Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the 2022 Urban Land Institute Global Award for Excellence Presentation Ceremony for SG Enable
Nov 11, 2022
Mr Eric Chua, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, MSF
Professor Khoo Teng Chye, Chair, Urban Land Institute (Asia Pacific)
Mr Moses Lee, Chairman, SG Enable
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
1. I am very happy to join in the celebrations of Urban Land Institute Global Awards for Excellence. Very happy to be back here at the Enabling Village.
2. Let me start right off by congratulating Mr Moses Lee, Chairman of SG Enable, Ms Ku Geok Boon, CEO, and all our colleagues and partners at SG Enable and the Enabling Village, for being one of the six global award winners this year. I understand that the entry faced very tough competition with 25 other finalists from around the world.
3. SG Enable’s award for the design of this Enabling Village bears testament to our values of liveability and inclusiveness. These are important outcomes that we strive for as we plan and develop our city and continually seek to improve it.
a. These values were clearly reaffirmed during our recent Long-Term Plan Review – an exhibition we held at URA, culminating after a whole year of outreach and engagement with Singaporeans. We met and spoke to over 15,000 people to hear their views and aspirations for what they want to see in Singapore over the next 50 years and beyond. So we asked them, please suspend your hopes for the here and now, dream for the future, tell us what you aspire to see. Not just for ourselves, but for our future generations.
b. Many participants highlighted to us the importance of ensuring that our urban design and infrastructure continue to provide a high quality living environment and meet the diverse needs of our people.
c. During MND’s ongoing Forward Singapore engagements on public housing, participants also discussed with us how we can make our public housing more inclusive for our seniors, and also for people who are differently-abled.
d. These ideas are important as we continue to shape our policies and design our homes, our neighbourhoods and public spaces.
Creating a Liveable and Inclusive City
4. In planning for our city, we strive to create liveable spaces all over. We are one of the very few, if not the only fully sovereign city state in the world who are planning thoughtfully, planning long term, planning for inclusiveness.
a. One example is of course, as part of our efforts to transform Singapore into a City in Nature, we have set aside an additional 1,000 hectares of green spaces over the next 10 to 15 years.
b. We are also developing new parks and will be expanding our park connector network. With these efforts, every household will be within a 10-minute walk from a park by 2030. Cast your mind back to the last few years of Covid-19, many of us appreciated that we had some green spaces nearby to get out to unwind, to destress, to spend time with our family and friends.
c. Coupled with our efforts to intensifying nature in our gardens and parks, this will provide Singaporeans with greater access to nature and its benefits to our health and well-being.
5. As we develop more green spaces and enhance existing ones, we also aim to make these spaces more inclusive for all.
a. And that is why we have introduced inclusive playgrounds – such as the ones at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park and West Coast Park – to create play spaces tailored for children with special needs, to be able to play along with typically-developing children.
b. We have also developed Therapeutic Gardens specially designed and programmed to cater to a diverse range of conditions, such as cognitive impairments, ADHD, dementia, stroke, and mood disorders.
6. Beyond our green spaces, it is important for us to provide and ensure that our urban infrastructure provide spaces for everyone and strengthen social inclusiveness and cohesion.
a. We do so by working with our partners in the people and private sectors to improve the accessibility of our public spaces.
b. For instance, we launched the Accessible City Network last year to partner communities to identify accessibility challenges on the ground in specific localities and jointly-develop solutions to address these gaps. In 2019, we went for a CBD mapping session, and although the city is supposed to be fully accessible, when you go on to the ground and you walk together with colleagues and people working in the area who are on mobility devices, who are visually impaired, who have other needs, we find that actually on a micro level, there is a lot more that we need to do, and a lot more that we need to do in coordination with each other - private building owners, owners of different public spaces. Not just achieving accessibility in your own domain, but making sure that when people travel from point to point, cutting across from spaces which we take for granted, but which can actually pose challenges to them. So the agencies responsible for all these different spaces coordinate so that they can be accessible on a practical, daily basis.
c. We also recently enhanced the Accessibility Fund. We did it in August this year. This Accessibility Fund provides grants to private building owners who undertake voluntary upgrading to improve the inclusiveness of their buildings. Under the enhanced Accessibility Fund, we have expanded the eligibility criteria to support more building owners in the construction of Universal Design features. So we encourage more private building owners, please tap on this fund, make good use of it, and make a real difference to the people who use your buildings.
Enabling Village as a Model for Liveability and Inclusiveness
7. The Enabling Village aims to provide a place where people of all abilities can learn, work and pursue leisure activities independently, feel accepted for who they are, and be valued for their contributions. The development exemplifies liveability and inclusiveness in design, in a few ways:
a. It is designed with sustainability in mind through adaptive reuse of what is actually an old school building. The development incorporates nature and greenery in the design, with the inclusion of natural ponds and foliage that attracts and supports a wide spectrum of biodiversity.
b. It is also designed to maximise social impact by providing training pathways and integrated employment services, and catalysing new disability-inclusive services and facilities, such as the first inclusive pre-school and gym, accessible supermarket and resource centre on assistive technology.
c. Since Enabling Village was set up, it has provided over 9,000 training and employment opportunities for persons with disabilities.
8. The Enabling Village will build on its success and provide more innovative support options for persons with disabilities and their caregivers by providing holistic programmes through the addition of a new four-storey building extension by 2024. SG Enable will continue to work with like-minded stakeholders to contribute towards building an inclusive society and enabling lives.
9. On this note, I am very pleased to join all of you in launching the “Design Playbook for Inclusive Spaces” to mark the start of Enabling Village’s extension plans. This playbook by SG Enable and STUCK Design distils key principles and ideas on how spaces can be made more inclusive, beyond just physical accessibility. Often, that is a real challenge for all of us.
a. Combining placemaking with the needs and aspirations of persons with disabilities, their caregivers and inclusive organisations, this playbook seeks to inspire all to create and design more inclusive experiences for everyone.
b. With the principles in this playbook, SG Enable will jointly-create inclusive spaces, programmes and experiences at the Enabling Village with its partners, and demonstrate how we can foster innovative, caring and resilient communities with inclusive spaces.
Conclusion
10. I am confident that all of you here at the Enabling Village will serve as a model for other developers to learn from you, and have a common ambition to create more liveable and inclusive cities. We look forward to more ideas and initiatives from SG Enable to enhance our living environment.
11. Once again, congratulations to our colleagues at SG Enable, for receiving the ULI Global Award for Excellence.