Speech by SMS Tan Kiat How at the Urban Lab Exhibition 2025 - Well-being in the City: Innovating Healthy Living
Apr 1, 2025
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am glad to join you at the launch of the Urban Lab Exhibition on “Well-being in the City: Innovating Healthy Living”.
This exhibition is part of the URA’s Draft Master Plan 2025 public engagements.
A key focus is shaping a happy and healthy city – one that supports our people’s physical, social and mental well-being.
Introduction
Singapore ranks among the healthiest cities in the world.
And we have consistently made health and well-being a key consideration in planning our built environment.
From our early years as a nation, we made every effort to ensure that Singaporeans had access to clean water and good sanitation, and tackled overcrowding.
This made a big difference in tackling challenges to public health and curbed the spread of infectious diseases within the community.
Our pioneers were also committed to greening our city and bringing public parks, community spaces and making sure that sports facilities are accessible in our neighbourhoods. These spaces are vital in fostering community bonding through common activities and give people places to unwind and spend time with loved ones.
Enabling Active Lifestyles – Physical Health
We are continuing to inject infrastructure like sports and recreational facilities in our neighbourhoods to encourage physical activity. Last year, we engaged the public on future recreation options as part of the Recreation Master Plan.
NParks will be expanding its network of parks and park connectors over the next five years, developing more than 25 new parks and over 50km of park connectors.
However, beyond infrastructure, we are also studying how we can better encourage people to make full use of these amenities.
[New] For instance, researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) found that people’s perceptions of the temperature and comfort of their environment is affected not only by the actual temperature but by the colours in their physical environment too.
This suggests that the visual elements in our neighbourhoods could be designed more purposefully, to better encourage people to go outdoors and be active.
Fostering Thoughtful Environments – Mental Health
Beyond physical health, greenery can also provide thoughtful spaces to improve people’s mental well-being.
Increasingly, research has shown that greenery can have significant therapeutic effects on mental health.
In line with our vision for City in Nature, we are making our green spaces more accessible and inclusive.
We have done so by introducing more therapeutic landscapes and pro-health features into our parks and gardens to enhance mental well-being.
To date, we have established 17 therapeutic gardens within our parks island-wide, more than halfway to our target of 30 by 2030.
This would provide residents with more accessible spaces to relax, unwind and connect with nature.
We are also exploring science-based approaches to enhance the therapeutic effects of urban greenery.
In 2022, NParks and NUS published a study on how contemplative landscapes could better promote mental well-being.
This could be done through curating of the colour and density of greenery and lighting of the surrounding landscapes.
Findings from the study were translated into NParks’ online “Design Guidelines for Contemplative Landscapes” for landscape professionals.
These principles have been applied to the newly opened Bidadari Park.
We are also studying how they can be enhanced and optimised to accommodate multifunctional uses.
To this end, we have recently awarded a research project under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2025 Cities of Tomorrow R&D programme to Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) to study how green spaces such as Nature Ways and park connectors can better facilitate connectivity for people and biodiversity.
The research results could help us design better green spaces to support community activities and boost usage of these green spaces.
Creating Vibrant Communities – Social Health
Beyond physical and mental health, our city aims to foster stronger social health and community ties, so that the “hardware” of our neighbourhoods forms the foundation for the “heartware” of our communities.
We have already begun building the “hardware” in the form of integrated community hubs like One Punggol and Active Ageing Centres (AACs) to provide spaces for residents and seniors to participate in recreational and social activities.
To help encourage usage of these spaces, Singhealth Community Hospitals and Singapore Land Authority have jointly developed the Living Asset Map which helps health practitioners to link their patients to nearby amenities and activities.
Views of residents are crucial in co-creating these spaces.
For example, SUTD, Changi General Hospital, and SAA Architects collaborated closely with residents to build the Pelatok Art Farm in Changi-Simei, using upcycled materials.
The Farm continues to serve as a vibrant meeting-ground for residents to engage in art, gardening, or other leisure activities, bringing the community closer together.
Conclusion
The planning for our living environments will have to constantly evolve so as to remain agile to meet emerging demographic and health needs.
Singapore is a rapidly ageing society. By 2030, more than one in four residents will be aged 65 or older. We need to narrow the gap between the expected lifespan and “health span” – how long we are able to live independent and healthy lives. To do so, we need to ensure that our neighbourhoods remain liveable and inclusive.
Under Age Well SG, we recently expanded the scope of the Estate Upgrading Programme (EUP) and introduced EUP for Silver Estates. This will help make our estates safer and more comfortable for our seniors.
For homes, we have also recently announced that we will expand the EASE programme, previously only available for HDB senior residents to now include our senior households living in private properties.
What I have shared today are just some examples of innovative projects displaed here. Shaping Singapore as a healthy city is an ongoing effort involving the public, private and people sectors.
To support this, we have made ‘Liveability and Healthy Cities’ one of our key research thrusts under the RIE 2030, Cities of Tomorrow (CoT) R&D programme.
More proposals will be showcased at the Draft Master Plan 2025 exhibition in June.
Where possible, we will scale up these efforts to shape Singapore into a Happy Healthy City.
Together, we can shape a more liveable, inclusive and endearing home for all, and for many generations to come. Thank you.