Hong Kong: a lesson in stairs (Billie Tsien and Tod Williams). There are many urban environments that I have come to cherish throughout my years traveling the world. I am an urban boy, and while I love Berlin, Paris, New Delhi, New York, Tokyo, and Vienna, and even at a more modest scale Lausanne where I studied architecture, Hong Kong remains top on my list of favorite cities.  There is no place that has provoked me more than the Fragrant Harbor—Hong Kong’s nickname—which is in direct opposition to the more gentile landscapes of places I have lived including the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, the Central Coast of California, and the New River Valley of Virginia.