| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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Research
Research at the Centre focuses on studies of Singapore’s planning, development and governance since Singapore’s independence. The objective of these retrospective studies is to distil and document important lessons from our development journey. The Centre’s research process involves extensive interviews with Singapore’s urban pioneers and collaboration with relevant agencies. The retrospective thematic studies are published under the Urban Systems Studies and has covered themes such as Sustainable Environment: Balancing Growth and the Environment; Land Acquisition and Resettlement: Securing Resources for Development; and Financing a City: Developing Foundations for Sustainable Growth.
The Centre also conducts forward-looking research into emerging challenges and issues related to liveability and sustainability. A collaborative approach is taken in the Centre’s research where the Centre works with government agencies, private organisations and people sector organisations. For example, the Centre has worked with organisations such as the Urban Land Institute, Royal Dutch Shell and the Urban Redevelopment Authority to study community engagement, liveability in high-density cities, energy, and active mobility.
Promotion
The Centre promotes knowledge sharing with partners through a series of local and global platforms and awards. The World Cities Summit (WCS) is a biennial premier platform for global government leaders and industry experts to address liveable and sustainable city challenges, share integrated urban solutions and forge new partnerships. WCS programming focuses on strategic thought leadership and dialogue among leaders on integrated urban development and sustainable governance practices, with exclusive forum sessions including the WCS Mayors Forum and WCS Young Leaders Symposium. These platforms are meant to promote peer-to-peer sharing of best-practices between city leaders as well as to facilitate companies and international organisations’ sharing of sustainable urban solutions with city leaders. The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize also highlights exemplary case studies of successful sustainable urban development.
Knowledge and research is also shared through various platforms such as periodicals and events. Our periodicals, including the monthly CLC e-Newsletter and biannual Urban Solutions publication, reach over 30,000 recipients. The online version of the Urban Solutions is at
(http://www.clc.gov.sg/Publications/urbansolutions.htm).
The CLC Lecture Series creates a platform to discuss and share knowledge on urban sustainability issues. Past lectures have featured environment and sustainability experts, addressing biodiversity, greenery, water management and conservation issues. Details of the Lecture Series, are at
(http://www.clc.gov.sg/Events/clclectureseries.htm).
Capability Development
The Centre designs and conducts capability development programmes for local urban sector practitioners comprising mid-level to high-level officers from the public and private sector. The programmes, anchored around CLC’s Liveability Framework and facilitated by a series of modules on Singapore’s urban systems aim to familiarise the participants with Singapore’s challenges and development journey to transform itself into the highly liveable city it is today. The modules, presented by sector experts and pioneers, highlight how Singapore effectively managed its development trade-offs and ensured a sustainable clean, green and liveable environment. The take-aways are also reinforced through site visits and learning journeys to projects as ABC Waters project (Bishan-Ang Mo Kio park), the Singapore river, Clean Tech park etc. These programmes also encourage deeper understanding of sector strategies and policies through group project assignments. As Singapore continues to develop and face new complex challenges, the programmes encourage the participants to reflect on policies and strategies to be adopted to ensure Singapore’s high liveability and continued sustainability.
The Centre’s capability development programmes also reach out to an international audience of city leaders and decision makers through its anchor programme, the Temasek Foundation Leaders in Urban Governance Programme (TFLUGP). This programme focuses on sharing lessons from Singapore’s development experience with high-level city leaders and emphasises the use of specific projects and action plans to put the lessons to practice.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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Domestically, the Centre works with agencies to capture and distil Singapore’s developmental experience, and promotes the Singapore model to the international audience of city planners, experts, business leaders etc. This in turn positions Singapore as an epitome of urban development and attracts international organisations, businesses and governments to look to Singapore for intellectual and business exchanges, thus value-adding to the domestic economy.
In addition, the Centre receives guidance from its Advisory Board, comprising senior figures from academia, industry and the public sector. A high-level panel of Distinguished Advisors - comprising prominent former politicians and senior civil servants - contributes to the intellectual development of the Centre. The Centre also engages a group of distinguished experts, i.e., CLC Experts, who are domain experts with technical knowledge and expertise that the Centre will tap for future consultancy projects.
In the international realm, the Centre actively engages a network of urban experts and partners to undertake forward looking researches to have an in-depth understanding of the region’s development and best practices, which will be translated back to the local agencies for knowledge and capacity building.
The Centre also works closely with other partner organisations and entities to share knowledge about liveable cities and sustainable development, as well as jointly promote such concepts at relevant platforms. The Centre also works with these organisations to develop relevant capability development programmes, or to solicit support and sponsorship for the Centre’s flagship events. Till date, the Centre has established partnerships with more than 200 public and private organisations.
In addition, the CLC Visiting Fellowship is a programme for distinguished researchers and practitioners to undertake research in their areas of expertise and interests. The programme is an excellent opportunity for the CLC to exchange knowledge on sustainable and liveable cities and strengthen our ties with like-minded researchers and practitioners, in the joint effort to create solutions to meet future challenges.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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Fully funded by the government, the CLC was established in June 2008 by MND & MEWR as a knowledge centre on liveable and sustainable cities which integrates across stakeholder agencies. There are currently 22 stakeholder agencies where the CEOs of these agencies form the CLC Stakeholders Steering Committee. The Committee meets regularly with the aim to guide and support CLC in achieving greater alignment. Stakeholder agencies are also encouraged to leverage the growing network and knowledge base of the Centre to advance their respective agency’s mission. At the same time, CLC aims to augment the stakeholder agencies’ knowledge-base and open-up more economic opportunities for Singapore. The participation of our stakeholders is invaluable to CLC’s success and the vision of making Singapore a global integrated urban solutions hub.
CLC has an existing staff strength of about 40. It targets to double its manpower resource by 2016. Other than full-time staff, CLC is supported by its Panel of Distinguished Advisors, Fellows and Experts. Our Distinguished Advisors and Fellows are prominent individuals who play an advisory role and CLC works closely with them to enhance its intellectual development through tapping on their wealth of knowledge and experience via oral history interviews, lectures and roundtable discussions. On the other hand, our Experts form a pool of domain experts and practitioners in the fields of technical knowledge and expertise related to CLC’s work. CLC Experts are an invaluable resource to CLC in its capacity to act as a knowledge platform and urban incubator. Based on the requirements of specific projects, CLC could tap on their relevant expertise to work together with CLC staff in active or advisory roles.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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1. CLC Liveability Framework. At the hallmark of the Centre’s work is the development of the CLC Liveability Framework. The Framework explains that the underlying systems of integrated master planning and development, and dynamic urban governance are key elements to achieve the three outcomes of a liveable and sustainable city – Competitive Economy, Sustainable Environment and High Quality of Life.
2. Urban System Studies. The series of monographs seek to unpack the systemic components that make up the city of Singapore, capturing knowledge not only within each of these systems, but also the threads that link these systems and how they make sense as a whole. The studies are scoped to venture deep into the key domain areas the Centre has identified under its Liveability Framework, attempting to address the key question: how has Singapore transformed itself to a highly liveable city and sustainable city within the last four to five decades. Since 2011, the Centre has completed 15 series of the monographs. In addition, the Centre is currently embarking on another 13 series.
3. World Cities Summit (WCS). WCS is the flagship biennial event organised by the Centre. Since 2010 where the Centre took over the organising of the WCS, the event has grown from strength to strength, with the number of countries/region growing from 49 in 2010 to 67 at the 4th WCS, 2014. The number of Ministerial and Mayor-level participants has grown over the years as well. 26 ministers and 128 mayors attended the latest edition of the WCS in 2014, which was held in conjunction with the Singapore International Water Week and CleanEnviro Summit Singapore. All three events garnered over 20,000 delegates from 133 countries and regions over four days.
4. Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize. The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize is a biennial international award that honours outstanding achievements and contributions to the creation of liveable, vibrant and sustainable urban communities around the world. The Prize is awarded to cities and recognises their key leaders and organisations for displaying foresight, good governance and innovation in tackling the many urban challenges faced, to bring about social, economic and environmental benefits in a holistic way to their communities. Cities such as Bilbao, New York and Suzhou have been named as prize laureates in 2010, 2012 and 2014 respectively.
5. Capability Development Programmes and Workshops. The Centre provides a range of capability development programmes for both local and overseas officials and city leaders. These programmes consist of cross-sector training and curriculum based on CLC’s integrated systems approach, and has proved useful in getting public officers and beyond to better appreciate Singapore’s urban challenges and what is needed to chart the way forward.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The Centre has put in place a systematic framework and platforms to monitor its strategic objectives, major initiatives and routine activities. At the highest-level platforms are the regular Stakeholders’ Meetings and the Advisory Board Meetings during which, the Centre reports its progress and achievements to the respective groups of stakeholders for their comments and suggestions. The Centre also holds regular meetings with the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of National Development, to seek strategic directions and suggestions from the Permanent Secretary.
At the Centre, annual corporate retreat and workplan planning take place to summarily take stock of the Centre’s yearly achievements and to plan ahead on its activities and projects. To this end, the Centre produces quarterly progress reports to document the current statuses of the Centre’s work, and to make forecast of its activities and projects.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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Since the Centre was established in 2008, it has faced two key challenges as highlighted below:
a. Difficulty in obtaining critical data. Approaching the public agencies for information is not always seamless, given some sensitivity involved in the nature of some of the information and data sets. Further, there is inertia from some public agencies in sharing of data, given the uncertainty in which the data and information would be used and the accountability should the data and information be mis-construed and mis-interpreted. To overcome the challenge, the Centre maintains close and regular contact with the relevant public agencies, through joint research collaborations and meetings (e.g., CLC Stakeholders’ Meetings). This is to build trust between the Centre and the various public agencies in a transparent, collaborative manner. The Centre also sends regular updates and publications to the public agencies to close the loop on the Centre’s work, and also to acknowledge the public agencies’ contributions and provision of critical information.
b. Seeking out Professionals and Experts to contribute to the Centre’s work. To ensure that the work of the Centre is holistic, the success and comprehensiveness of the Centre’s work, especially in the arena of research, hinges on the ability to identify and engage professionals and experts who have partake in Singapore’s urban planning. In this aspect, the Centre actively identifies these personnel through existing contacts or networks, and invites them to become members of the Advisory Board, Distinguished Panel of Advisors, or the Panel of Experts. The Centre would also invite them to be Fellows, or Visiting Fellows.
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