Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the Urban Land Institute Singapore Conference 2022
Feb 22, 2022
Introduction
A very good afternoon and thank you for inviting me to this year’s ULI Singapore Conference.
Let me first start by thanking all of you at ULI for your partnership in our ongoing Long-Term Plan Review, or LTPR.
We are currently reviewing Singapore’s long-term plans, to imagine what our city might look like, 50 years from now. We take stock of these plans every ten years. And as part of this work, we engage widely with Singaporeans, to gather their ideas and aspirations.
ULI helped to host one of these public engagements recently. I’d like to thank everyone who helped to put the session together, as well as the participants who contributed their thoughts and suggestions to us.
Such engagements – both by my colleagues at URA, but also by partners such as ULI – are vital, because we want to give everyone a voice in planning for Singapore’s future together.
Today, I’d like to share some updates from our Long-Term Plan Review – some of the ideas that we’ve gathered, and the broad themes that we’re working on. And I look forward to our dialogue later and hearing from you.
A City and a Country
City planning in Singapore is quite different from what other cities have to do.
We are small, densely-populated, and also the only sovereign city-state, responsible for our own defence and foreign relations. What this means is we need to find space for all the things that a fully sovereign country needs, within the confines of one and only one city – including things that larger countries can site far away from their cities, such as airports, sea ports, incineration plants, military bases and so on.
This poses a big challenge, and colleagues who have been working on this for so many years and decades, they will know that it means we have to be very disciplined and very creative and innovative in our use of land. It’s not just about finding space for different needs. It’s also about putting different uses together in a sensible way, so that they complement one another, and help our city to flourish.
And it’s about planning for the long term – using and reusing our scarce land judiciously, and leaving enough buffer and flexibility for the uncertain needs of our future generations.
In this process, we will have to make difficult trade-offs – balancing between competing needs today, but also between present needs and future needs.
So in working with people to imagine our future Singapore would look like, we also need to help everyone understand these trade-offs. That even as we strive to meet everyone’s aspirations today, we will also have to give and take, and make space for one another.
With this in mind, we have reached out to over 5,800 Singaporeans since last year, to understand their values, their concerns, and their hopes for our future city. We’ve also held in-depth discussions with over 1,000 participants, and reached out to over 7,000 others through webinars and other platforms.
We’ve distilled what people shared with us into 4 key aspirations. First, for us to be an
inclusive city, that meets the needs of people from all walks of life. Second, to be an
adaptable city, that is resilient to future shocks, including the pandemic that we’re living with today. Third, to be a
sustainable city, in light of existential threats like climate change. And finally, to be a
distinctive and endearing city that is ultimately home.
From there, we discussed how we could achieve these four aspirations, while balancing the various trade-offs.
Let me share some of our findings so far, under four key themes: the Future of Work, Future of Living, Future of Mobility, and the Future of our Environment.
Future of Work
Let me start with the Future of Work.
Even before the pandemic, we've been decentralising our city, to bring jobs closer to homes outside the city centre, and to reduce congestion in our Central Business District (CBD). In fact, our plans for polycentres such as the Jurong Lake District – which is meant to be a second CBD, Paya Lebar Central and others were first conceived as part of the 1991 Concept Plan Review. It takes decades to put these plans into action.
Today, the impact of COVID-19 has given us an added impetus for decentralisation. It’s become more important to make our city less crowded, to slow down the spread of the virus and protect public health. If you centralise, every day there will be huge flows of people on public transport and the roads, moving into the city, and every evening, in the opposite direction. And the pandemic has accelerated the rise of digitalisation and telecommuting, transforming what work looks like for many of us – with trends like Work-From-Home and Work-Away-From-Office taking shape.
Given these trends, we’re pressing on with decentralisation, while considering other complementary strategies too.
One idea that has come up in our discussions is to cater for more flexible workspaces.
In individual workplaces, this could mean reconfiguring spaces so that they can be adapted to different uses easily. New types of spaces such as ‘Zoom pods’ or enclosed booths for virtual meetings may become more commonplace. I visited some new buildings that have recently opened, and spoke to some the tenants, they showed me around. I asked them what was their plan before COVID, and what have they done since COVID. They showed me plans and what they have done - they have reconfigured the space, new-fangled concepts came to the fore, and they’ve brought them into fruition.
On a larger scale, we may need to fit-out office buildings, or even malls, libraries and other community facilities, with more co-working spaces. For example, we are trying out work booths in community spaces like our Community Clubs. Should we inject more co-working spaces in our residential estates, such as among our heartland commercial spaces? Would the design of our homes and HDB flats need to change, to better accommodate working from home?
Our CBD will also need to adapt. We’ve been working with the private sector to inject more housing and mixed-use developments in the CBD, so that it doesn’t just empty out after working hours. Now, we are also exploring time-sharing arrangements to enliven our CBD 24/7. For instance, co-working spaces could double up as recreational or event spaces at night or on weekends. And through the Strategic Development Incentive (SDI) scheme, we support the owners of older buildings in areas like the CBD and Orchard Road, to redevelop their buildings into exciting projects that could transform their environment.
Future of Living
The second theme is the Future of Living.
Singaporeans’ housing needs are diverse and evolving. We provide housing not just for Singaporeans, but also for people who come to Singapore to live, work and play here, and contribute to our society. In the past, our priority was to house a newly independent nation. Some 60 years ago, many still lived in slums, villages and squatter settlements. So we built many flats quickly, to provide Singaporeans with proper shelter, water and electricity. And back then, families were used to living together, across generations. I was just having a conversation with my dad a couple of nights ago, and reminiscing how in the past, in the village – the whole family and extended family would live in kampong houses, and us swimming in the drains and in the ponds, and how different things have become over the decades.
Indeed, over the years, our standards of living have risen, and our aspirations changed.
Today, many Singaporeans hope to go beyond basic housing, to live in a pleasant and high-quality environment, near commercial amenities and green spaces, and they just want more space generally.
Many also desire privacy at a younger age. Married couples and younger singles often wish to have a place of their own, instead of living with their parents.
We recognise these aspirations, and we strive to meet them – while balancing against our land constraints and our other objectives, such as keeping housing affordable for everyone.
At the same time, as our population rapidly ages, we will need to take better care of our seniors.
On a macro scale, we need enough healthcare facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes and step-down care, to meet the projected rise in demand.
On a micro scale, our public spaces, buildings and homes should be designed to support our seniors in their daily lives. There is one statistic, 1 in 10 seniors suffer from dementia today, a number that will likely rise with time. So we will need to make local neighbourhoods a lot more dementia-friendly.
During our engagements, Singaporeans suggested various ideas to make our living environment more supportive for seniors – such as new housing models and designs.
We are already trying some of these innovations today. For instance, HDB has launched specially-designed 3Gen flats, dual-keys and dual-entrances, that encourage multi-generational families to live together. Integrated developments – like Kampung Admiralty which has been operating for a few years, and another one that is coming up in Yew Tee – integrate housing with social, healthcare, communal and other facilities, so that seniors can meet their needs easily and conveniently. And we are piloting a new type of flats, the Community Care Apartments, which integrate senior-friendly housing with care services, communal spaces and programmes – so that seniors can enjoy community living, while having their care needs met. These have been well received. So in a sense we start to see infrastructure being fused with services, health and social services. For rental housing, it is increasingly being fused with social services, as part of a whole package.
We’re also exploring ways to make the broader living environment more conducive for healthy living – so infrastructure and preventive healthcare. We announced a pilot Health District @ Queenstown last October. Queenstown is a very old town, it is being rejuvenated. We are taking the chance to inject new housing, redesigning and reimaging the whole town, but also infusing preventive healthcare for the entire population that will visit the town in future. We’ll work with National University Health System and community partners to make design and programming interventions in the Queenstown estate, to promote preventive health. How can infrastructure design of housing and communal spaces, coupled with programming and activities, help make living a lot more healthy upstream.
Besides our seniors, we want to make our city more inclusive for other groups too, including persons with disabilities or special needs. In fact, over the weekend I had a dialogue with some parents of adult children with special needs, and they were wondering how their children would continue with life after they’re gone, and asking for some solutions for housing for persons with disabilities. We recently launched the Accessible City Network, which will bring the public, private and people sectors together – not conceptually, but literally on the ground, in the communities, to make our city more accessible for persons with disabilities – people on wheelchairs, mobility devices, people with their white canes, people who move around using guide dogs, and people with more invisible disabilities, like intellectual disabilities as well as autism, how we can make it more accessible. And you do this by paying close attention to their actual lived experience on the ground, at their workspace, whether it’s at Raffles Place or in the heartlands, commuting from home to a transport node, to the hawker centre, to the shopping mall.
And finally, housing policies like the prime location public housing (PLH) model and our Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) help to keep our residential estates diverse and inclusive.
Future of Mobility
The third theme is the Future of Mobility – how we transport both people and things around our city.
Fifty years ago, Singapore’s first long-term plan – which we called the Concept Plan of 1971 – proposed setting up a nationwide rail transport system. This was seen as a radical idea at the time, and a very costly investment, compared to the cheaper bus-only alternative. But it proved to be a far-sighted vision, and our MRT network today is the backbone of our public transport system.
The next fifty years could see a similarly revolutionary transformation of our transport networks.
First, we’re pushing for a much greener and more sustainable transportation network. Over a tenth of our CO2 emissions currently comes from vehicles on our roads.
So we’re redoubling our efforts to green our vehicles, and an important part of this is to transition as rapidly as we can to electric vehicles (EVs). We will phase out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2040, and we’re providing incentives for EV adoption. Last year, the EV share of new car registrations was around 4%, compared to 0.2% in the year before. So we’re making progress, but we need to press on. As shared during the Budget speech, to better support this transition, we will build even more charging stations nearer our homes where we live. We’ll need to overhaul our infrastructure massively to prepare for EVs.
Besides this, we continue to expand our MRT and cycling networks significantly too, to reduce our reliance on cars.
In the longer term, we are looking at whether we can sink more of our transport network underground, to free up land above ground to reconnect communities and to allow more people-centric uses like recreation or housing. Many of our MRT lines and stations are already underground. We have also put roads and highways underground, such as the MCE tunnel, which has allowed us to repurpose part of the ECP that previously cut through the city centre. We will continue to study where an underground approach could be fruitful – some suggestions include the Ayer Rajah Expressway, or more pedestrian links underneath Orchard Road.
Even further into the future, cutting-edge technology may thoroughly transform urban mobility. Autonomous vehicles, flying taxis, delivery drones – not too long ago might have been dismissed as science fiction. But today, they are being tested by cities all around the world. In Singapore for instance, we have trialled our first revenue-collecting driverless or autonomous bus services, on Jurong Island and in Science Park 2. We will continue to monitor these and other trials, and prepare the necessary infrastructure, rules and regulations, incentives, and digital systems – so that these new forms of transport can be scaled up safely and quickly, when ready.
It’s worth mentioning that among the many ideas we gathered from Singaporeans, one priority stood out – that even as we plan for new forms of mobility, we should ensure that effective transport remains accessible to the vast majority of Singaporeans.
We share these views – public transport is likely to remain central to our system, as we continue to improve and complement our existing bus and MRT services.
Future of Environment
Finally, the theme of the Future of the Environment.
My colleague, Minister Lawrence Wong, announced during the Budget last Friday that we will raise our ambition to achieve net zero emissions by or around 2050.
We also announced our intention to publish a Green Bond Framework and issue $35 billion of green bonds by 2030 to fund public sector green infrastructure projects.
Along with this, we significantly revised our carbon tax trajectory. We will raise our carbon tax fivefold in 2024 and 2025, with a view to raising it tenfold or more by 2030, compared to $5 per tonne of emissions today.
We made these moves because we are committed to securing a sustainable long-term future for Singapore, and have a better sense of the likely maturity of technology, as well as high trust green carbon certificates.
So it is very encouraging that many Singaporeans also consider climate change and the environment a top priority – as we saw from our LTPR engagements. We received many suggestions on this.
For example, many thought we could do more to green our buildings.
Indeed, we are pushing for sustainability to be a core part of the entire building cycle – from upstream architectural design, to the construction materials and processes, and downstream to maintenance and facilities management.
As just one example, the NUS School of Design and Environment Four, or SDE4, is Singapore’s first net-zero energy building. It uses naturally ventilated spaces and a hybrid cooling system to enhance air quality and circulation, and to provide thermal comfort.
Beyond buildings, we also plan for sustainability at a wider district level. For example, we use computer simulations to study the urban heat island effect, so that we can modify building heights, orientations, and other parameters, to lower temperatures by capitalising on natural wind flow.
In addition, we are tapping on under-utilised spaces to meet our sustainability targets. To generate more renewable energy, we’re installing solar panels on the roof of HDB blocks and on the surface of reservoirs, including one of the world’s largest inland floating solar farms on Tengeh Reservoir, covering some 45ha. And to grow more food to meet 30% of our nutritional needs locally by 2030, we’re setting up urban farms on the rooftops of some of our HDB multi-storey carparks.
Beyond the built environment, many Singaporeans felt it was important to conserve our green spaces and live in harmony with nature.
In line with this, we are transforming Singapore into a City in Nature. We are weaving nature much more closely into our urban fabric, coursing veins through the city, so that nature can thrive within and throughout, in our highly urbanised city. To do this, we take a science-based approach, to incorporate ecological considerations into our long-term land-use planning.
We aim to go beyond just a “sustainable” approach that minimises the damage done to the natural environment, to a more “restorative” approach, where we heal past damage caused, and actively restore natural habitats.
In the future, perhaps we could go even further, toward a “regenerative” city, one that does more for the environment than it seeks to takes away.
Conclusion
Let me conclude. Our Long-Term plan review has helped us better understand what Singaporeans value, as we build our future city together. Our future city must reflect the aspirations of present and future generations, but mindful also that how we design our city – accidentally or deliberately, will also have a significant impact on the way we live our lives.
And we’ve gathered bold ideas that challenge the status quo, and push us to unshackle our thinking, as we dream about the Futures of Work, Living, Mobility and the Environment.
For example, we heard suggestions to use a entire floor of HDB blocks for community spaces or co-working facilities, or to provide HDB flats with no internal walls at all, so that new homeowners can easily adapt them to fit their own preferences. Now already for newer HDB designs, we push the pillars, the columns, to the outer margins of the flat, and allow people to make some adjustments. Some Singaporeans thought we should ensure that building rooftops can facilitate drone deliveries, for e-commerce. Others suggested mobile supermarkets that could bring amenities closer to residents. Some even imagined that we might one day have a “hyperloop” – with vacuum tubes that propel transport pods at high speeds throughout the city.
These are just some of the creative ideas that were raised, and we will consider all of them and more, as we weigh their implications and review our long-term plans. Because you are really not talking about next year or the end of the decade, but half a century from today.
Given our limited land supply, we cannot afford to leave our city’s development to chance.
We must continue to plan for the long term, and steward our land and environment for future generations, while building flexibility into our plans, so that we can adapt nimbly no matter what the future brings.
In doing so, we need to tap on the wisdom and experience of everyone who lives here – because we all have a stake in the shared future of the city.
We hope you will continue with us on this journey, and I look forward to our discussion later. Thank you.