 it okay yeah right then I shall start so thank you very much for the opportunity to share with you today today I'll share with you the Singapore's experience and hope that it will start to generate and trigger some good discussions so I'll go on to the first slide if you have been to Singapore then you will know that the Singapore today did not happen by chance at all I'm not sure if you are surprised that the situation in the 1950s and 60s were actually characterized by these pictures you see here of overcrowded slums poor sanitation and there was pollution disease and flooding all of which very much negatively impacted the health outcomes and today when you visit Singapore Singapore has transformed to be consistently ranked as one of the worst most livable cities even as our population has tripled during the same period Singapore strives to achieve high livability despite our high density contacts by adopting what we call an urban systems approach outcomes of livability and health are met when the various urban systems you see here are well integrated and addressed as a whole a livable and healthy city begins with integrated master planning and thinking long term today I shall share a few key strategies Singapore has adopted first the creation of polycentric centers have has helped Singapore to overcome the initial challenges of resettling our occupants from the inner city slums into good quality housing with clean drinking water and proper sanitation and this has tremendously improved the public health of our population in those early days this is complemented by locating jobs within and close to these centers to ensure that the occupants and people have access to employment opportunities and to reduce the need to travel to the CBD second is the creation of self-sufficient towns amidst a high density context where localized amenities like your grocery stores clinics and food centers are cited within each neighborhood today I'm not sure if you are surprised but over 80% of Singapore's population is housed in this self-sufficient towns and during the pandemic this has proven to be an effective way of ensuring essential needs are met and within close reach and thereby this minimizes the need for our residents to travel long distances which will thereby increase the likelihood of transmission a third strategy for us is consciously embedding health has a key aspect of our city planning enabled by the first two strategies I shared with you earlier on polycentricity and self-sufficiency Singapore plans for the adequate provision and distribution of healthcare facilities and we do this by organizing our healthcare system into three integrated health clusters in the east west and central regions and each cluster you see here provides a full range of healthcare services from primary care all the way to general hospitals like how different regions are planned to be self-sufficient for residential commercial and recreational needs and by doing so this allows our residents to have quality healthcare within close proximity to their homes but beyond healthcare it is also about healthy living scientific evidence has shown that our social and urban environments account for more than half the variation in population health outcomes so simple interventions like this you see here which is very prevalent in Singapore which are called shelter pedestrian paths they help encourage walking and physical activity from point to point especially in our hot and often stormy tropical climate and during the pandemic it helped to ensure that all of a person's basic needs is met within a 15 minute walk or cycle from their home come rain or shine but at the larger scale in fact I would like to share this news with you a couple of days ago Singapore has just announced a pilot health district project and this project is supported by a cross section of people from the health social care planning and design as well as technology sectors and all these players come together to bring holistic well-being to the residents of this area known as Queenstown which will not only serve as a pilot but also a living lab for us to test new health initiatives that can be scaled up across our city island and you can google to find out more about this finally Singapore is known as a city in a garden and we plan for green and blue spaces that are accessible to all throughout the pandemic parks have been kept open enabling our residents to continue healthy habits of physical activity safely in order to maintain not just a physical but mental well-being as well so in Singapore's high rise and high density context we also demonstrated innovative ways of injecting greenery into places like your pocket parks vertical greenery green roofs to maximize greenery in all spaces and at all scales and levels I'd like to share a case study with you in 2006 Singapore launched the active beautiful clean or abc waters program to transform our waterways and water bodies beyond just drainage and water storage functions and to turn them into multi-purpose use as beautiful urban assets that are spaces for community bonding and recreation and one instance is this Ang Mo Kio Bichang park parallel to the launch of the abc waters program as you can see at the top left hand corner it was merely a linear canal running through the park completed 10 years ago in 2011 the park now features a meandering waterway that you see on the right that serves as a floodplain during wet weather and has a vibrant recreational space during dry weather and this is my last slide today many of Singapore's parks feature beautiful naturalized waterways that serve both as water channels as well as recreation spaces and these waterways are also clean enough for plants wildlife and biodiversity to thrive and together with the abundant greenery these efforts will help bring Singapore closer to becoming what we aspire to be which is a city in nature in terms of public health greening can improve thermal comfort air quality and encourage walkability and physical activity furthermore various research also identified close correlations between green spaces and mental well-being so i hope my sharing has shed some light on the Singapore experience towards creating a livable healthy city through both urban planning and greening thank you so much thank you so much dr tan wow that was really really fascinating now the ice see there's a qr code there for folks at home to to follow as well wonderful so um same question to you the what you feel might be priorities for us to to really work on to generate healthier cities across asia pacific and um what might the research community do to help thank you tomas that is a very interesting question and a very pertinent one to us i i like to just first highlight that asia or asia pacific is home to some of the densest cities in the world and apart from singapore you have cities like tokyo so shanghai and nearer to home bencon in jakarta so the densification was brought up has a discussion point on whether they were a positive or a negative during this pandemic situation and i like to share that for many of the cities in asia for instance in singapore included this densification is not a choice and we're on a trajectory of projected growth so how can we leverage therefore the question is how then can we leverage on the advantages of our density and here i'd like to offer three propositions where we can have deeper study um and you you see first in a density you can have many services and amenities within a given area therefore the planning and provision and distribution of essential needs amenities is paramount to ensure proximity and accessibility to everyone and in mixed income neighborhoods especially this is a positive aspect walkability is a key feature for densities because this encourages more physical active mobility and reduce the use of private cars and this not only improve physical well-being but also helps improve the air quality and lastly on greenery greenery and the innovative injection of greenery at every scale and level is key for a city to provide physical and visual relief and also to maintain the connection to nature and when done well the reinstatement of biodiversity is a bonus and we've seen them in some of our projects and even in that amokio bisham park case study that i shared earlier so so yeah i could humbly offer these three propositions thank you very much