Sustainable cities for tomorrow

It’s time to revisit the built environment’s relationship with the natural environment

What will the city of tomorrow look like?

With the emergence of new digital technologies, coupled with the deluge of data becoming available through sensors and mobile devices, the city of tomorrow will definitely be more interconnected in many ways at different levels.

The urban dweller experiences a sense of this on a daily basis—with hassle-free electronic banking and smart homes that ‘respond’ to you thanks to a range of sensors, controls and voice-recognition technology. Less obvious is the web of interconnectivity among urban systems, such as electricity, water, transport, emergency services and so on. These hidden connections and interdependencies need to be better understood to make the city of tomorrow more resilient.

“As we continue to experience the effects of climate change, every city urgently needs to take actions to mitigate it.”

Hoisting the roof of the Rumah Tambah, or expandable house, in Batam: a sustainable housing unit

The city will also be more connected physically, with more efficient public transport networks and services, shared transport services (such as Grab and BlueSG), and better pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. Despite its small land area of 724.2 square kilometres, Singapore will continue to grow its rail network from about 230 to about 360 kilometres by the year 2030. Jakarta has also started offering its very own rail service to alleviate its perennial traffic woes.

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PROF GERHARD SCHMITT
Founding director, Singapore-ETH Centre
Professor for Information Architecture, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich)

Dr Gerhard Schmitt is professor of Information Architecture at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) and founding director of the Singapore-ETH Centre. The centre in Singapore was established in 2010 by ETH Zurich and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), as part of the NRF’s CREATE campus.

As the centre’s director, he leads an interdisciplinary and multi-university team in developing practical solutions to some of the most pressing challenges on urban sustainability, liveability and resilience. These efforts are channelled through research programmes including the Future Cities Laboratory, Future Resilient Systems, Cooling Singapore, and Natural Capital Singapore. He currently leads the Cooling Singapore project, aimed at mitigating the urban heat island effect; and Big Data informed Urban Design and Governance project.

Prof Schmitt was awarded the European Culture of Science Award in 2010 for initiating the transition of Science City in ETH Zurich towards a zero carbon emission campus in 2007.