Speech by MOS Faishal at World Cities Summit 2024 Cities for People - City Network for The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize (LKYWCP Network) Convening Session
Jun 3, 2024
Introduction
A very good afternoon to all of you, and a warm welcome to the inaugural Convening Session of the City Network for Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize (LKYWCP).
Let me start by congratulating the 2024 Prize Laureate – Mexico City, and special mentions – Cape Town, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, and Wellington. These cities are of different sizes and are at developmental stages, and they have devised many innovative solutions to overcome the challenges in their unique urban contexts, to create liveable, vibrant, and sustainable urban communities.
I would also like to thank Keppel Ltd. for their continued generosity in sponsoring the Prize. I was very excited for this occasion, to listen to today’s eminent speakers and experts share about their cities.
Revitalising Our Cities: Exploring Urban Rejuvenation Strategies and Successes
Cities are dynamic entities that are constantly evolving and transforming to meet an array of global, regional and local challenges that impact their liveability and sustainability. For example, cities worldwide face common challenges like climate change, geopolitical instability, environmental degradation, and ageing populations, no matter their size or where they are. Some cities grapple with the additional challenges of declining populations, ageing infrastructure, and economic stagnation. For others, they have to contend with the reverse – rapid population growth, inadequate infrastructure, and limited resources. We see these issues manifested in the form of fragmented urban landscapes, inadequate public spaces, and the inefficient use of resources, though the extent varies from city to city.
Urban rejuvenation is a critical strategy for achieving sustainable urban development and fostering more resilient, inclusive, and prosperous communities. Cities can promote accessibility, connectivity and mixed-use development by optimising land through intensification and revitalising underutilised or neglected areas. Rejuvenation also allows cities to upgrade their infrastructure to meet the needs of their communities as their demographics change over time. For example, to prepare for an ageing population, Singapore upgrades its housing estates to make them safer and easier for seniors to age well, such as through providing more amenities that encourage active ageing and neighbourly bonding. As such, we must continue to keep pace and plan for the future, so that when our population ages or when new trends emerge – while we might not be ahead of things, we can at least be better prepared.
Beyond this, urban rejuvenation has the potential to change lives and communities for the better, by enhancing social cohesion, preventing displacement and even creating economic opportunities for our people. And here in Singapore, beyond planning, we also make sure that our policies, as well as how we deal with social development, continue to enhance our social cohesion.
So, a liveable city is an inclusive one.
It is important that as cities plan and design public spaces, they co-create them with their local communities. Through close collaboration across the public and private sectors, and partnership with stakeholders from diverse domains, city planners can leverage the best expertise and experiences to innovate and problem-solve. A city’s residents also often have good ideas for how their cities can be rejuvenated, which a city can and should tap on. By engaging their residents in the urban rejuvenation process, cities can create spaces that truly meet their needs and aspirations. This is important, as we create spaces, infrastructure and building facilities for the people.
As a local Member of Parliament, I spend a lot of time walking the ground and getting feedback on what needs to be done – and this is an important part of how we meet residents’ needs and engage in local planning. And increasingly, as Minister Desmond Lee had shared yesterday, we should continue to work with partners to co-create together – and that is the way to go as we embark on our journey of making our cities better and meeting the needs of our people.
So in the same way, cities must work together to navigate the challenges they face. No city can stand alone. By coming together, we can exchange insights, co-create solutions, and push boundaries in our endeavour to make better cities for our people.
This is why Singapore embarked on collaborations with other cities, such as in China on the Suzhou Industrial Park and Tianjin Eco-City. In fact, when Singapore and China launched the Tianjin Eco-City project in 2008, we had set out specifically to pioneer a model of sustainable urban development for cities, which can be replicated elsewhere. This was a far-sighted project, launched at a time when climate action was not a global priority like today. When the project first started, the site comprised only barren land, salt pans and polluted waterbodies. In the short span of 15 years, we have built a liveable and environmentally-friendly home for over 150,000 people and 30,000 businesses.
The Eco-City has also opened up new partnership possibilities for our people to jointly test-bed new solutions. For example, Moovita, a Singapore company, is piloting its autonomous vehicle fleet in the Eco-City, while Keppel Land China is expanding its suite of smart and sustainable solutions in developments there. In the next bound of the project, we will unlock more of such collaboration opportunities, as Singapore and China jointly facilitate the development of the Eco-City as China’s upgraded ‘National Green Development Demonstration Zone’ for low-carbon growth.
We are also partnering our Indonesian colleagues on knowledge exchanges to support the development of a sustainable and liveable Nusantara, Indonesia’s new capital.
LKYWCP Network Convening Session
Singapore wants to keep building on and promoting such meaningful collaborations. This is why we established the LKYWCP Network, to facilitate knowledge sharing and deeper conversations among cities that have also achieved remarkable successes in urban rejuvenation and to spur further innovation in sustainable urban development.
Today, we hold our inaugural Convening Session as part of the 2024 World Cities Summit. In line with the theme of this session – “Revitalising Our Cities: Exploring Urban Rejuvenation Strategies and Successes”, we have invited speakers from highly esteemed cities, including the 2024 Prize cities, to share a diversity of key urban rejuvenation strategies they have adopted to address the challenges in their cities. I look forward to hearing from them.
Conclusion
Let me conclude.
The challenges that our cities face are immense, but they are not insurmountable. Let us work together, share knowledge, and support one another, to create liveable, vibrant and sustainable cities for ourselves and our future generations.
I wish all of you a dynamic and fruitful session. Thank you.