When we put together our list of Hong Kong’s five best harbourfront promenades, we had plenty of options to choose from. More than 13 kilometres of waterfront on the north side of Hong Kong Island is now connected, from Kennedy Town to Shau Kei Wan, and on the Kowloon side, half a dozen new harbourfront spaces have opened in the past five years alone, with more to come.
Our top picks were in Cheung Sha Wan, West Kowloon, Kwun Tong, North Point and Central — but a few other promenades came close. And the others? Well, each one is worth visiting, if only for the inevitably fantastic views of the harbour, skyline and mountains. But there’s plenty of room for improvement. So we’ve put together a guide to all of the promenades and other public spaces lining the shores of Hong Kong Island, from west to east.
Up next: Kowloon.
As always, let us know what you think on our socials @zolima_hongkong.
Kennedy Town and Shek Tong Tsui
Not long ago, the only place to enjoy the harbourfront on Hong Kong Island’s western tip was a tiny seating area squeezed into some leftover space next to a diesel-choked bus terminus. (That, plus the late and lamented Instagram Pier.) Now there’s an eclectic mix of spaces where you can linger, from the Cadogan Street Promenade in the west to four public piers behind the Western District Wholesale Food Market, by way of the Belcher Bay Promenade.
What we love: There’s a lot of flexible space. The Belcher Bay Promenade in particular is a wide-open plaza where you can bring your dog and let your kids roam free. It evokes a bit of the atmosphere of the old Instagram Pier, albeit in a more family-friendly, sanitised form. Similarly, the piers behind the wholesale market are generally uncluttered; one has even been landscaped with a small lawn.
What needs work: When you’re making your way to the Belcher Bay Promenade and wholesale market promenade, you’ll notice there are some real gaps in the promenade. There’s no waterside path along New Praya; pedestrians are forced onto narrow footpaths on the opposite side of the road from the harbour. To get to the market promenade from Belcher Bay, you need to walk inland alongside a busy motorway for nearly 900 metres — all because the Instagram Pier is officially off-limits due to public safety concerns.
Sai Ying Pun and Sheung Wan
When Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park opened in 2010, it introduced something completely novel to Hong Kong: a harbourfront lawn. Overseen by a big statue of China’s revolutionary hero, it’s still a popular place for a picnic. Now the park has been extended to the west, with even more grassy areas on the Fung Mat Road Promenade — and a new batch of novel features. This recently revamped stretch of harbourfront includes what is probably the most epic children’s playground in Hong Kong.
What we love: The playground is undeniably fun and a huge departure from the boring plastic play equipment that has become standard around the city. There’s a massive slide, bouncy inflatables, concrete tubes that appear to have been salvaged from a construction site, and even a sand pit overlooking the water.
Sun Yat-sen Park continues to be one of the most popular harbourfront destinations on Hong Kong Island and for good reason: it strikes a great balance between recreational amenities and open space. Whether you decide to picnic on the lawn or sit in the attractively landscaped plaza next to the water, it’s a great space to linger and watch the world go by.
What needs work: The Fung Mat Road playground has become a victim of its own success — and now it’s being managed in a rather fussy way, with attendants restricting access to the slide, inflatables and sand pit. Who wants to queue up at the playground? It’s a microcosm of what’s wrong with so many oppressively rule-bound spaces in Hong Kong. Even actual children don’t want to be infantilised.
Another problem worth noting: the Shun Tak Centre, the hulking office and commerical complex attached to the Hong Kong–Macau ferry terminal. Unless you want to detour through the shopping mall, the only way to continue walking along the harbour at this point means continuing on a stretch of road with no footpath. Many people do it, but it’s unpleasant and potentially unsafe. Something needs to change.
Admiralty (Tamar)
When architect Rocco Yim was hired to design the new Central Government Offices, which opened in 2011, he was keen to make a grand civic gesture. And even if you think the government headquarters look awfully foreboding, you have to appreciate their centrepiece, Tamar Park, a lushly planted green space that links the harbourfront to Admiralty MTR. The adjacent harbourfront spaces have taken their cue from Tamar Park’s big sloping lawn: there’s plenty of grass to sit on.
What we love: The way Tamar Park slopes down to the water has made it an emblematic Hong Kong space. We also appreciate the way it terminates in a wooden viewing platform, which has become a popular place to do yoga. There’s even a not-for-profit café tucked underneath the viewing deck.
What needs work: Outside Tamar Park itself, nearby green spaces are strangely designed, with vast amounts of shrubbery and oddly disconnected walking paths. Aside from the aforementioned café, there’s nowhere else to eat or drink in what should be a prime spot for al fresco dining. There’s also a notable lack of shade and seating on the brick-paved path that is closest to the water.
There’s one other thing, too: the Central Harbourfront Event Space. Located in between Tamar Park and the Central Ferry Piers, this 36,000-square-metre gravel lot is leased to a private company that rents it out to events, including Clockenflap, Art Central and the AIA Carnival. That’s great — we absolutely need a big outdoor event space on the Central harbourfront. But we wish the site was properly landscaped and open to the public in between ticketed events. Instead, it lies fallow, a huge missed opportunity in the heart of the city.
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
Curving 500 metres around Hong Kong’s huge, seabird-inspired convention centre, this promenade feels like a timewarp to the days when most of Victoria Harbour was inaccessible and the few public spaces that existed felt like urban planning afterthoughts. Two monuments to Hong Kong’s 1997 handover from Britain to China bookend the space: the flashy Golden Bauhinia, which is perpetually swarmed by tour groups, and the Reunification Monument, a surprisingly sober black pillar that is largely overlooked by tourists.
What we love: It’s a good spot to gaze out at the water and to watch the nightly Symphony of Lights.
What needs work: There’s a reason the only people that come here are tour groups, fishermen and joggers. The landscaping is bland. The eastern part of the promenade runs straight into an overcrowded, confusing parking area for tour coaches. And worst of all, the convention centre turns its back on the harbour. There could easily be restaurants, bars and cafés on the building’s ground level, making this one of the liveliest parts of the harbourfront. Instead, it’s a monolith.
Wan Chai
This is part of a new generation of spaces conceived and managed by the Harbourfront Commission rather than the government’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department. As a result, it feels like a massive experiment in how to make the harbourfront a lively place. To the west, there’s a space called HarbourChill, where an artificial lawn is dotted with public seating and food trucks; there’s a regular programme of commercial and cultural events. To the east, the oddly-named Water Sports and Recreation Precinct features a decommissioned East Rail Line carriage, a paddleboat basin and a restaurant-bar that operates out of repurposed shipping containers.
What we love: Unlike many spots along the harbour, there’s actually a lot to do here. You can work remotely in one of the many sheltered seating areas; in fact, there’s an abundance of different types of seating, from steps overlooking the paddleboat basin to loungers to benches with convenient little tables for you to put your takeaway lunch. You can get a beer and sit outdoors. You can go paddleboating. There’s a dog park. There are displays of vintage Hong Kong-style letterboxes and street nameplates that seem custom-designed as Instagram backdrops. And there’s the train carriage we mentioned above. Why is it there? Who knows, but it’s fun to check it out.
What needs work: If you hadn’t already guessed based on the above description, this is a wild grab bag of different design concepts and activities. It lacks focus and feels rather tatty, like an amusement park that has seen better days. Eventually, we’d like to see more cohesive landscaping. And just imagine if the paddleboat basin was instead used for swimming, now that the harbour’s water quality is steadily improving.
Causeway Bay
If you ever need proof that Hong Kong’s official attitudes to public space are changing, look no further than the Causeway Bay harbourfront. Cut off from the rest of the city by 10 lanes of traffic speeding along Victoria Park Road, this used to be an absolute non-place — somewhere you’d only visit if you really wanted to see the Noonday Gun or if you were taking a sampan to the floating restaurant in the typhoon shelter. Then, in 2023, it was completely revamped with new footpaths, greenery and public seating overlooking the typhoon shelter.
What we love: What was once a narrow footpath lined by an ugly fence is now a spacious promenade with trees and benches — and steps leading right down to the water. (There’s no fence, so watch or step or you might just fall in!) The steps have even been equipped with little tables where you can put your food and drink.
What needs work: Sandwiched between the perimeter walls of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, the entrance to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel and the Police Officers Club carpark, the narrow path connecting Causeway Bay with the rest of the harbourfront is decidedly unpleasant. Could either of those private clubs be convinced to give up a portion of their land to improve the adjacent public spaces? We can only dream.
Fortress Hill
Freedom! That’s the vibe in the new East Coast Park Precinct. Like the Belcher Bay Promenade in Kennedy Town, it’s a wide-open area that lacks many of the restrictions imposed in Hong Kong parks. Here, you can play music, cycle, toss a ball — and dogs are welcome too. As a result, it’s a lively, uninhibited gathering space that is popular day and night.
What we love: The breakwater at the eastern edge of the space is one of the best places to watch the sunset in Hong Kong, with westerly views over the Causeway Bay typhoon shelter towards Victoria Peak and the Central skyline. There’s plenty of seating, including loungers where you can really soak up the sun.
What needs work: The whole space is rather denuded, which is a problem during scorching hot summer afternoons. A few trees wouldn’t hurt. Nor would some food and drink stalls similar to what’s available in West Kowloon or at the Central Ferry Piers.
Quarry Bay, Sai Wan Ho and Shau Kei Wan
If you continue along the East Coast Boardwalk — one of our five favourite harbourfront spaces — you’ll eventually reach Quarry Bay Park, which was one of the few places to hang out next to the harbour when it opened in 1994. It’s a lively though conventionally landscaped park that is unfortunately bisected by 10 lanes of the Island Eastern Corridor. Further east, the park gives way to a promenade running along the shores of Sai Wan Ho and Shau Kei Wan.
What we love: Wan Chai has its random East Rail Line train. But do you know about the OG vehicle plonked along the harbourfront? Fireboat Alexander Grantham is a real-life fire-fighting vessel that now serves as a museum. Learn about Hong Kong’s long history of marine fire services while also reconnecting with your inner kid who thinks it’s just super cool to be on a fireboat.
What needs work: The entire stretch of harbourfront from Quarry Bay to Shau Kei Wan is pleasant enough — but that’s just it. It’s ho-hum. There isn’t much comfortable seating where you can sit and look out at the water. And beyond that, there just isn’t much to do.
The main exception is the opportunistically branded Soho East, a stretch of harbourview restaurants and bars in Sai Wan Ho. While we won’t comment on the quality of these establishments, they’re some of the only places on Hong Kong Island where you can have a leisurely meal while gazing out at the water.
The problem, unfortunately, is that while the restaurants have open shopfronts, they aren’t allowed to put tables outdoors — and they’re cut off from the harbourfront promenade by Tai Hong Street. Why not pedestrianise the street to allow for large terraces and a better connection with the water? At the very least, remove a lane of traffic to widen the footpath and allow for some proper outdoor dining.
All photographs in this article were taken by Christopher DeWolf.
Map illustration by Laine Tam.