Blog

The deployment of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) in cities is an exciting development and we currently see them being tested in a growing number of trials in many cities around the world. In this post, we share some preliminary findings from a Driverless Mobility Dialogue hosted by the Centre and the Sustainable Urban Mobility Research Laboratory at SUTD.

LKYCIC Research Fellow Sam Chng discusses Singapore’s e-scooter ban on a CNA Podcast.

Digital participation has become a hot topic in recent years, whereby traditional methods of gathering feedback from the public – Town Halls, workshops and meetings – are increasingly being augmented by online tools. In this blog post we explore the potential for existing digital collaboration platforms such as GitHub to support participatory planning.

Since the early days of independence, the Singapore government has tried and tested various modes of engagement with its constituents. Many of the earlier iterations of engagement consisted of campaigns to communicate policies and national development goals; however, with time, these methods of engagement began to take on different shapes and forms, and have adopted collaborative elements in an effort to experiment with more participatory, interactive dialogue.

Global food waste is a complex problem that threatens food security and environmental sustainability. It points towards massive inefficiencies and severe mismanagement of resources in the global food network.

Many people find it difficult to identify the value of smart cities. Smart city icons can bridge that understanding and social divides by empowering people.

Singapore’s route to urban transformation is often narrated as a success story that gave rise to a sleek cityscape of modern skyscrapers, preserved shophouses and iconic public housing estates. What used to be a society housed primarily in low-density village-like ‘kampungs’ in the pre-independence era was quickly transformed into dense residential high rises where roughly 80% of the population now lives. In doing so, the Housing Development Board (HDB) tried to balance the need for density and land optimization with maintaining the close-knit bonds and communities common in the kampungs.

Towards a research agenda on what innovation in government consists of, how the current focus on innovation may be changing the public sector service delivery function, and the extent to which it is a distinct phenomenon as opposed to previous cycles of governmental reform efforts.

If cities are at the center of so much innovation, as is commonly argued, do we adequately understand innovative processes and innovative outcomes at the city level? Moreover, are cities tracking the innovative activities occurring in their midst? Could the goals of supporting innovation be better realized if innovative activity was better understood at an urban scale?

In our new, rapidly changing societies – perhaps the way forward is not to try to tightly control new innovations, but to have the right government structure to safely try new things, respond quickly, evaluate, adjust and adapt.