of Delaware.

The researchers only considered land and freshwater ecosystems but not oceans or marine protected areas. Researchers did not include invertebrates in the study, as the geographical distributions insects and other such animals are not well mapped.