Day 1- Bridging the Divide | Future Cities Symposium & Exhibition 2025

Today's topic is the advanced form of Microsoft as a new urban structure led by local governors. That is the advanced form which I have lectured in last year in Singapore and I try to.

Advance the quality the contents of microcity and Seoul in the last 60 years until 1970, the central government promoted and accelerated the urbanization and industrialization focus on The Seoul and 1980 we have 1988, we have Olympic Games to prepare Olympic Games Central government invested big large infrastructure and urban redevelopment and make residential area cooperate. Of course, the Seoul Metron government But still the central government have power to arrange the Seoul metronome government.

In 1995, we have the first urban transition transformation because central government gave the planning authority to city government. Then Seoul Metro government began first time planning for the citizen. So we set up the planning system and we make the plan for the citizen not for the government. That is the first transformation. And with this system in 2000, we promoted Seoul promoted a lot of different diverse projects from 600 historical heritage to environmental and social project. And one of the representative project the Sangan Digital Media City that is infrastructure for K Pop and K Drama we created here through it was biggest waste deposit and we changed the Sangamjil Media city and also the Changgyecheon. I think there is a representative project and we realized how important is workability for urban revitalization like CLC, Singapore and workable city. And since 2000, we tried to make a workable city all over the city.

So in 2012 we have second transformation because the former mayor he gave authority to the citizen and that is the first trial in our history Citizen got a planet's authority they can make a vision, they make a strategic and they participate every urban policies not not only urban master plan but also social plan and environment et cetera. And suddenly before the former mayor they focused on the big mega project. But after the citizen participation the policies focus on the neighborhood units Very small size but very.

Focused on the citizen need. And also the educational and social and environmental and health care project were promoted at the time based on the citizen participation in less than 15 years this all developed in Koroba cities nowadays.

And some representative.

Indicator in the last 60 years the accelerated urban development Seoul became one of the poorest city in the world to global cities and.

The urban Master Plan which was started 1966. Since then we devised 11 times and 30 infrastructure plan. I think the urban Master plan urban planning contribute the physical condition of Seoul. So that is.

In the past 60 years and now after pandemic everyone asked of ourselves. Whether the aggressive planning structure and planning method in the past 60 years still relevant in the next generation. Because we have fully another conditions. Demographic changes, the birth rate decreased in aging and climate change. All of globalization problem we have. And that's why we began our institute and Seoul Metro government. We began the new project for 100 year long term plan Plan for. Not for us, for the next generation. That is the our project and the result vision. Yeah, we try to come back to the basic condition we lost the environment, the recovering of natural resources and human oriented planning should be promoted. And the science should useful for recovering nature and human oriented planning. That is the vision of the 100 year plan.

So then how can we realize how can we make the plan for next maybe next 20 or 30 years? I think most important thing is how can we rearrange the governance system. That is the today's issues. And as you see here Until 1990, Seoul became bigger and bigger. But since 2015, we have.

Another condition. Of course the Seoul became bigger. But we have 30 years long. We have 10 million population very stable go out and come to Seoul. But since 2015, the citizens became began to move outside of Seoul more than income. So the 10 million population broken and the citizen became the decrease 9.5 or 9.4. But the people who move outside of Seoul it means we have in Seoul we have 11 neighboring cities with 6 million population. It means all of them we have about 15 million population. They work and live and study and shopping together in all the mega city region. But still now 12 cities inclusive Seoul we make their own plan. We didn't try to cooperate a plan. But the citizens want to have a corporate plan. But because of the.

Politics, because of the politicians because of the political situation they cannot start to cooperate. That is the first issue. And second one after participation process 2012 citizens realized the big mega project is not always good for their own life. They want to make some small size neighborhood units plan. This small size plan. It means the city became greater and bigger as mega city. And at the same time city became smaller. And it means this Seoul metronome government cannot arrange all of these trends.

Seoul should cooperate with 11 neighboring cities together. That is the first task. And second one Seoul Metropolitan we have 25 autonomous districts so boroughs. But the soul method government they didn't give authority to the 1225 districts because they cannot trust the local government. That is a problem. But since 2015 the condition was changed. And that is the new challenge of Seoul. As you see here.

Still shorten already to 2015 we should change the governance but still we have just only one Seoul metformin government that is the problem.

And that is the result of 100 year plan we should rearrange our structure and that is a very, very famous concept. I think there's an architectural concept of Hollander the Kuras the small, medium, large and X large will try to imply in urban structure the small size. This is normal and new thing is medium sized neighborhood unit in Seoul Neighborhood units we can arrange about 10 or 15,000 population and several neighborhood units make one micro or Seoul as a complex city and altogether did two things that is a role for local autonomous districts the borough should plan this area and Seoul metropolitan future Seoul metro government should cooperate with neighboring city. There is a new arrange of special structure and new governance system. It means in the next 20 years local government, local districts they have a main role to make urban planning.

So from Seoul to a human centered plan that is the background and this idea was announced in 2047 plan as a Microsoft but still we didn't realize the ideas and that's why we divided Here Seoul Over 100 small sites Local diversity and there's this concept the basic units to Microsoft.

That was the idea. And last year we began to realize the Microsoft and luckily I have cooperated with one of 25 districts Gangnam Gu districts and they gave me suggestion. Okay, we can cooperate, we can realize the Microsoft that is our mission. And Gangnam style Tamin City is another form of Microsoft. Gangnam Style is pop. We try to make Gangnam Style for urban planning. Yeah, this is a branding and everyone was very funny find funny. And the mayor of Gangnam Gu he was very surprised about the ideas. And then the Gangnam GU 500,000 population with 40 square kilometers very high density city One of the best and powerful districts in Korea. And first step there is a Gangnam Gu and We divided Gangnam GU7 10 minutes area 7 micro cities. Each microcity has their own character, own vision. Some character is biomedical, surgery or global, financial and educational, etc. There's a first step and second step that is I think a very important point. There's a new type of citizen participation and we have a town meeting process and we invited not only the citizen but also the entrepreneur and developer and landowner and politicians all together we discuss about issue of each micro cities and there are a lot of solutions detailed solution and we gather the solutions, ideas and then the third step we gave a guideline for the developer or guidance for the Solmatown government and each area we have land use on density management that is internally of course it's flexible. We can every time we can change it through the participation of the stakeholders.

And then after then we make a master plan for each district. That is the first one. Because before we don't have any district plan. We have just only partial oriented plan, very small size. And that's why we couldn't negotiate. We could negotiate with the sole metro government and we couldn't give the guideline for the investor. But with this plan transparent and predictable. And that is the interim result, that is the density. And we can change the density between the areas.

And social facility, the kindergarten aging center. We can try to rearrange this year for the citizen focused.

Local areas. And this is how can we make the workable environment within the place. And that is the final result of a concept plan. That is the tool. It's not plan, it's a tool, communication tool to negotiate. So method government. That is the first step to realize the concept plan. And still the plan is not statutory. And how can we formalize the plan locally? Next year the Seoul Metronome government Revised the Plan 2050 Soil Master Plan, the statutory plan. And we can apply the result of the Microsoft we can apply in the soil metal polypanth area. And we are now working with Solmeton government. They gave us a very positive signal. And I hope, and we hope in the next year the microsoul concept will be realized and will be formalized in Seoul. And I hope we have a new governance system. The plants authority goes to the local government and the city became more sustainable and resilient. And I hope the result can spread out not only in Gangnam Gu, but also in 24 districts. Then maybe we have a new transition after the pandemic. And I hope that is the new model in Seoul. And thank you very much for the hearing.

Yeah.

Thank you, Dr. Kim. We now invite Emeritus Professor Dirk Simons. Professor Simmons is one of the founders of H and S Landscape Architects architects where between 1990 and 2015 he worked extensively on regional plans and research by design commissions. In recognition of his contributions, he received the Muskand Award in 2002 and the Edgar Donker Award for his role in shaping Dutch culture in 2007. Please welcome Professor Simons.

Thank you. And thank you for inviting me here. I want to use my time slot, my column, really.

It's going to be a visual column, as you will see, to indicate where.

The emergency exits are situated.

Well, not the emergency exits of this.

Nice venue here, but the emergency Exits from our current dominant modernist worldview.

And as the flight attendants always say, please be aware that the closest one may be behind you. And more importantly, and that's what the flight attendants don't say, the nearest exit is not necessarily the safest one.

Here you are the exits. But when I talk about the modernist worldview, I don't mean the architectural modernist style. I am referring of course, to the larger Promethean modernist project, the project that promised us to free us from the chains of nature. A project where the driving factor was emancipation and where politicians and designers alike spoke of their ideals in utopian terms. But this project seem to be. Sorry, wrong button. Seem to be running out of steam now that the side effects are becoming painfully clear. We are not only influencing our environment on the scale of landscapes or the scale of ecosystems. Man as a global force is also disrupting the vital processes of our planet itself. And that is why my fellow countryman Paul Crutzen coined the term the Anthropocene in the year 2000. To make this planetary reality more tangible, Johann Rickstrom from the Stockholm Institute for Sustainability developed a kind of dashboard for planet Earth. This famous infographic show shows where and how far we are overstepping the hospitality of our planet.

Green is a safe operating space, of course. Yellow means a risky zone of uncertainty. And orange and red mark danger zones where irreversible tipping points may emerge. But modernism and solutionism are almost synonyms. Every problem can be solved one by one like a bulleted list.

And check and move to the next one. This modernist attitude keeps alive the illusion that eternal growth on a finite planet is not only possible, but necessary. Necessary to pay for all these so called externalities of our global economy. If we just work our way through the list, that would be a final victory for mankind and we can proclaim the good Anthropocene. The harsh reality is different. The problems are deeply interconnected. Some of these solutions are self invented fairy tales. Others might worsen the problem. Still others could even produce sorcerers apprentice effects. The only structural solution might be to slow down the turnover speed of our global economy. But how? Easier said than done. A more accurate diagnosis of the meta crisis we are facing might be might look a little bit like this. All the planetary processes we are derailing are entering dance floor together with humanity in a swirling interaction where even the dance floor seems to move.

No technical intervention will bring us back to that calm and stable hollow scene. We have left the realm of well defined problems with clear cut solutions. We are entering an era where we Must learn to ride this tiger of uncertainty where we can only hope to design.

Navigating tools for these new realities. This observation on a global scale will eventually percolate down to the level of urban planning and landscape architecture and I think will deeply influence our 21st century practice. But agreed, this is all abstract on a stratospheric level. How do we land this plane? I guess by bringing it back to our disciplines to offer solutions. We must first be aware to the extent we are part of the problem. So let's start with the spatial aspects of these global phenomena. The red dancer here, land reclamation for agriculture and urbanization both squarely in the spatial domain. They are in a way two sides of the same coin. And I think for axial global urbanization might be the best example. This graph of what has been dubbed the Great Acceleration shows that after World War II almost everything goes to the roof, from population to paper use, fossil energy use, natural resource extraction, etc. We pick out the rise of the human population, the red line, as a reliable indicator of the built environment growth. How big is big? A 2021 article in Nature concluded that the total weight of everything humans have built now exceeds the weight of of the total living biomass of our planet. And how fast is fast if you are on an exponential growth trajectory? Shockingly, the article calculates that.

Calculates that this weight will double in the coming decades.

That means the weight everything we built from the pyramids of Cheops until now will be added again. I can't wrap my head around where the natural resources for this will come from or how this can be done without pushing the global temperature even higher. After all, we still don't have fossil friendlier alternatives for cement and steel production. Clearly this calls for a radical rethink of building and building materials. A child can see that building in woods a current trend won't be the total answer. Perhaps we must look at structural building with mycelium. Like FCL Global is researching currently ramped Earth or completely new solutions. Or even better, like Sasha Mentz told us this morning.

Do a lot of renovation of buildings that are already there now. Where is all this building activity supposed to land the project? The Atlas for the End of the World shows the IUCN identified biodiversity hotspots of the world. Overlay these maps with projections of where urbanization is sought to go viral in the next decades and you see a head on collision is in the making between bio complexity and urbanization.

I hope this will be a Central theme for 21st century landscape architecture and urban planning. Deciding where Urban nature design can help mitigate the damage. And where old fashioned, strict reserves must be installed. If we have to say goodbye to the classical modernist idea of progress, an idea where we as designers have long been the heralds of, we need to reflect on our worldview. What are the possible escape routes from modernism without throwing away all the good things from the illumination?

The first and currently very popular escape route is denialism. Crisis. What crisis? Climate change is a hoax invented to bring our beautiful civilization to a grinding halt. The worldwide turn to right wing politics almost pivots around climate denial. It also reveals a deep anxiety. People and vested interests sense intuitively that structural environmental measures might threaten their privileges. That's why the comfortable living global north are not taking real serious action. Why not go for the habitual round of golf? This escape hatch lead to crashing into our planetary boundaries and I'm afraid we'll end up in catastrophe. The second escape route consists simply of giving classical modernism a facelift by adding the prefix eco. Eco modernism grew out of an attempt to reunite environmental politics with mainstream ideology. The message is we must not slow down, but accelerate. The best is yet to come. This makes it clear why eco modernism is the great hope of the system and why it gets so much tailwind. Everything that is technologically possible is welcomed and must be allowed to happen. The icon head for this techno optimism is of course Elon Musk. But is it idealistic or merely naive to hope that ecology and economy can be reconciled without profound systemic change?

Posthumanism offers the third escape route from modernism. Man is only one insignificant species woven into a complex and finely branched web of life. In short, we must step back from ego to eco. In this animated world, always of being, all ontologies deserve equal respect. At its core, the environmental crisis is a spiritual crisis. In this way of seeing post humanist projects include giving legal rights to to landscapes such as the Whanganui river in New Zealand. This new form of empathy is very popular in artistic circles. But we can ask, is our avant garde? Are our oat milk elite troops marching towards the right frontier? The fourth escape route is a new kind of anthropocentrism, a 2.0 version in which responsibility and not hubris take center stage. Humanity is not just one out of million species, but is responsible for repairing the havoc we have created and preventing new catastrophes. We are here to fix it. The motto is not the best is yet to come as in eco modernism. But the worst might still be avoided. Keywords in this science driven worldview are healing, regeneration, Repairing, undoing, reverse engineering, connecting, etc. But there's a downside. Many of the projects seem to require a sort of new superhero, a kind of planet repair man or woman, because none of them have a business case.

Are there only four escape routes for modernism? Of course not. There are countless hybrids. Still, the underlying framework is quite robust because it rests on a four type typology that is developed by the Australian philosopher Clive Hamilton. I have translated this typology into a graph. Imagine two axes intersecting. The vertical axis represents the views of humanity from a puny species to a geological force. The horizontal axis represents the role of the earth from the passive backloss to our worldly globalism to a living and powerful planet.

These axes generate the four positions I tried to sketch earlier. Each position has its own strengths and weaknesses in the public discourse. No position will ever achieve an absolute majority. If we want to make an impact as urban planners and landscape architects and not end up in a meltdown of increasingly grim discussions, we must form coalitions around issues. Moreover, every region shows examples of all four positions, Singapore included. As my student K. Yuan observed obvious the famous repair of the Kallang river in green. But I was surprised to see post humanism also at work. For example, the role feng shui played in urban planning marked in yellow.

This means that we must also recognize positive elements in perspectives out of our own bubble. At first glance, denialism seems entirely negative. But could we not appreciate the detachment, the lack of inhibition, of ignorance, perhaps its strange kind of open mindedness the rest of us might already have lost of eco modernism? We might borrow the sheer pleasure of designing and making if we could just import it. Without the control dreams of the engineers of the post Humanists. We take new forms of empathy with our fellow creatures, but without obscurantism. Please. From Anthropocentrism 2.0, we embrace the ambition of healing and discovery without the moralistic finger pointing. And as designers, I think we are surely capable of combining the best of these four worlds. I firmly believe in this because there is space between the opposites, and space is our profession. Thank you. And remember, different worldviews offer different diagnosis. Different perspectives and in the end result in different plants.

Thanks again.

Thank you, professor simmons. We'd like to invite our next keynote speaker, Mr. Leonard ng, director of business area at helen larson asia pacific. Please welcome Mr. Ng.

This is.

Sure.

So.

Thank you for everybody for attending this talk. I think compared to my esteemed scholarly colleagues on the panel, might come across as almost a string of consciousness. Excuse me. For it.

I want to talk about how shaping cities shape us and in return it becomes a blueprint for influence. So.

I want to talk about today's discussion through the lens of domains. I'm sorry, through the lens of domains of influences and based on our practice, I've seen there are a few domains that has particularly significant influence on the projects we do. One is policy. And you know, policy is something that in the context of Singapore, we are familiar working with. Right. When and when you have got a well thought through policy, right. It really helps to.

Make the project deliver better. It's almost 50% of the job done. But if you have bad policy, it almost consigned the project to failure from day one.

The next domain that I talk about is behavior and increasingly this is becoming part of our project.

Consideration. Once again, I'm talking through the lens of Singapore and doing public projects. So now previously the population was really happy for the government to lead the way, but increasingly through new generations, they want a voice, they want to be involved. Right. And they want to have a stake in development. So listening to them and understand what you need is actually critical to get a buy in.

The next domain that is coming to the forefront is science.

Increasingly there are evidence that we have to pay attention to science when we deliver projects, public infrastructure projects. We are constantly impacted by climate change and if we don't take that as part of the equation, then we are missing a large part that will make a project successful.

So all these three works together and have an impact on design.

A good design is really an expression of these three domains together, right. And it says a good design doesn't lecture in nudges.

And if you do a good design, it has that feedback loop to the tree domain ultimately.

So I created this diagram. It's a bit simplistic, but I think that diagram talks about the interplay between these three domains and design. So you see the first one on the right.

So what you see is a policy driven, it's very much a Singapore style project driven for a long time and it's been very, very successful, been very successful at doing that.

And then behavior and science is becoming more prominent as a domain and in the way it influence project. And I think the three of them have significant consideration for it to be successful, for any project to be successful. What we observe is that.

Most projects tend to be driven by one of these domains and if it is, the chances of success goes up.

Especially if you include.

The layers of behavior and science. But if it's not driven by one Domain projects tend to meander and lose focus. There will be no champion. And when there's no champion, that's when project struggles. We see that in a lot of projects.

While we have significant success working with policy driven projects.

The outcome for behavior driven and science driven is still up for judgment.

We are new to that, we are new to that and I think based on our experience in projects, we need to really figure out how we can do this better through behavior and true science and make them part of, inclusive, part of the design.

I put this on always Steve Jobs. It doesn't go away. So we are gambling on our vision and we would rather do that than make me two project products. I think this thing very much encapsulates what we are trying to achieve in Singapore. In Singapore we are like the canary in the coal mine. We're at the forefront of urban technology and organization. We are trying to push the boundaries.

And it requires you to take risks.

To look ahead and not do what has been done before.

For us I think that is also an ambition to really examine the way we have been conducting business and how we can change. So we have been very good at looking at the best practices from all over the world, bringing back here to Singapore, adapting it and making it work for us.

But now we have come to a point where there is maybe no best practices out there. We have learned as much as we can out there and brought it here. And the next step may involve having to do things that have not been done before and that involves taking risks and accepting failure and improving from the experience.

And we see attention. I mentioned about three domains and we haven't really figured out how quite to involve behavior and science to drive projects. And the tension is reflected in projects.

That we see.

So I'm going to use.

I'm going to start talking about three projects that we feel represents the domains.

That drives them. This project is Bishan Amokyopa. This was our first project in Singapore when we established the company.

And actually if you look at this picture, it looks like a beautiful landscape design with a floodplain.

But the seed of this project actually extended far back into our Singapore's history as a republic.

It started from the need for water security.

So Singapore is a small island of 720 square kilometers thereabouts. We don't have a hinterland for catchment water so we need to secure our water resources. Pub created this four tap strategy. Water from catchment, imported water, new water, desaled water. We know that imported water is going to be less significant in the future as our contract with our neighbors expire, new water and distilled water is playing a significant role in securing our water future. But they are energy intensive.

Of course. Local catchment. We are a small country, but we wanted to play a more significant role by having more of Singapore collect water and use it for drinking water.

And this started way back.

And it led to this program called ABC Waters Program.

This program is how do we catch the water.

Clean it, use it to purify and activate spaces.

But was more than just.

It was actually.

An intention to change mindsets.

The citizens and the residents relationship with water. Because the thinking goes that if my kids were to play in the water, I'm less likely to litter in it. Hence the water that falls in our housing estate will, will arrive at the reservoirs cleaner and is easier to recycle. That's the theory.

So we started with this program where we looked at all the waterways and see how we can use them and maximize them as assets and to change our relationship with water. This is an image of the canal that used to fringe Bishan Ang Mo Kio park. And this is the replacement. This was the river we created. And if you look at this, you say, oh, you know, in retrospect this is almost a no brainer. You should have done this. The funny thing is.

When I was doing it, it wasn't a no brainer, it was not obvious. Actually.

When we were walking around, we were asking the residents what did they think? And they are very typical Singaporean, extremely guarded. They say, well, we'll see, we'll see what happens and whether it works for us.

So.

We weren't sure whether they would be supportive. In fact, I remember one clear incident where it was still hoarded up. We planted all the grasses on the side and it has this wild look to it. And one resident complained, why does it look so untidy? Can you do something about this? So I think the project manager, on his own accord, send in mowers to go mow it down.

And then the next day we got a feedback from his neighbor saying, why do you cut the grasses, right? It was so beautiful and wild. If you want nature, you cannot be mowing it.

So.

There'S that tension.

You cannot really predict how people react. And even though you see it now, it says, well, no, we should do this, not then. When you are doing something new, it's not obvious.

So really what we wanted to do is influence behaviors. I think because this is a completed project, it's been done since 2012. We have the data to back that actually it has done its job. You have increased visitorship.

They stay for longer, the property values have gone up, there's increase even in flora and fauna. So there are multitudes now on hindsight that is a significant benefit to society.

And ultimately this is, this is the image that really captures what we are trying to do.

The attachment with water as an important resource and educating the future. I was especially enthused by this particular social media. This was a page from Straits Time social media posting. It was after a storm event. Somebody wrote in complaining that why is the river flooded?

And to my surprise the public actually stood up and says look, don't be an idiot. This is designed to be this way. This is the new way of conveyancing water. And to me that is a validation of what was done. It's really changing mindsets in action.

The next project I'm talking about, but before I talk about it, I've got some LTA colleagues because this is an ongoing project. I've got some LTA colleagues here just to be sure. Any rendering you see is not the design proposal.

It'S just some ideas we're exploring. Okay, I hope that's good enough for lta.

So the NSC is actually.

A project that stretches from Woodlands all the way to Monroe Bay. I mean you cannot get another project that has as wide an influence on the nation as this. It literally bisect the island in half. So this is really important stuff.

The plan was to, you know, right now it's a series of roads, fragmented roads of different weaves all winding down all the way. Government plan a long time ago was to, you know, why not create an expressway for more efficient movement. Viaduct in the northernmost stretch followed by underground tunnel in the southern half.

And so they pressed the expressway you see below. But the question is, what do we do on the surface you spend all this money pushing the transport away. What can we do above that will make a difference and justify the expenditure?

One of the first things they did, and I think this was really a really good move was to go out to the public even before the tender was published and says we want to know what you want. And this was summarized into 13 key highlights ranging from walk, cycle, ride to traffic to community spaces and green spaces. And all these were actually a summary of what people hope to see on this surface street.

So when we were pitching for this, and this was a slide I used for my competition, this was a hard grabbing slide that I used to secure the project, but actually it was also a slide of me in My childhood. So I used to live in a little village.

Before we started growing quickly and we were all moved along with my neighbors into these flats, little flats.

And they were little flats. There were 10 of us living in this 600 square feet flat. So this common corridor became an extension.

Of our front, front hall. That's where we all gathered, we played, we shared, we laughed and cried together. And in my mind, it's important to understand what this corridor represents for Singapore because I feel that that's a microcosm of the corridor that I experienced as a child. So bringing the experience with me. We also engage with the public. If you look at the picture in the center, the guy in the beige pants and a black shirt is me.

I was wearing the mask over my eyes. We had a session that was conducted by the association of Visual Handicaps where we put mask over our face and then walked with white sticks. And I tell you, that was one of the most terrifying experience I've ever, ever done. Imagine closing your eyes and trying to cross a busy street with all the cars and the noise and the horns. It is scary, but it needs to be done if you want to be able to design for the user groups and understand their needs.

Really it's about behaviors, behaviors influencing design. And this has led to us thinking about how do we provide for the different user groups? How do we put ourselves in their shoes as they are using these spaces that we design.

So that we can make it easier for them.

We adapted from the New South Wales Movement and Place framework.

As part of our thinking. So for us, it's more than movement. It's really creating a place for community. For us to build memories.

And relationships is about the possibility of not putting the roads front and center, but putting public front and center.

A short video of our competition entry.

Friendships deepen on our doorsteps along the common corridors. This is our Singapore growing up and growing old in a place so full of life. The north south corridor is an extension of our everyday social spaces. It's where nature, community and mobility all come together.

Imagine a seamless people first connection where cyclic commuters enjoy a safe and direct route from woodlands to Kampong Glam in the early morning breeze.

A city with less noise and cleaner air where you can enjoy the outdoors, cycle or just go on a peaceful stroll.

Roads will be transformed into lively parks and public amenities where we can all get together. Our children will play and learn about nature right here in our neighborhoods.

Every generation can now enjoy our friendly streets on safer, better transport.

Taking the bus is such A delightful experience. The North South Corridor is a canvas for us to co create spaces that celebrate our identity and heritage, respond to our needs and dare to dream of a better future.

Together.

Let's transform the North South Corridor into our life reserve. An inclusive living space flowing through the heart of Singapore, making our city a better place to live.

Well, I'm happy to say that the video was good enough to win us the competition and right now we are right in the middle of designing it, working closely with lta.

The last project, how science influence design.

I mean, this is established science.

I think for most people in this room this is established science.

Climate change is a problem, we see it constantly. But the problem with climate change is we are not entirely sure about the outcome. There are several scenarios and we have to be flexible enough to plan for the different scenarios. This is from a projection by NOAA Climate.

Department showing potentially the sea level rise up to the year 2100.

And this was extracted from the Centre for Liver Cities Knowledge Lab showing in Singapore's case, increasing rainfall. Extreme rainfall events will double.

As we approach the year 2100. Singapore will see a sea level rise of up to a meter by year 2100 and overall sea level low rise could go up between 4 to 5 meters depending on where you're at. Significant numbers for Singapore, but also globally.

It will have an impact on our urban fabric. Low lying areas will be eroded.

Our infrastructures will be threatened.

There will be significant intrusion of salt water. So really complex problems that needs to be solved. And it's not just theoretical, it's happening now. We see it every week in the news. Somewhere in the world this is happening and it's not just for developing nations, it's for the developed nations. This is actually.

A flooding event in Copenhagen in the year 2011, where a significant part of Copenhagen was flooded. A first world country flooded, costing them billions of dollars.

So the government woke up after that and says, look, we need to make a difference, we need to do something about this. Because not doing something is not an option.

The graph shows not doing anything is the blue bars versus doing something now, paying the price now so that we can lower the cost to society in the future. That is the green bar. That's a significant difference.

But because Copenhagen is an old city and I'm sure if you want to tear down city blocks, the people there won't be too happy. How do we work with existing cityscape? Finding pathways for flood water to dissipate.

And we propose a system of assigning hierarchies to roadways, allowing some roadways to flood and some not, and then incorporating stormwater management systems within existing roadways and really educating the public that this is something you should expect.

And Singapore, Singapore is also this problem.

So this was an extraction from CNA news release showing these Barrie islands that we're going to build to cater for sea level rise.

So I remember when this was first announced, I was living along east coast just in front, right? And I was looking out to sea and I was, my God, are they going to build a series of islands out there? What's going to happen to our sea view? And I wasn't the only one saying it. All the neighbors, everybody was talking, what is going to happen?

Is this really what we want?

So.

If this was the solution.

Then I think the worst fears would have come true. While it would have solved the problem, it would create a whole set of other problems.

This was a project, a proposal we did for Northhound in a reclaimed part of Copenhagen where we also created sea walls, but using nature based solutions. It's part of the landscape. It doesn't look like a wall, but it does the same thing. It protects against sea level rise.

And really in order to build resilient infrastructure, you really need to understand the science. How do you protect against storm surges? How do you provide for the fresh water that's coming in from inland with that more intense stormwater? And then how do you.

Create opportunities from this new land.

Incorporating places for people to live.

Understand the fears of the neighborhood living around and addressing them directly during your planning process.

And then really being flexible in how you implement design strategies, not just relying on one method, but in several different methods, from the soft to the heart.

I'll end my talk by saying that the relationship with policy science and behavior with design is constantly evolving.

We need to understand the dynamics better because.

If we don't give enough weight to policy, science and behavior together, the project outcome suffers.

So and everybody to understand this, not just from the very top, but all the way down to the working group, only then can we have successful outcomes. Thank you all.

Thank you Mr. Ng. We will now commence our panel discussion and our moderator for the session is Professor Dr. Sasha Menz. Professor Menz is the Director of Future Cities Laboratory Global under the Singapore ETH Centre. He was named Full professor of Architecture and building process at ETH Zurich in 2004. He was head and co founder of the Institute of Technology and Architecture, Dean and Vice Dean of the Department of Architecture at ETH Zirich. He initiated the construction of the building ArcTech Lab at ETH Zurich. Additionally, Professor Mens is a practicing architect and urban planner. Please allow me to hand over the time to Professor Mens. I would also like to invite our panelists to join us on stage. Dr. Kim, Professor Simons and Mr. Ng, thank you.

Thank you very much. And by this occasion I would like to announce that on my place should be Arno Schluter, also director of the Future Cities Lab Global in Zurich. But due to a family tragic event, he could not be here and I'm here on his place and I hope I can replace him. Well, we did not prepare anything. We talked about it before, don't worry.

And I would like to start off the. I must say this really very interesting tour through different cultures, planning cultures and also concepts shown. As a Swiss citizen, of course I like small scale and of course the.

Question comes up to you and I mean participation looks like kind of a remedy of the future for planning.

How do you organize this participation? I mean Seoul is nearly half the population of Switzerland so. And I know the problems we have with participation so I'm really interested. Could you give us an insight please in here? Thank you.

First time.

2012.

We implemented first time the participant participation in urban Master plan is long long term plan in Seoul metropolitan area and at the time everyone gave me a warning it's very dangerous to participate as citizen in the planning because they don't know about the policies and but we try to. We try to do and everyone was surprised about the result because the citizens were very high quality and what they gave the suggestion of citizen was sometimes more easy and very concrete compared to professional and since then every city.

Try to make a city participation that is at the city level and now because of the concrete and now I go to in the district level and we try to make a citizen participation in second trial and in this time also a lot of people gave me a warning a any and if you go to in the field they gave their own interest and private interest and etc. It's not easy to make consensus but in the fact in this time not only in citizen but also we try to make communicate with entrepreneur and politician etc. And if I go to them open minded and give a feedback then they gave us really the sincere truly concrete issues and solutions and I think that is a second.

Process and the participation process is an ongoing project and it will be finished at the end of this year and I'm very very.

Excited how we gather the information from information from the local, the Districts, area. And then maybe we have the second step, the partition process. Whole city level to interstate level. And that is ongoing project. And still I have a very.

Positive result, interim result. And I hope.

We have a next step for the participation process. And this time not only as I told not only citizen, but also every diverse stakeholders. And that is very unique point compared to the 10 years before the participation process.

You mentioned the change to governance. So was this a major issue to really could get into that. And how was this government changed in the last.

The Seoul Mehrung government established 1949. So about I think 70 years ago, 80 years ago. And for 50 years, 50 years along the central government had the planning authority. And since 1995 this whole metropolitan government has authority in the last 30 years. And now everyone knows the city Seoul Mason government is limited. They tried everything and they cannot further. And now is the time for the local government in the next 30 years. And Seoul Mason government tried to cooperate not only the 25 local districts, but also the 11 neighboring cities. And in this point the local government can give solution, concrete solution for the citizen better than Sol Mahetam government. And that's why I think the next step we should change our government system from Central Seoul mehtrum government to local government. And local government can give more condition for design and sustainability. And we can react against the climate changes. And everything the citizens needs can better. We can better.

Give a solution than some government.

Thank you, Dirk. Transformation process through participation. You're coming from Holland.

The water you drink has been going seven times through an organism. When it starts in Switzerland. Yes, about your water security, we can talk about that. So the Dutch are quite.

Thank you for your.

And I mean your flight attendants.

Show us an emergency exits 4 you showed at the end. But I would address this question to you as a pilot. You know, you are guiding now. So how.

You mentioned that.

Thanks for asking this question because it gives me the opportunity to show I'm a very practical person, really. And not doing all this abstract work. Only I I was comes to mind the chair of the Room for the river program. That was a program that ran from 2006 to 2016, 32 projects, 2.3 billion euros. Where.

Let'S say the discussion started with the idea that you already mentioned that that this climate change thing is not going to be go away in 50 years, not in 100 years, not in 150 years, not in 200 years. But it will be there for generations. And our policymakers and scientists came to the conclusion that if we look at the map of the Netherlands, now we are still able to give more room to the river. And maybe in hundred years from now or the hundred year plan you make for, say, you also have that time frame, we might not be able to give that room to the river because it might be urbanized, for instance, and making it much, much more difficult. So let's give more room to the river now. And that started the program and I come back to the. To the. To the participation point. We started the project and it was a trend crack because our Ministry of Infrastructure and Waterworks was, let's say, almost organized. Like the military is sort of completely top down. We are going to do the work here, our yellow machines and okay, there we go. But in a way they, the. They thought it was not the way to work anymore. So it started with science to look at where could we give more room to the river. And out came 600 possible small projects that together have an overdose for, let's say, having our 16,000 cubic meters of Swiss water passing our.

Boundaries, getting to the sea without problems.

So the Ministry made, let's say, an administrative tour around the whole country to all municipalities said, okay guys, we have a problem. And these are 600 projects. Some of them are in your municipality of. In your province or your water board. Is anybody. Will anybody work with us? And well, some municipalities said, oh my God, this is a chance because we were already dreaming for 50 years for an outside the Dike Marina and maybe we can, if we work together, they might pay for that. So after this, let's say, administrative tour, 32 projects came out that had a green light from the local communities in a way. So that is, I think indeed it is.

A sort of paradigm shift in the way you work from top down to bottom up. And that's from. In Holland, from the last 20 years, I think.

Thank you, Dirk Leonard, what would you say if I look at your North House corridor participatory processes, do they exist or top down, bottom up? How are decisions made?

I think this one of the projects that actually is a good example of involving the public very early on in the tender process, right. LTA indicated that they want significant public engagement and they are serious about it. They want us to work with the public to incorporate their ambitions and wishes. And what we discovered through the process as was run by our partners, pid. I think they are sitting here in the audience in that they are actually very passionate public out there. And we were shocked by.

The commitment to get involved. They'll come on Saturdays, they will do traffic counts themselves. They'll cycle the routes.

And this is just out of passion. And I think that's what they bring to the table. And what we have to do in return is to be sincere about what we hope to achieve with them. Right? Really listen to them, give them a voice, incorporate them, and also tell them honestly what's possible and what's not. Right? Because what they don't want is to be treated like kids. They want to be treated like adults. And I have to say, so far, one year into the project, it has been extremely enriching. Exchange. Right. We have learned so much. It's on a monthly basis, maybe, that we are engaging with them. And they tell us things about the local neighborhood that we will never know as designers. So they are an important source of local information.

And I think hopefully in our future projects, we really need to do more of this if you want to give them and gain a sense of ownership.

But design is under pressure, you said, and we, I think many of us also here in the public know and feel that design is under pressure. Is design at the end producing the solution, or is it. Is it science? I mean, we try at our Future Cities Lab Global, we rely on science, we rely on design, we rely on engineering. But we know we have to bring it together. And at the end, without policy making, without governance, everything we do is nothing. So what's your position on that?

It's a really good question.

Let me put it diplomatically. I'm not talking about NSC here, okay? I'm talking about projects in general. If you want to be innovative, you're doing things that's not done before, and that requires an element of risk. But the problem is when you are working with engineers and all that, they are always more comfortable to do things that they have done before because they can prove it. So there's that tension between pushing boundaries as opposed to staying within your comfort zone. And I set you an example where we propose something that's really innovative. But during the design evaluation.

The evaluating committee use an existing model to evaluate the efficacy of your proposal. It's never going to work because if you're using an older model, you'll get an older answer. And that's the tension we are facing. In many projects, you need not just to propose new proposals. You need to also think about how it should be evaluated.

So I would say that, you know, it is a work in progress, right? We are trying hard in all our projects to keep pushing the boundary of involving science, behaviors, and policy.

Dirk, I think you can follow up.

I will try to.

And coming back to this room for the river program design played an important role because from the start of the process we had next to water safety, landscape quality as a second main goal inserted in the planning law of this project. And that surely helped. Every project had its own, not only engineers, but also landscape architects and architects working along. And that really helps to make projects that are well sort of embraced by, by the public in the end. And after that our parliament said, okay, this is fantastic, beautiful, but this design is luxury and this landscape quality we can do without. Back to basics please. And they had a statement in parliament that in the next projects only water safety and sweet water.

Infrastructure were interesting. And don't look at nature, don't look at leisure, don't look at city fronts, just the downright water safety, please. And what you see now is there are of course new projects because this, well, climate change forces us to, let's say, review.

The context of the project.

And you see these projects are all.

Coming to a grinding halt because they sort of miss the umbrella of this room for the river program with this quality goal.

So I think quality and design in.

The end are not luxury, but if you use them well, they are essential for successful projects in the end and for indeed stepping one step forward and doing new things.

So what role if we talk about this threat, climate change, overpopulation, what role does data play? We heard this morning about AI, about data, about open source. I understood you Dirk, that we're a little bit against data. You showed us data driven slides. So I was thinking, well, I will ask him, so what's the base and what's your opinion about it?

Well, the slide I showed was indeed sort of needed a humongous amount of data to produce it. But I am a little skeptical about.

Data on as absolute essential for city planning because I think smart cities, okay, because of data, okay. I think in the end we have to be smart about cities and not need smart cities because the data is also, let's say, element of controlling the the population. This is a sort of element of.

Not only design and making the right decisions, but also controlling.

The urban population.

And that is the shadow side of this completely data driven.

Kind of planning in my eyes. But I'm an old fashioned person.

And who owns the data.

In your case in Seoul? Who owns the data?

I'm not good in science, I'm not good at data. But I think the data collected in Seoul Metro government, as I know in terms of science, the Seoul Melbourne government has tried to be a smart city, the data driven city and transportation and climate change is everything. I think it's okay, enough with smart city in Seoul. But for me, science, the Seoul Meitom government had new challenges. They should cooperate with 11 neighboring cities with 6 million population, more than now over 50 million population. They should cooperate with the different cities. They should negotiate with the different citizens in different city. And then they need more, I think modify the data with not only Seoul Mehong government, but also the neighboring 11 cities. They should collect information, data and they should cooperate within 11 cities. And that is new task in terms of science. And also the Seoul metropolitan government should cooperate with 25 autonomous districts, boroughs and also in this time also they need a new data collection copied with 25 districts. And that is the new challenge in terms of data in science. They need a more easy and compact data system to communicate with the different stakeholders and different cities. And I understand science in this.

Yeah.

And this governance, new governance systems and.

Leonard, I mean policy influences design. We heard science influences design. Both has a data driven data producing. How do you handle this?

Data, in my opinion is needed to justify projects. Right?

It's really important you do. I mean you accumulate the right data, right? With the right intentions. Because data tells you.

What'S at risk, right? It tells you.

But it doesn't give you, tell you how you're gonna solve it. Right? So data actually in my opinion is really the first step, right? At the end of the day, you actually really need to reach out towards.

The people and include the government to be able to come up with a strategy that would address these issues presented by data. We have seen a lot of data with respect to climate change, for example. But when you present with data, what we are always asked is so what are you going to do about this? What are the solutions? And really that in itself poses a whole set of challenges because you need to first off educate people about what this data means. And then you need to get them to buy into the idea and then you need to justify the cost that you expense. So there are many steps after getting the data towards solving the problem.

So let's address a little bit the transformation process of cities.

You see the urban transition topic, which we have on a high level on one sense, we talk about sufficiency, about how people act, how difficult it is about behavior. We heard you. We talk about efficiency, technological aspects, data driven aspects, science and of consistencies. We have a stock, we have to think about it, how do we reclaim and we use our materials.

What's your way to think about this. How does behavior.

Change can be changed in people?

Can behavior be changed through planning or policies? Just behavior of common. Mr. And Mrs. Miller.

Let me think about it.

No, it's a difficult question.

At least in my experience this city after the citizen participation, at least the cities the behavior of a citizen will change it. They didn't trust the bomb policies, but they participate in the policies and they realize what they suggest will be realized. Or sometimes they gave up feedback. At this point it is not easy to realize. We gave a feedback to citizens and after that the behavior of citizens at least the citizen become to trust their own policies at least through the participation process. I think that is a small step. But we can change the behavior of citizens through participation process in different levels. And I hope in the next step we go to in 22 in Gangnam district. We have 22 neighborhood units and we managed in 22 every.

Neighborhood center we visit there. Then we make the town meetings. Then they give us the solution ideas. And then if we give a feedback to the citizen then maybe the behavior of citizen will be changed and we can be more cooperative with a citizen. Of course, maybe they give a more opposite. But in my experience in the last 10 years in Citizen participation, if I go open minded and trust and transparent and give the feedback immediately, then the behavior of citizen is changed. And I don't know whether Would that work in Holland?

Well, possibly. I think behavior.

Within limits can be influenced.

And I've been involved in a pilot project. I'm not sure. Do you have value added tax here in Singapore?

Yes, and let's say substituting the value added tax for a carbon added tax. So every step in production and consumption.

You have to pay for the added.

Carbon in that step. And I did that with the institute in Delft and well, in the pilot you saw really that is working. The invisible hand of the market gets green cloths on to to work on behavior. But that is very simple one, one very price driven, et cetera, et cetera. But in a way like Winston Churchill famously said, first we make our buildings and then our buildings make us. But that is for me there's a complete new research field.

How and in how far that is true and how you can instrumentalize that. I'm not sure how to do that. Maybe you are. You're an architect.

I'm here to ask.

I was afraid so.

Leonard, any adding on this?

I think we don't want to say that we want to change behavior. I mentioned in my presentation earlier good design nudges and I think it is important that they arrive at their own conclusion. Whether this is the right act for them and whether it is worth the effort to change. We are only providing the framework for them to arrive their own decision. And it is never a one way traffic. Right. While we try to give them a framework to.

Think about what is their preference. At the same time, we as designers are influenced by how they behave and how they react within the space that we design.

Yeah, but allow me to go back to that question earlier. You post about data. I want to maybe clarify a bit. So the thing about data is it is good if they are measuring the right thing, right? And you know what to do with the data. I have seen data that matches the wrong thing. All right. And. Or if you don't know what to do, the data. So an example is designing a canal, right? The data tells you there is higher storm event. So then as designers, what do you do? Do you design a bigger canal? Because that would not be wrong. But that is probably not the right solution. So using data that needs to be done sensitively, you know what you use it for. You need to know what you're measuring. Because you could be designing the wrong thing if you're measuring the wrong thing.

Thank you. I would like to open the discussion and invite the public for questions. Are there any questions? We have a microphone. I would be happy if there is an intervention in the public. Because I think we have been talking about quite some sensitive topics. Please.

Thank you very much. It was a very, very interesting sharing. I have a question for Mr. Kim someone, Dr. Kim. I've known him for many years. The proposal for Seoul is quite interesting because we have seen the way Seoul has been doing public consultation for the last 15, 20 years. That's been the big shift. Now the shift is towards the neighborhood. So at a consultation level, I think it's very good. The question then is the governance between the sole metropolitan government and at the neighborhood. Local government in terms of decision making and the availability of funding to do some of the projects that the community wants. Could you sort of share a little bit about how this works with this new model? Thank you.

Yeah.

Luckily, I started with Gangnam Gu district, one of the rich districts in Korea. And I was very surprised how rich the district Gangnam Go and every suggestion which I propose will be realized. And the people, the public, officers and investors are ready to make it. But they don't have any guideline. But I give a guideline they started and of course that is a special case. But I try to make some positive, successful, small story success stories. And in this story case can be spread out in the poor districts and etc. And I also have a lot of.

Advice in different districts. And they won't make also the micro city for their own character. But they don't have any financial resources, they don't have no human resources. They are waiting for the success story of Gangnam. And if the Gangnam style successful then Seoul method government can finance.

The poor districts. Then.

I think it will be realized this is a special case in Gangnam style.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any. Any other question?

Right, so. So I've been hearing, you know, through your discussions about like the limitations of data when it comes to urban, you know, when it comes to planning and urban design.

Right.

So.

I have this impression, I mean, because I'm an urban planner, right, by profession that we tend to, especially in Singapore, we tend to.

Approach urbanism through a very policy oriented and very scientific perspective. But I come from a much more artistic, creative background. That's why I resonate a lot with Henning Larson too. So would you then say, I mean this is my own personal opinion, urbanism is more of an art more than a science.

Right.

Because that, because of like what you discussed, that there are limitations to using data to inform everything in your planning and designs. Right.

I think it's for the three of you.

For the three of us, exactly. Yeah.

And this is sort of an almost.

A philosophical question of.

How we want, let's say this humanism come in in our planning if the data allows it.

It's a bit.

Like the discussion about the discussion, sorry about AI.

Where. Where are we?

It is, let's say the same ethical.

Let'S say boundaries we are in danger of crossing. Because Sasha just also warned us with the question who owns the data? And I think that is a complete vital question. In Holland, you see already part of the data are being privatized and before we know it, a couple of American firms.

Have all the data and we have as municipalities, we have to buy them, etc, etc.

So it is also a sort of.

Fight we are swimming in and where turning around is making things more and more difficult. So it is, it has so many sides this, this question that yeah, indeed it should be central in let's say our education. It also in academia to discuss about, about this, the dark side of data. And again, I don't think we need, let's say smart cities in the data sense. We need to be smart about cities.

Maybe I take a step at this. Data is really important towards.

Creating good urban spaces. But I think it's an incomplete science.

Data only can tell you certain part and there are gaps to that. So as designers we use the known data scaping to understand the site as much as possible. But what is missing from data are things like experience, like memories, relationships and that is really hard to measure. And that's where the personal creative side comes in. We were designed to such a point where data stops and then you have to take that lip.

I don't have the answer as to how you take that leap because everybody wants to know that answer. As a designer, right?

So we work with things like understanding the hydraulic.

The situation, understanding the topography, the landscape. Right. And we try to work as much of the land as possible. But ultimately when you decide the areas that is least.

Would have least impact for development and you start developing this place, those places are the ones that you actually have to decide how you want people to experience those places. And that is when as a designer you impose your vision.

I think just short comments, maybe I'm old fashioned men. I think the priority is humanity and the communication with humanity is priority. But participation, policy, you have a lot of conflicts, issues informed with the citizens or with a professional and then with a data driven fact with this there could be communications tools or negotiations tools. I think this is the less priority. And I can use data driven smart system as communication tools and negotiations.

If I may, Sasha, there's one other point I would like to stress that.

We have.

That has been, let's say, one of the themes the whole day, an enormous amount of data these days almost. And you see that there is tendency that.

With data mining, in these enormous amounts of data you can leapfrog theory. You don't need to know how things really work. With data mining people think they can, let's say, know how things work. And I. I think that's a great misunderstanding. I seek we can't leapfrog theory because theory, urban theory is really, well, very modest. If you look at what we really know, how things work, and leapfrogging it with this.

Deluge of data, I think is a mistake.

More questions.

Stephen?

Thanks.

I can't resist. I wanted to pick up on this and the last question, which is, you know, a science or art? And of course we have to be both, it's clear that we can't be in those silos to address these kinds of questions. And it seems to me that the matter of data now is.

So vast, but also so incomplete, so thick and thin available sometimes not available other times. But I also like this discussion very much because I've also found ways in which data is not often available in precisely the way you think. And in fact there's a lot of proxification, if you like, where we take data from. From one domain and find value and usefulness in another domain. We can also find ways in which data is manipulated the other way. The data doesn't quite exist and yet we make claims. So I think it's a way of coming back to Dirk's point and to Leonard's point. In a way, I think it's much more. We have to become a little bit more loose in the way we use data. We can't simply find these ways in which data confirms something or deny something because it exists or it doesn'. There's always a cross hybridization of data proxification. And for me, the theory is very nicely put and I love. I wanted to emphasize the modesty of theory. And finally, this is becoming of a speech. I know. And finally is to come back. We can't just be artists or scientists. It's clear we have to be using. Perhaps as an artistically inclined person, I want to be using data as a medium for my practice. And I think that's a really significant dimension of the larger FCL project.

Maybe I can add Stephen to that. Maybe. You know, this stone plate in front of the entrance of the Aula Magna, the main auditorium of ETH Zurich. The stone plate reflects Stefano De Sanctis, one of the first professors at dth, the first foreigner elected, an Italian at the time. And he writes, before you start to be an engineer, be a human. So I think this maybe answers also a little bit your question. And this is how we try to educate our youngsters at ETH and hopefully also in other places. I don't see any hands.

Is there? Ah, wonderful. Thank you.

Hi, thank you so much for the talks in the panel. So kind of picking up all the threads of data, as well as the title of this one about community. So I think one of the panelists earlier mentioned about how data doesn't always capture memories or emotions and how we feel about a place. But of course there is quantitative data and there is qualitative data. So qualitative data could capture some of that. But of course.

We all know it's still incomplete. And so I'd like to also think about when we have all this data and then what do we do with it? Right. So it informs planning or interventions, but at the same time, living in Singapore and perhaps from our experiences, our own personal experiences, we know that constant redevelopment and demolition kind of erases memory. It erases communities, or at least it changes them irretrievably in some way. And so the question I'd like to put forth and maybe get your insight on for the panelists is when do we stop? Maybe when do we stop changing things and intervening? When do we let continuity sit for a while and rest and build a sense of community or engagement? Because for the ordinary citizen, when things are constantly changing around them, you get this sense of detachment, even if it's your own city. So maybe what are, what problems are outside of the realm of design? And you know, when you have this data, do you always act on it? How do you know when to just leave it be?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Do you want to add anything?

Great statement.

Yeah, a great statement.

And I think that there are two, let's say, entries in that.

Problematic the. The first is how do you.

How do you.

How do you treat your own cultural history? And in some cultures.

That is of no concern. And other cultures are almost afraid of doing any, anything new. But I think that the other entry might also be interesting, that.

The slice.

I showed about urbanization going viral makes it evident that there is going to be a natural resources crisis within a few decades that forces everywhere to go into a sort of renovation kind of ethic more than build.

Remove and rebuild, remove and rebuild, etc. Etc. So I think both angles in the, in the, in the question.

Can be addressed differently in every culture, every country. But the last one will force us all to change our ideas about.

I'm, I mean, the board of a foundation that tries to give.

Schools that were built in the 60s and the 70s a second life.

Not only before because of cultural history, but in a strange way, we are not able to build the same volume of schools with the current school budgets. So we are losing something.

And we are also losing the way.

The 60s and the 70s were looking at education and what we are showing in this foundation that every school board nowadays said, okay, away with that old school, we start anew. And that's for also for climate it's better, but we calculated that for climate it's worse. You can better ask a young architect to make a plan to give the old school a new life. So renovation is a very interesting field also for architects, where new challenges are.

On the way. And I think that will, I hope, be the new normal everywhere. Be very careful with what we already have in building structures.

Maybe I answer a bit, actually, the two Ladies in front here. They are much more qualified to answer the question.

Should consult them. I just want to say something. Not too long ago, I read a book about memories. It's actually this card player who was trying to talk about how you can remember things really quickly. And what he actually mentioned was the longest form of memory you have are spatial memories.

Memories tied to spaces. And he cited a few examples. They were doing experiments with discard players, right? And a lot of them were having difficulty remembering. But once they connected their memories to spaces, they started recalling them much more efficiently.

So we as humans, right, we are spatial creatures, right? We are raised based on visual, mostly visual, right?

And we perceive spaces and we connect memories to these spaces. I myself have actually gone through spaces that have been redeveloped quite a lot. But just because of the lay of the land or the curve to the road, it gives me a sense of deja vu. Oh, I've been here before. So it is important that while we develop, we need to really also understand how much to develop, what to retain. Even the small queues can give you that sense of memory. So as a society, we have really developed a lot. Have we developed too much?

I'm not the guy to answer that, but I think when we come to a point where our rootedness gets affected, then I think we need to step back and think about it.

Thank you so much. Another question.

Thanks.

I'm Weiyang from the Singapore Management University now, but just wanted to take up this thematic area about the human, the perspective. Because I mean, I'm looking at science, design, policy and community. And I wonder whether maybe what we need to be thinking a lot more about is what is the role of the human and how they feel, sense and so on. So that's the science of what the human actually encounters. Design is around the human and maybe his human networks in terms of how you then perceive the impact of that space on his own experiences and his experiences with the people that he cares about. Policy shapes that behavior, but that behavior then shapes other people's behavior around him as well. And finally, community is really that thing that binds all of us together. And to see in a way, urban design very much more from a human lens and the human network lens.

And to understand that everything is just wrapping around it to create the kind of space to create the community, the values, the memories, the hope and so on that we want to create out of what we do with our city. So just wanted to pose that as a thought and see what's the reaction from.

Thank you. So tirk quoting Bruno Latour we have never been modern.

We've never been modern. Now and quoting Peter Slaughterdijk, it's not important what the human is. The important thing is where is the human? The space is important. But to try to answer your question, at TU Delft we had a working group that was called Design as if people mattered.

And it was fantastic because it sort.

Of critiqued the rest of the curriculum at school.

And indeed it was, well, let's say.

A sort of open nerve.

So it is really important to look.

To the lens of the human or the community to design.

Thank you.

Just one comment. 15 years ago, when I began to make 2030 Sol Mesa plan. Solmester Plan is a high statutory plan. At the time, nobody interested about the plan because the plan is too big, too much. And according to the guideline of central government, we should propose the data driven analysis. And the plan is so thick and it is very statistically data driven. Mesa plan, nobody interested about it. And at that time the professional specialists. Yeah, the MESA plan will be died. We don't need.

And then.

And then one year after we change the structure, no more data driven. We coordinate the citizen participation group and we cooperate one year long. We make a vision strategy and we make public announce and all of them. And suddenly everyone began to interest about what is our master plan. All this is a plan for us through the collective intelligence. That is the first step. And after that, seven years ago, we devised a 2030 sold master plan. And we realized the plan, the use of plan is not citizen. The use of plan is public officers. And then we began to make public officers groups and they gave us ideas on Asian. We don't need to make a plan, just idea from public officials, quality intelligence and the plan. This whole mess of plan will arrive and then that is the. I think that is the power of humanity. Of course, based on the data driven. But the priorities human network is important still.

Thank you. I think this was a great final statements. We are in overtime. That's always good because that means that what we do matters. So I take away design matters, science matters, good governance matters, but we should not forget we are humans and we should be in the middle of all of that, that sense. So thank you very much.