“They give. They do nothing but give,” says Gavin Coates, who is behind the Greening Master Plan. “They’re massive air conditioners, they provide homes for masses of different organisms.”

Coates’s project planted over 20,000 trees in older urban areas of Hong Kong. He says more trees should be planted across the city. But does Hong Kong have space? And does the bureaucracy have the level of coordination required to catch up with Singapore’s greening efforts?
