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Like many cities in advanced economies, Hong Kong has embraced the "smart city" agenda. In this article, we engage with a number of ethical issues surrounding smart city development. We assess the ethical implications of four different smart city initiatives in Hong Kong - the use of a facial recognition system, the Smart Lamppost Pilot Scheme, the Free-flow Tolling System, and Electronic Health Records System - from the perspective of relational egalitarianism. Our analysis suggests that there are various moral risks - that a particular smart city initiative may fall short of some relevant normative requirements - depending on the levels of their voluntariness and transparency. Finally, we consider a number of strategies for mitigating these moral risks and maintaining socially egalitarian relationships among citizens of a smart city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based mainly on a Hong Kong-wide survey carried out in March-April 2021, while also drawing on a round of stakeholder interviews from July 2020 to December 2021, the article interprets the linked phenomena of trust and the smart city in the specific context of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In the main body of the article, four angles are used to understand facets of trust-smart city relations, centred on characteristic trust, trust and technology, the role of intermediaries, and trust in government. The main findings of the survey centre around the data trust paradox (of high support for technology in a low-trust environment), the social impact of trust and mistrust (strongly correlated with age and political affiliation), and trust in the smart city as a weathervane of trust in government. Factors such as a digitally literate population, a decades-long investment in technology, and a substantial record of delivery provide solid reasons to believe that a strategic-technical narrative on the smart city might succeed where others have failed to convince. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Hong Kong's smart city development as the case study, this paper aims to discover the influence of public trust on citizens' perception of Hong Kong's smart city performance in an international dimension, comparing with the smart city ranking by research agencies. Our central investigation further focuses on the association of public trust and digital trust, using COVID19 contact tracing app as an example. This paper uses data from a Hong Kong-based territory-wide survey in 2021 to conduct the analysis. The result suggests a positive relationship between public trust, subjective perception and digital trust, and supports that public acceptability is a cornerstone of an effective public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]