Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the Award Ceremony for the Jurong Lake District Innovation Challenge

Jul 11, 2023

A very good afternoon, and welcome to the URA Centre and to the Jurong Lake District Innovation Challenge Award Ceremony.

A green, inclusive, sustainable approach to urban planning

Jurong Lake District (JLD) will be our largest business district outside the CBD. It presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us to sculpt the future of urban development in Singapore through the Jurong Lake District, as we pursue our vision for a greener, more sustainable and inclusive city.

a. For example, we want all new developments in JLD to achieve net zero emissions by around 2045 – which is five years earlier than our national target.

b. Every new building that comes up will fully replace any greenery that is lost due to development, with features like vertical greenery, sky terraces and landscaping.

c. And the Jurong Lake District will be an inclusive, people-centric district; a place for everyone to live, work, and play. There will be well-curated public spaces and amenities, including a central park that connects new neighbourhoods to Jurong Lake.

Partnering the community to build JLD

Turning this vision statement into reality is an ambitious undertaking. It is not something that we as government planners can achieve on our own. For the Jurong Lake District to lead the way in urban sustainability, we will need innovative solutions to produce greener and cleaner infrastructure. We must therefore harness the ingenuity and enterprise of different segments of our society: academics, business people, researchers, students, NGOs, start-ups, everyone. We need you to step forward with your ideas and your contributions.

That is precisely why my colleagues at URA and SNGDO organised this Innovation Challenge. Our agencies worked closely with public and private organisations who are operating in the JLD to identify six different challenge statements based on issues that they face, and called for novel solutions to address these real-world problems. Some of these challenge statements include:

a. First, CapitaLand’s call for a digital solution to aggregate data on the waste generated by large commercial properties, so as to improve waste management capabilities and guide strategies to encourage higher recycling rates;

b. Second, Lendlease Global Commercial REIT’s call for a dynamic and responsive building management system that can enable JEM to optimise energy efficiency based on volume and distribution of visitors throughout the day, without compromising on thermal comfort.

I would like to thank our various partner organisations for your support in helping to drive innovations to enhance the Jurong Lake District.

I am also greatly encouraged by the overwhelming response to the Innovation Challenge. It has attracted promising novel proposals from more than a hundred teams: from established companies, start-ups and institutes of higher learning; from Singapore and all around the world.

Eight of the best proposals will receive awards today. I would like to commend the winning teams for their wonderful ideas.

a. These include AI-enabled hardware solutions for different types of buildings to enhance energy efficiency, optimise thermal comfort, and improve resource and waste management.

i. For example, the Environmental and Water Technology Centre of Innovation at Ngee Ann Polytechnic introduced a system that makes use of smart sensors and AI to adjust the room temperature based on a range of environmental factors and how many people are in the room, so that the room temperature can be kept comfortable without consuming too much energy.

b. As well as software applications that encourage people to adopt more sustainable behaviours as they go about their daily lives. For instance:

i. Gametize, a Singapore-based company that specialises in community engagement and advocacy through gamification, has proposed a way to motivate users to embrace sustainability by tracking how much they are consuming and throwing away through a gamified app. The app allows users to form online communities to encourage one another – they will be able to share their progress with friends, and offer suggestions to one another.

ii. The winning proposal from Mapxus is a navigational application that recommends the shortest indoor and outdoor routes, and also barrier-free routes to serve the needs of wheelchaired users. This promotes active mobility and the adoption of public transport for a more inclusive and sustainable district.

We want JLD to serve as a living lab to testbed innovative urban solutions that improve sustainability, both in terms of infrastructure as well as changing people’s way of life. All the winning solutions of this Innovation Challenge will receive a cash prize of $50,000, and have the opportunity to pilot their solutions at the premises of the organisations that sponsored the respective challenge statements – to carry through from being a winning proposal, to actually implementing on the ground. All of us look forward to their success, and the possibilities for them to be scaled up across the district and even beyond Singapore.

Besides contributions from the industry, young people and students play an equally important role in imagining fresh possibilities for the Jurong Lake District.

a. Today, we will also present awards to students of the Challenge for the Urban & Built Environment (CUBE). This is an annual workshop and competition organised by URA for students from tertiary institutes.

b. In the latest edition of CUBE, our students transformed themselves into urban planners and architects for the Jurong Lake District. They came up with many innovative ideas, such as an integrated recreational hub; a wellness district centre around Jurong Town Hall; and a unique vertical kampung that promotes cross-generation interaction.

c. I hope some of you will consider a career with us at the URA in the near future!

Conclusion

10. Once again, congratulations to the winning teams and a big thank you to all our stakeholders for your support. Innovation cannot happen in a vacuum, and I am very happy that this challenge was able to bring together the many partners to address climate change, and make Singapore greener and more sustainable.

11. I hope such efforts will continue long after this Innovation Challenge. Congratulations once again, and thank you.

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