International Journal on Smart and Sustainable Cities

Despite growing evidence of general patterns of urban development, urban planning and policy have remained largely normative, still lacking the conceptual frameworks and technical tools to learn cumulatively from work around the world and to extrapolate to entirely new situations, such as future sustainable cities. I argue here that a deeper understanding of urban processes using scientific methods appropriate to the study of cities and human development provides a host of new concepts and tools for this purpose. The present discussion gives a brief overview of the emerging conceptual and empirical basis for these findings. It illustrates the approach with the description of two conceptual tools, (i) the human-centric city, and (ii) the circularity diagram for material flows. These tools show how fundamental urban concepts can be articulated to analyze specific contextual situations and expand equity and sustainability in explicitly diverse, connected, and fast-changing cities.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, marked by emerging/disruptive technologies like mobile internet, big data, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), immersive media (VR/AR/MR), and the Internet of Things (IoT), is transforming cities and promoting urban development. This paper argues that these technologies foster urban studies and implementation in three pathways: methodology, epistemology, and practice. First, the new data environment offers a foundation for quantitative and objective urban studies, enabling researchers to treat cities as laboratories and conduct city experiments worldwide. Second, emerging technologies are reshaping contemporary urban life and space, promoting the update of urban theories. Third, these technologies are expected to be applied as new elements in the urban planning and design processes to create smart urban spatial forms that cater to contemporary needs. Overall, this paper highlights the potential significance of emerging technologies for urban research and development in terms of research methods and data support, theoretical updates and iterations, and practical urban planning and design.

This Insight paper argues that urban planning should be more than “smart” or more than just relying on the sheer amount of urban data. Rather, the urban planning should also incorporate foresight to address the complexity of urban development that urban data might have revealed. To do this, we propose the convergence of foresight (or futures studies) and complexity science within the context of urban planning. Foresight equips stakeholders with tools to anticipate and prepare for future scenarios in urban development, facilitating strategic decision-making, risk management, and policy development. Complexity science, on the other hand, offers a deeper understanding of urban systems by examining nonlinear interactions and emergent properties. This paper discusses how complexity science enriches our comprehension of urban systems, revealing intricate patterns and behaviors in the urban context. This, in turn, informed foresight methodologies that can enhance urban planning by considering dynamic urban systems. This Insight paper suggests the way to move forward is by combining foresight and complexity science for developing innovative urban planning practices to shape the future of smart and sustainable cities.

This paper analyzes the location of industries in two metropolitan cities to investigate how firms are spatially distributed, and identify the prevailing trends in firm location choice. By defining a “Region Index” metric, we show how industries have concentrated in or diffused from the regions-of-interest over time. We apply this metric to the Central Area (CA) of Singapore and the London Region to decipher the relative tendency of industries to locate at CA as well as London. To analyze the spatial co-location of industries, we constructed a community network, which reveals subtle spatial relationships between firms. Extending this approach temporally to create a co-change network, we deduce the occurrences of industries in Singapore and London that move into or out of a spatial region synchronously. Based on this approach, we elucidate firm types that not only co-change but also co-occur in space and remain within a region-of-interest. Overall, we observe certain common and contrasting patterns of industry movements in the context of Singapore and London through the analysis. “Other Activities Auxiliary to Financial Services” is found to have the consistent tendency of diffusing out of CA and London throughout the period of study. Conversely, opposite movement patterns are observed where we see the proclivity of IT and digital service firms to locate in London but relocate out of CA, while the Media, Financial Services, and Life Insurance subsectors tend to diffuse out of London but concentrate in the CA of Singapore.

The adoption of participatory planning approaches in the deployment of new mobility solutions is rare. In this study, we conducted a community-based planning exercise using design thinking approaches to engage residents in co-creating an Autonomous Mobility System (AMS) for their neighborhood in Singapore. Through this process, a baseline understanding of participants’ attitude toward autonomous vehicles (AVs) was established, along with understanding the residents’ travel patterns and challenges. A co-creation activity guided participants to design their ideal AMS for the local community living in the Punggol residential district in Singapore. The exercise resulted in 20 unique designs of AMS, producing novel ideas such as suitable AV-holding areas and service zones. The results of the design activities provided insights into community-level priority and values. For AMS, providing alternative transport options that complemented existing train and bus services was the priority. As participants co-designed an AMS that fitted their needs as well as the needs of other participants, the designs also suggested that participants valued transport equity and accessibility, especially for the marginalized population, highlighting the importance of a human-centric design approach to transportation planning.

This study investigates the business impact of pedestrianization in Singapore and provides a framework to assess business impact and recommendations to mitigate business downsides and maximize the benefits of pedestrianization. It consists of onsite business audit and observations, interviews with businesses ($N$ = 31) and consumers ($N$ = 102) of Tiong Bahru, and case studies of Little India and Kampong Glam. Results suggest a negative short-term business impact due to decreased accessibility by driving consumers, decreased visibility, and increased operational challenges. Generalized framework and recommendations were developed based on the insights to help planners assess the business impact of pedestrianization schemes and enhance them.