Issue 1

Greetings from the Centre for Liveable Cities, Singapore – and welcome to the inaugural issue of our bi-annual magazine, URBAN SOLUTIONS!

The Centre for Liveable Cities, or CLC, works to distil, create and share knowledge on liveable and sustainable cities. As our flagship periodical, URBAN SOLUTIONS aims to deliver useful content to city leaders and urban practitioners on how to make their cities more liveable and sustainable. We will feature best practices, relevant research and new ideas from top global practitioners and thought-leaders in urban planning, development and governance. To enrich the magazine, CLC will co-curate some issues with our stakeholders. Our first two issues are joint editorial efforts with Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), to explore the topic of planning for liveable high-density cities.

Features are a signature component of our practitioner-oriented magazine. Here, city leaders share their experiences and best practices with reference to a real project, policy or programme. In this issue, we profile inspiring stories from Brazil, China, Ethiopia and Singapore. Instead of a single initiative, City Focus takes a broader look at one city as a whole. Our inaugural city being featured here is New York, also the winner of the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize 2012.

We are honoured to feature thought-provoking Essays by renowned urban design and planning luminaries – Sir Peter Hall (UK), Dr Cheong-Chua Koon Hean (Singapore), Dr Alfonso Vegara and Mark Dwyer (Spain), and Yang Baojun (China). We are likewise delighted to have our inaugural Interview with Dr Liu Thai Ker, Singapore’s ‘Father of Urban Planning’.

Experts and research centres share their works in our Research & Reports section, where we have articles by Flemming Borreskov of Realdania, and Jeremy B. Bentham of Shell. CLC is also pleased to present our own research on the CLC Framework for Liveable and Sustainable Cities, which aims to help city leaders consider how they can improve urban liveability and sustainability.

I hope that you will find URBAN SOLUTIONS informative, inspiring, and most of all useful in helping you – the leaders and shapers of the world’s cities – improve the quality of life and environment for your people, and for future generations to come.

Khoo Teng Chye
Executive Director
Centre for Liveable Cities