Valuing the Hong Kong Northern Metropolis

Long being overly emphasised by a wealth of scholarly research, singularly focusing on the economic value has caused the degradation of natural areas, environmental pollution, overconsumption of nonrenewable energy, and social inequality. Against such a background, this paper proposes a triangulated framework for evaluating territorial sustainability, adding environmental and social components to the mere economic valuation. Using the Hong Kong Northern Metropolis as a testing ground, this study evaluates economic, environmental, and social value by establishing a sustainability evaluation system using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method with reliable and open-source datasets. The results show a vastly distributed high-value environmental area, a minimal area with social value, and the spatial dissimilarity between environmental and economic value. By successfully testing this triangulated sustainability evaluation framework and proving its feasibility and replicability, territorial environmental and social values are brought to researchers’ and policymakers’ sight, enabling envisioning a future habitat with environmental, social, and economic prosperity.