Here's why Hong Kong couldn't top smart cities rankings

It ranked 68 with a score of 5.29 out of 10.

Hong Kong has yet to achieve the status of a perfect smart city as it landed in the half bottom of the world's top smart city rankings, Swedish transport firm EasyPark revealed.

According to its Smart Cities Index, the city scored 5.29 out of 10 and ranked 68th.

The researchers looked at data on more than 500 cities worldwide based 19 factors.

The city had a mixed performance in terms of transport-related factors. It scored 8.62 in terms of smart parking, which is its highest, but also received 1.50 for its car sharing services. The latter measures the car sharing industry's fleet.

Across sustainability-related factors, Hong Kong performed average. It scored 8.01 for environment protection and 6.02 for smart building, but also got 4.62 for waste disposal.

"A smart city is sustainable, with a focus on clean energy and environmental projection," EasyPark said.

Hong Kong got its lowest score for a governance-related factor, a 1.18 for citizen participation, which measured election turnout. Meanwhile, it got 4.63 for government digitalisation.

The city scored 6.28 in terms of its innovation economy.

It had some the highest scores for digitalisation-related factors. It scored 7.92 for its Wi-Fi hotspots, 7.17 for 4G LTE, and 6.97 for internet speed.

However, it also got a 3.71 for smartphone penetration.

"We discovered that such a city should be digitalized first and foremost—with 4G, plentiful Wi-Fi hotspots and high smartphone usage," EasyPark said.

Hong Kong performed poorly in terms of living standards with a score of 3.60, which measured average sum spent on basic needs and average net salary adjusted to the GDP per capita levels.

The final category, expert perception, was based on smart city ratings from 20,000 technology and urban planning journalists. Hong Kong scored 6.20.

Cities' scores in transport and mobility, digitalisation, governance, and expert perception weighed the heaviest in the final computation.