Government ministers, academics, and business leaders gathered at a Hong Kong auditorium for a two-day summit last week to discuss an ambitious project: building three universities towns in a sprawling area near the city’s border with mainland China.

This aerial photo shows the construction site of the Hung Shui Kiu MTR station, October 30, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Hong Kong is betting on the multibillion-dollar Northern Metropolis project, which is set to transform about 300 square kilometres – roughly a third of the city’s territory – into an innovation and technology hub. Authorities hope that the project will power the city’s future growth and further integrate it into China’s Greater Bay Area, a region encompassing nine mainland municipalities plus the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau.

“The main focus of its development will be its three university towns,” Chief Executive John Lee told the audience at last week’s summit, referring to the planned clusters at San Tin, Hung Shui Kiu, and Ta Kwu Ling. “They will be developed to band together five elements: education, technology, industry, talent, and city development,” Lee said.

But university towns have not always been the main focus of the Northern Metropolis. In fact, when the mega-project was first announced in 2021 by Lee’s predecessor, Carrie Lam, the crown jewel was supposed to be a high-tech hub known as the San Tin Technopole.

For years, the Northern Metropolis project was planned around the San Tin Technopole, which innovation chief Sun Dong projected could provide nearly half of the mega-development’s 650,000 promised new jobs. Earlier plans envisioned one university town near San Tin, not three.

Lee noted the shift as well. “At the 2024 summit, I mentioned that we had set aside more than 80 hectares of land in the Northern Metropolis for a new University Town,” he said at the summit last week. “Our ambitions have only grown since then.”

A two-day “Global University” summit is held in Hong Kong in late October 2026, as city leader John Lee seeks to woo international academics about Hong Kong’s plan to build three university towns in its sprawling Northern Metropolis. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

According to the latest strategy outlined in the government’s Five-Year Plan in September, the Northern Metropolis will host three university towns occupying a total area of more than 1,000 hectares. Among them, the Hung Shui Kiu campus is set to welcome its first institutions next year.

Over the course of the project, “new concepts emerge every year or two that appear to redefine the whole Northern Metropolis,” said Chan Kim-ching of Liber Research Community.

“The government used to say… innovation would be the main driver [of growth], but now it seems to be saying that education is the main driver of innovation,” Chan told HKFP in Cantonese.

The pivot to university towns, however, may represent a more “realistic approach,” Chan added, pointing to the city’s high-calibre universities that already draw students from across Asia and have remained fiscally strong amid a period of general economic downturn.

A banner shows the new development area in Ngau Tam Mei, where one of the campus areas of the San Tin University Town will be located, October 30, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. Northern Hong Kong developments

The idea of developing Hong Kong’s vast frontier with Shenzhen has long featured in government policy – and was once a deeply contentious matter in the 2010s.

In 2014, protesters and opposition politicians fiercely opposed a bill to allocate funding for what was then known as the Northeast New Territories New Development Areas plan. In June that year, affected residents and activists stormed the legislature while pan-democratic lawmakers filibustered over the bill inside the chamber, but the bill was passed nonetheless.

However, with public dissent and the political opposition largely snuffed out after Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020 in the wake of the 2019 protests and unrest, there has been virtually no open opposition to the Northern Metropolis project.

When Lam’s administration proposed the project in 2021, the San Tin Technopole was envisioned as its core. Authorities explicitly pitched the tech hub as Hong Kong’s Silicon Valley.

An excavator is working at the Kwu Tung construction site, October 16, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

“The very announcement of the Northern Metropolis was itself a mutation [from pre-2021 policies],” said Liber’s Chan. “Even now, the project is still mutating, still evolving.”

In the years following 2021, new concepts emerged, such as the “four zones” of the Metropolis: a “high-end professional services and logistics hub,” an “innovation and technology zone,” a “boundary commerce and industry zone,” and a “blue and green recreation, tourism and conservation circle.”

Throughout this period, development remained centred on the San Tin Technopole.

The government first mentioned that land would be reserved to build a “Northern Metropolis University Town” in 2023. Then, in his 2025 Policy Address, Chief Executive John Lee announced that the government would set up a working group on the planning and construction of the university town, which would be led by Chief Secretary Eric Chan.

A government illustration showing the locations of the three planned university towns in Northern Metropolis. Photo: Screenshot, via GovHK.

Lee added that the government was considering three potential sites, thus laying the groundwork for the current plan to develop three university towns instead of one.

From Technopole to University Towns

Chan said the previous Technopole-centric plan had been criticised for potentially overlapping with existing innovation and technology hubs in the city.

“Is [the San Tin Technopole] just another Hong Kong Science Park?” Chan said, referring to the Pak Shek Kok tech hub that has been developed from the early 2000s. “You also have Cyberport [in Southern District].”

“And there are hundreds of innovation hubs in the mainland, so what really is the relevance [of San Tin Technopole]?” Chan added.

Chan Kim-ching (left) and Sunny Leung (right) of Liber Research Community. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

The government’s approach has been to pitch the planned Technopole by offering various policy incentives to expedite its development. A dedicated Northern Metropolis Development Bill is currently in the legislative process. When passed, it will “streamline” the city’s urban planning and construction processes and facilitate cross-boundary flows of people and goods.

Chan warned, however, that as with government-led development schemes worldwide, the ultimate test remains whether there is sufficient real-world demand to underpin the project’s ambitions.

“Deregulation doesn’t necessarily lead to acceleration,” he said. “Acceleration hinges on whether there is effective demand to drive the plan.”

A government illustration showing the projected Northern Metropolis. Photo: Screenshot.

This year, early signs suggest that demand for the mega-project is cooler than authorities had hoped.

In August, the government announced that a HK$1.03 billion tender for a pilot project in the Metropolis – the first of its kind – had been awarded to a consortium of six firms, which included Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com but lacked other major Chinese tech players.

That same month, the Northern Metropolis’s first residential launch, Wheelock Properties’ Park Silicon in Kwu Tung, drew a lukewarm reception, offloading only 56 of the 100 units on offer on its opening day.

Against this backdrop, pivoting to university towns as the driving force of the mega-project could prove a pragmatic move, Chan said. Five of Hong Kong’s eight publicly funded universities rank among the world’s top 100, and internationalised higher education has long been a key strength of the former British colony, even compared to China’s fast-growing cities.

Nancy Ip, president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, speaks during the Global University summit in late October, 2026. HKUST has committed to moving its medical school – the third in Hong Kong and currently under construction – into the Northern Metropolis. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

The universities are also actively expanding and snapping up land in the city, thanks to the persistent demand from students from mainland China and across the region, driving up the institutions’ revenues in recent years. As of early 2025, the eight universities funded by the University Grants Committee had total reserves of nearly HK$140 billion, according to the South China Morning Post.

The government has also increased the non-local student quota at universities, and the influx of mainland and international students is projected to continue growing.

“The universities have huge demand for new campuses and student accommodation,” Chan said. “In fact, they are practically the only public bodies still expanding while the Hong Kong government is grappling with a fiscal deficit.”

This aerial photo shows the demolition of Yik Yuen Tsuen, a village near the future Hung Shui Kiu MTR station, October 30, 2026. On the top right corner of the photo shows a large area planned for the campus area of the Hung Shui Kiu University Town. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

“So you are seeing the government leverage [the universities’] resources to power up the Northern Metropolis development,” he said.

University challenge

The pivot comes with its own set of challenges, Chan said, noting that Hong Kong’s idea of a university town is largely modelled after those in mainland China.

In neighbouring Shenzhen, the Xili Lake International Science and Education City spans nearly 70 square kilometres – or 7,000 hectares, seven times the size of all Hong Kong’s proposed university towns combined. Elite mainland institutions, including Peking University and Tsinghua University, have established postgraduate divisions in the area alongside local Shenzhen campuses.

The Xili Lake campuses sit only around 13 kilometres from Hong Kong’s San Tin.

University towns in Hong Kong will have to avoid simply aping what Shenzhen has been doing in order to stay competitive, Chan said. But how to achieve that remained vague.

Tracts of land that will soon become Hong Kong’s Northern Metropolis, pictured with the Shenzhen skyline in the background on October 13, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Another danger of the current strategy is the risk of “over-planning,” Chan added, which could trigger cutthroat competition among the three university towns. “If, for example, you only need one town but end up building three, developers will naturally worry about a race to the bottom.”

The government has outlined separate functions for the three planned towns. The Hung Shui Kiu site has been positioned as a “cultivation centre for smart manufacturing.” The San Tin University Town will focus on medicine, life technology, artificial intelligence and robotics, while the Ta Kwu Ling location will incorporate arts and “blue-green development elements.”

But Chan said that it remained unclear how the university towns would create “synergy” among institutions, while Sunny Leung, another researcher with Liber, questioned whether the three clusters could generate sufficient revenue to sustain long-term development.

Chan said Hong Kong is best positioned to leverage its strong international ties to attract overseas universities to partner with local institutions in the Northern Metropolis. Last week’s summit echoed Chan’s point, with speakers coming from 21 countries across the globe.

Workers clear overgrowth from a construction site in Ha Tsuen, near Hung Shui Kiu – part of the planned Northern Metropolis – on October 16, 2026. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Yet, with geopolitical tensions rising and the China-US rivalry intensifying, it raises questions about how many Western institutions are willing to invest in Hong Kong, Chan noted.

“Internationalisation will be hit by geopolitics. Which universities are willing to place the core of their research efforts in partnership with Hong Kong? That remains a major uncertainty.”