This article is featured in Special Feature: Raising Cities

With the rapid and intense pace of urbanisation - particularly in Asia - there is immense competition for resources, resulting in social tension and urban sprawl that policymakers need to grapple with in a climate-sensitive time. To address these issues, Singapore Management University (SMU) has set up the SMU Urban Institute (UI) on 17 January 2024. The Institute will play a significant role in raising the University’s profile, and contribute thought leadership and innovative solutions to develop more inclusive, resilient and vibrant cities. 

Professor Archan Misra, SMU Vice Provost (Research), says that UI is positioned deliberately as a university-level entity and draws on leadership across all SMU Schools. “My hope is that the Institute will harness relevant disciplinary strengths, spanning areas such as urban geography, urban and behavioural economics, public policy, operations management and geospatial data analytics. We envision the Institute to be a research powerhouse dedicated to delivering impact through the study of Southeast Asian cities with two focus areas. The first is to view cities as socio-technical systems with an emphasis on collective human behaviour, and the second focuses on how to strike a balance between urban growth and sustainability.” Specifically, the research of the Institute will centre on the key themes of Urban Infrastructure, Urban Growth and Urban Life. 

Learning from Asian urbanisms

Led by Orlando Woods, Associate Professor of Geography, the institute is Southeast Asia’s first research institute that focuses specifically on challenges facing Asia’s cities. The Institute will serve as a place where scholars, policymakers, communities, and industry collaborate and engage with one another. 

The new Institute will consolidate SMU’s existing urban-related research - which sits at the heart of each of SMU’s strategic priorities of Digital Transformation, Sustainable Living and Growth in Asia - and catalyse new directions for practical solutions to urban challenges.

Partnering with others

The SMU Urban Institute is working on multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary urban research partnerships with relevant stakeholders. It has also begun the development of partnerships with like-minded partners in the region and will be collaborating with other schools, institutes and initiatives that are focused on the study of cities, such as the Thammasat University in Thailand, the University of Melbourne in Australia, and the University of Toronto in Canada.

These collaborations underpin the importance of sharing expertise, data, and information with cities to learn from each other in a fast-changing urban landscape. Find out more about the new Urban Institute, and read about the recent research of Assoc Prof Orlando Woods, the Director of the Urban Institute in Shaping cities: Balancing social cohesion and urban infrastructure”.