Into the Minds of a Developer: The UrbanPlan Workshop for Public Officials

Property developers and public service officials don’t always see eye to eye. While the former is motivated by profit, the latter seeks optimal social outcomes that balance the needs of various stakeholders. The UrbanPlan Workshop for Public Officials was created to bridge these different interests. It allows Singapore’s public service to step into the role of a private developer so as to gain insights into development and recognise the trade-offs between social objectives and financial goals.

This scenario-based workshop was first introduced in the United States by the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a non-profit research and education organisation. The 15-hour workshop saw participants form development teams and respond to the redevelopment of a blighted site in a fictional community. While originally designed for high school students in economics or government courses in the junior and senior years, UrbanPlan has since been used to train government officials to discuss the issues, trade-offs and economics at play in land-use decisions. In the Asia-Pacific, UrbanPlan is being adapted for high schools, universities as well as governments in Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila.

UrbanPlan in Singapore
Working with the ULI and the Institute of Real Estate and Urban Studies in the National University of Singapore (IREUS), CLC tailored UrbanPlan to suit Singapore’s development and land-bidding system. The Singapore version was designed around a two-envelope system in which the concept proposal and bidding price are separate but key evaluation criteria. Following two pilots in November 2018 and January 2019, the inaugural UrbanPlan workshop was launched on 28 February 2019. Participants from planning and development agencies, including the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Housing and Development Board (HDB), JTC Corporation and Land Transport Authority (LTA) formed property development teams and took on the role of the private sector.

Each team member assumed one of five roles: Financial Analyst, Research & Marketing Director, Project Architect, Head of Community Relations and Project Coordinator. They then worked together to assemble a competitive proposal for a fictional development. Not only did they have to craft a vision, the group also had to decide on its target market, develop a site design with land use and amenities, conceptualise a financial model and submit a bid for the land parcel.

Involving the Industry
To inject a sense of reality into the workshop, experts from the real estate industry were invited to facilitate the proceedings. These volunteers attended pre-workshop training sessions for capacity building and they challenged participants during the workshop to think more critically about development issues and their specific roles and responsibilities. In addition, the final concepts were evaluated by a committee consisting of senior members of Singapore’s real esate industry. The committee heard the teams’ presentations and challenged their proposals as would happen in an actual bid for land. They then decided which concepts could advance into the next stage, which was when the teams’ second envelope were revealed. The highest bid was awarded the development contract.

A Tool to Nurture Public-Private Partnerships
The interactive workshop helped public service officers understand the considerations and challenges faced by developers, particularly on how the return on investment and the process of land acquisition function in a real estate development process. By jointly working on a case study, participants across the different agencies also learnt how the private sector understood planning norms and design options, financial returns, and community relations priorities. This would be useful towards realising successful public-private partnerships in Singapore. UrbanPlan can also be potentially adopted as a community engagement tool for development projects that involve multiple stakeholders.

About the Writer

Phua Shi Hui

Shi Hui is a researcher at the Centre for Liveable Cities. Her research focus includes master and urban planning, innovation districts, governance and development. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Real Estate and a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from the National University of Singapore.