Delivering Sustainable Urbanisation in ASEAN CITIES

Centre for Liveable Cities Executive Director Khoo Teng Chye spoke recently at the ASEAN Connectivity Symposium, an annual event for stakeholders to exchange perspectives and recommendations to address the challenges, opportunities and ideas in achieving a well-connected ASEAN. The theme for this year’s symposium was “Harnessing opportunities and addressing challenges in the implementation of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC) 2025”.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

ASEAN’s rapid urbanisation
ASEAN is rapidly urbanising. 47% of its population now live in cities. By 2030, another 90 million people will live in its cities. ASEAN has some of the biggest megacities in the world like Manila (12.9 million), Jakarta (10.3 million) and Bangkok (9.3 million); mature cities like Singapore (5.6 million) and Kuala Lumpur (6.8 million), and fast emerging cities like Ho Chi Minh City (7.3 million), Yangon (4.8 million) and Phnom Penh (1.7 million).

But some of the fastest growing ASEAN cities are the 89 medium-sized cities that are growing at more than 6% annually. Examples include Denpasar (the capital of Bali province experiences an annual growth of 6.49% and contributes 1.5% to Indonesia’s GDP), Batam (has an annual growth of 6.57% and contributes 1.7% of Indonesia’s GDP), Hanoi (the capital of Vietnam with an annual growth of 8.25% growth forms 13.7% of Vietnam’s GDP), and Vientiane (the capital of Laos spurs an annual growth of 11% growth and makes up 49.2% of the country’s GDP).

The challenge is, how do we ensure sustainable urbanisation?

ASEAN Connectivity Plan
The ASEAN Connectivity Plan goes some way towards this goal, with its five pillars, one of which is sustainable infrastructure. The deployment of sustainable urban development models is a major initiative.

Is there a good model for liveable and sustainable cities?

CLC Mission
This is the very question Singapore asked itself some eight years ago, when we were developing our Sustainable Development Blueprint. My centre, the Centre for Liveable Cities, was set up to research this question, paying particular attention to Singapore’s own experience, as we are both a city as well as a nation. We have had to develop sustainably given our severe resource constraints in terms of land, water, energy and even food.

Our centre’s Mission is to distil, create and share knowledge on liveable and sustainable cities. We undertake research, capacity development programmes, convene knowledge sharing platforms and provide advisory services.

CLC Focus Areas & Output
Our research has focused primarily on documenting as case studies the Singapore experience in various urban areas like urban planning and governance, housing, environmental management, greenery, and transport. We call these studies Urban Systems Studies. (USSs).

We make use of these cases in our training programmes led by experts who are practitioners (many are retired CEOs or specialist chiefs).

Singapore then & now
In the fifties and early sixties, our population was less than 2 million, but we had very serious problems of urbanisation gone wrong…overcrowded slums in the city centre, polluted rivers, severe traffic congestion, drought, floods, crime and disease. We were certainly not a very liveable city then. Our population has tripled to 5.6 million, and yet we are today cleaner, greener and much more liveable.

CLC Liveability Matrix
Unlike many of the world’s most liveable cities which are low density, Singapore’s urban development path is one of increasing liveability even as we densified. This is a model that we think is relevant to many ASEAN cities.

CLC produced a matrix to plot the liveability of cities according to Mercer’s 2016 Quality of Living index against the city population density. Singapore’s development path is shown in this diagram.

Singapore Liveability Framework
From our research, we think the principles that have worked for Singapore’s successful urban development can be depicted in this diagram that we call our Liveability Framework. It is essentially about balancing the liveability outcomes of quality of life, environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness. Ensuring that these outcomes can be achieved sustainably require 2 key prerequisites: integrated master planning and development, and dynamic urban governance.

Singapore Liveability
This urban systems approach has enabled Singapore to house 80% of its population in public housing in self-contained, socially inclusive HDB towns, or communities. These are easily connected to the the city centre and other towns by a network of public transport, including buses and MRT. Greenery is pervasive. In fact, Singapore became greener as our density increased over the years. We are now also becoming blue, with the ABC waters programme, and our goal is to become a City in Nature so that we can become even more liveable as we continue to grow. All this is made possible by good integrated planning and development and dynamic urban governance.

Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize
But our centre has also been monitoring other successful cities through an award, the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize. These cities are those that have demonstrated best practices in ensuring Liveability and sustainability: Bilbao in Spain, New York, Suzhou in China and Medellin in Columbia. All these cities have shown the ability to turn around from difficult urban conditions to be liveable and sustainable cities. They do demonstrate that the principles in the Singapore Liveability Framework apply to many other successful cities too.

CLC Knowledge Sharing
How do we share this knowledge on sustainable urban development models?

CLC does this in 3 ways:
1) through formal training programmes
2) sharing through knowledge platforms and
3) providing advisory services.

CLC Capability Development
CLC trains city leaders including Mayors, CEOs of cities and senior Government officials typically in a 5-day Leaders in Urban Governance Programme (LUGP). During the 5 day Programme, which is run more like a Workshop, participants are guided through the USSs on Singapore by experts who are often retired senior civil servants who have had the actual experience in the cases they share with the group. They also go through carefully curated learning journeys. The most important part of the Workshop is when participants discuss cases of their own cities which they share with experts who make suggestions on how they apply the LF to more systematically tackle the problems they face. The outcomes are translated into action plans which are shared at the end of the workshop. The centre keeps in touch with participants after they leave and often make follow up visits or further training. Since 2010, the CLC has conducted 40 programmes, and trained 1,561 officials from 48 countries. Some cities have followed up with further training, for example, the Mayor of Quezon City requested CLC to train 60 of his officials so that they could all understand the same principles and work in an integrated way to plan for the city. Sri Lanka also asked CLC to train 300 of their officials in several workshops conducted in Colombo and Singapore. The Mayor of Kuching North adopted the approach in our ABC Waters Programme and created his own CBS, Clean, Beautiful and Safe or Chantek, Bersih, Selamat in Bahasa Malaysia.

CLC Knowledge Platform
CLC also create platforms for cities to share their best practices and for city leaders from all over the world to meet each other as well as business leaders, NGOs, IOs and academics. Our major platform is the World Cities Summit that is held every 2 years in Singapore. The last one in 2016 attracted more than 21,000 participants from 100 cities and 1000 companies. The event is combined with the SIWW and CES, and is not just a conference but an opportunity to see practical urban solutions at the City Solutions Expo. A key component of the WCS is the Mayors Forum, and exclusive roundtable for mayors which is held every year. In the odd years when the WCS is not in Singapore, the MF is held in the city that previously won the LKY WCP. So we have had the MF in Bilbao in 2013, New York City in 2015 and in Suzhou this year, in May. These fora give mayors the opportunity to see for themselves best practices not just in Singapore. CLC also regular convene lectures and workshops and publish our Urban Solutions and Better Cities which are distributed electronically to a mailing list of 30000.

CLC Advisory
Finally, CLC offers advisory services to cities e.g. we are now working with the Chief Minister of Andra Pradesh in India to help his officials plan and develop their new capital city, Amaravati. We are also working with the Sri Lankan government to plan for the cleaning up and development of the area around Beira Lake in the heart of Colombo. The CLC is also working with the governments of Jakarta, Yangon and with the Town and Country Planning Office (TCPO) in India and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in China.

ASEAN Connectivity
At the ASEAN regional level, connectivity is also achieved with an integrated approach to planning and governance. So our centre is happy to be able to attend this symposium of the ACP, which we think is an important initiative. For example, in connectivity infrastructure like ports and airport, a regional approach is essential. Singapore is happy to play its part, as we continue to that we invest in our port and airport to be ready for the growth in ASEAN. Singapore will be building its Teas mega port in the west, and our Terminal 5 and the third runway. Likewise, in rail connectivity, Singapore and KL have collaborated on the high speed rail between the 2 cities by 2026. The rail link will create development opportunities in both cities like the Jurong Lake District in Singapore, which can be a second CBD for Singapore. Development opportunity is also increased along the cities along the high speed rail corridor.

So ASEAN cities can collaborate well to make ASEAN a key air, sea and rail hub that will enhance the flow of goods and people throughout ASEAN, and connecting ASEAN with the world.

ASEAN Infrastructure Financing
Making the plan happen will require resources. I have spoken about knowledge, expertise and capacity building. But money is also needed. This is where much has to be done to channel capital into much needed infrastructure projects. The next speaker will talk about how to make projects bankable. The key to this is to bring together different expertise like planners, Engineers, Lawyers, financiers and investors as well as government officials together to imaginatively work out different structures to allocate risk. The multilateral institutions like the World Bank, ADB, AIIB, UNDP, UN Habitat can play a key role. Singapore, as a major financial hub, is well positioned to act as hub for such infrastructure financing. The World Bank, for example, has stationed 200 of its experts in urban development and financing in Singapore. We also play host to international financial firms and legal firms.

WCS 2018
How do we get people together to share knowledge and create the opportunities to move the ASEAN Connectivity Plan forward? I do hope all of you will be able to make time to attend the next WCS in 8-12 July 2018. There will be special events like the ASEAN Mayors Forum, which will be more exclusively for ASEAN, but where we will also invite other interested international participants to attend. This will give us the opportunity to engage the world on what ASEAN is doing, including the ASEAN Connectivity Plan. That will go some way towards increasing visibility as well as attract more stakeholders to participate in the initiatives and projects.

Thank you.

About the Speaker

SPEAKER
Mr Khoo Teng Chye

Mr Khoo Teng Chye is currently the Executive Director for the Centre for Liveable Cities, Ministry of National Development (MND), Singapore. He was formerly the Chief Executive of PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency (2003 to 2011), Chief Executive Officer/Chief Planner at the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) (1992 to 1996), Chief Executive Officer/Group President of PSA Corporation (1996 to 2002), President and Chief Executive Officer of Mapletree Investments and Managing Director (Special Projects) of Temasek Holdings (2002 to 2003).