Cities face a web of shared challenges like surging populations, ageing demographics and the looming threat of climate change. Out-of-the-box thinking and research-based insights are crucial in helping urban leaders find the best way forward, with resilience and adaptability. Given the scale and urgency of these issues however, no city can achieve this in isolation.  

Themed ‘Liveable and Sustainable Cities: Rejuvenate, Reinvent, Reimagine’, the ninth edition of the World Cities Summit (2 to 4 June 2024) brought together government leaders and industry experts to exchange knowledge, share integrated solutions and forge partnerships that can help cities worldwide accelerate their progress. During the three-day event, 3,500 delegates and trade visitors from close to 100 cities were in attendance, with city mayors, policymakers,and thought leaders in academia and the private sector sharing their expertise. 

Professor Lily Kong contributed to the discussions in two capacities; as the president of one of Singapore’s top universities, and as an award-winning researcher specialising in urban transformations, and social and cultural change in Asia.

She shared her insights to education, leadership as well as the sociological perspectives needed to truly understand and solve the world’s most pressing urban challenges. Here are some of the key points she raised during the conference. 

From micro to macro: Understanding behaviours for big solutions 

Prof Kong delivered the opening address at the Science of Cities Symposium, which offered research-based insights into building climate adaptive and people-centric cities. In her speech, Prof Kong discussed the evolving nature of cities and their complex systems comprising individuals, families, communities and more; all of which make governance, decision-making and change-making especially challenging.

“To understand how a city works, we must thus understand the behaviour of its inhabitants and the nature of their interactions, giving attention to how collective behaviour is manifested and changes over time,” she explained. As she introduced the symposium’s two thematic panels, titled ‘Science of Climate Adaptive Cities’ and ‘Science of People-Centric Cities’, she highlighted four ways cities can adapt to maintain vitality and efficacy. 

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Diversity of thought: Key to Singapore’s continued success

Prof Kong was also a panellist at the WCS Opening Plenary, titled ‘Liveable & Sustainable Cities: Rejuvenation, Reinvention, Reimagine’. In her presentation, she highlighted Singapore’s unique advantages and challenges as a city state, but highlighted groupthink as a potential pitfall for the country. Groupthink could arise due to the state’s compact size, which could lead to a lack of diverse perspectives even as it enables long-term, cohesive planning by its leaders. To ensure the city’s continued success, she observed, it is therefore critical for the city leaders to proactively seek diversity of thought and take an integrative approach to solution-making. 

For example, as Singapore enters the fourth industrial revolution, its leaders must find new opportunities to keep the nation’s economy vibrant and globally relevant. Underground data centres have become a viable solution for the spatially constrained nation, but this requires both technical expertise and sociological and psychological awareness to ensure they are suitable for people to work and even live in. 

Cities can effectively meet such multifaceted challenges by offering interdisciplinary education programmes to young people, such as those offered by SMU’s College of Integrative Studies. "For future city leaders, interdisciplinary learning is crucial to break down silos in technical, technological, sociological, and humanistic domains, fostering holistic thinking," Prof Kong explained. 

Accompanying her on the panel was the Honourable Alice Wahome, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development (Kenya); Dato Sri Alexander Nanta Linggi, Minister of Works (Malaysia); Mr Federico Gutierrez Zuluaga, Mayor of Medellin (Columbia); Mr Ernst Woller, President of Provincial Parliament (Vienna, Austria) and Mr Sean Chiao, Group CEO of Surbana Jurong.  

Industry and academia must work together 

Finding the right research question to address complex urban challenges can also be daunting, requiring expertise and resources that may seem out of reach. However, Prof Kong offered a compelling solution: committed collaborative efforts between the public sector, private sector, and academia. By pooling knowledge and resources, these combined efforts can provide city leaders with the crucial insights they need to navigate urban complexities.

An example of how industry can work with academia is the the Fujitsu-A*Star-SMU collaboration, as part of the Urban Computing and Engineering Corporate Lab@SMU. Their Digital Platform Experimentation Project, for example, brought together expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum-inspired computing to find faster solutions to complex problems like resource planning and scheduling. This could mean designing daily schedules for ambulances and patrol cars for more effective responsiveness to incidents in a dense urban environment.  

“It is so important for city leaders to work with the private sector and academia to open up the possibilities of ideas from different sectors,” she pointed out. “At the end of the day research from universities is an important partner to policy-making.”

Understanding data with empathy: The role of sociology in geospatial data 

Donning her hat as a geographer, Prof Kong was part of the Singapore Geospatial Forum titled ‘Geospatial & Geography: Empowering Communities, Enhancing Lives’. The panel discussed how geospatial technology and the data collected can be used to improve citizens’ quality of life. Through the use of geospatial technologies, cities can collect a vast amount of data with a spatial component, such as population density by location and real-time data such as traffic flow, transportation usage and energy consumption. City leaders can then make better decisions in resource allocation, build more intentional neighbourhood designs, and also improve citizen engagement through the open sharing of this data.

Prof Kong offered a sociological perspective on the topic, highlighting the pivotal role that cultural variations and nuances can play in the interpretation of the data. She provided an example from a work studying the outbreak of COVID-19 in foreign worker dormitories in Singapore. While geospatial technology could track the spread of the virus, policymakers still required a sociological perspective to understand the psyche of the workers involved, and thus form effective solutions. 

An integrative education that combines technical expertise on data collection with an understanding of social relations, cultural norms and ideological positions is therefore critical to fully utilising geospatial technology. “Only then can we interpret and come up with the appropriate policy, solutioning and so forth,” she observed.  

Empowering citizens and mapping cultural history

The panel also discussed the merits of keeping geospatial data free and easily available for public use. Prof Kong explained that this will create an avenue for participatory governance, where citizens are empowered with the information needed for higher-quality debate, leading to better outcomes for the society. While she viewed this as a positive move for maturing societies, she stresses: “[This] does require a readiness to engage openly and to acknowledge that the perspective of (community) interest groups might actually be valid.”  

Looking beyond the spatial dimension of geospatial technology, Prof Kong highlighted the importance of collecting data over long periods of time, as this equips societies with the historical insight needed to project future trends. 

Referring to the city of Melbourne’s use of geospatial technology to digitally map ancient aboriginal sites as a way to recognise the different cultural practices that were precedent to those of today, she said: “It’s so important in giving us the sense of who we are as a people, our identity, and where society has evolved from.”

As Prof Kong noted earlier in her opening address at the Science of Cities Symposium, people have to be at the centre of cities. “Science isn’t everything. At the hearts of cities are their inhabitants. It is imperative that urban planning, design and implementation are driven by a people-centric approach, prioritising the needs, well-being and experiences of residents. As demographics and societal preferences shift, cities must adapt to maintain vitality and efficacy. Applying science-based approaches for data-driven decision-making and innovative solutioning is fundamental to this aim."

Alongside Prof Kong in this panel discussion were Mr Tshering Gyaltshen Penjor, National Land Commission Secretariat (Bhutan); Mr Vincent Karremans, Vice Mayor of Rotterdam (The Netherlands); Mr Petr Hlaváček, Deputy Mayor (Prague); and Ms Sally Capp, Lord Mayor of Melbourne (Australia).  

About the World Cities Summit

The World Cities Summit (WCS) is a biennial event organised by Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) that brings together government leaders and industry experts to address liveable and sustainable city challenges, share integrated urban solutions and forge new partnerships.