Karen N Lee World Sustainable Built Environment Conference 2026

Karen N Lee

Karen Lee is Senior Manager at the Jockey Club Design Institute for Social Innovation (JCDISI), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. A Chartered Town Planner and project manager, she specialises in urban integration and city management strategies, with a strong track record in turning complex place-based challenges into implementable, community-centred solutions. She is also a Certified Playground Safety Inspector, advancing “Intergenerational Play Spaces” as a new typology of public space design concept to promote inclusive, all-age play and improve community well-being. Karen’s work focuses on data-driven community making and futureproofing communities under the pressures of “Double Ageing” (ageing people and ageing building stock). She helps partners move from intuition-led programmes to evidence-led action by combining participatory co-design with structured assessment frameworks (e.g., community assessment indicators), spatial analysis, and monitoring-and-evaluation feedback loops. This approach enables communities and service providers to identify vulnerabilities, prioritise investments, measure outcomes, and continuously refine both “hardware” (space and infrastructure) and “software” (services and programmes). She also collaborates closely with NGOs on data-driven service re-engineering, strengthening service alignment, resource planning, and cross-sector coordination to build sustainable, resilient communities that can adapt over time. Before joining JCDISI, Karen was Technical Manager for the Elizabeth Line in the UK and the Walk DVRC project in Hong Kong.