Singapore: Asia’s smart city – or what’s Singapore’s secret sauce ?
Singapore has led the smart city stampede in Asia with a plethora of innovative projects and a comprehensive city wide plan. I have been able to work with many entities to advise Singapore Government agencies such as URA, HDB, PUB and academic bodies such as NUS, SUTD and NTU and many of the local property developers.
Many people see Singapore as an example of a smart city ( not withstanding different rankings in smart city indices and that’s a whole other topic I will expand upon later ) and it really is in my opinion; formed over 10 years of living and working in Singapore. So what is the “secret sauce” then that makes Singapore a smart city ? I think it is actually quite simple and can be summarised thus:
- Density – the little red dot as it is affectionately known is very small which allows for high density and the accompanying high quality infrastructure that is smaller in size or length buty higher in volumes of use; hence efficiency.
- Good Planning – Singapore has many government agencies that look after the various vertical domains of the city state such as land use, planning, housing, water, energy and transport.
- PMO Smart City – most cities now around the world have a smart city plan of some sort but very few have an organisation to provide direction and oversight to the smart city plan. Singapore is one city that actually has one. It seems to function more in an oversight manner, which is very sound, and leaves actual design and engineering decisions to the various agencies which of course have the expertise and experience within that particular domain. The PMO works very much across agencies which is a system that works very well in Singapore and provides both guidance and direction without an over focus on compliance.
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