 Okay, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the session of cities. We are talking about cities today, and it's entitled Designing City 4.0, which means how to utilize the industrial, forced industrial revolution into making the designing new cities, which is probably different from the shape of the cities in 20th century. Living space in a green environment or the time redundancy was a time with family, even. It's been sacrificed in a good world in the 20th century type of cities. Cities are no longer the place where the people come from, rural area, live together under the stress and high density. City must be the place where the innovation occurs, or the creative work, and human life, and it becomes a place, sort of, factory of the new economic value, I think. So we have to design, we have to define the shape, the meaning of the smart city and smart nation. So we have the distinguished five guest panelists today, and my aim... By the way, I have to introduce myself. My name is Yasu Ota from Japan, and Japan, as you know, is suffering from natural disaster. And the airport in Osaka is literally sinking under the water, and the airport in Hokkaido is shut down because of the historical earthquake. Everything is so historical. We are so used to historical stuff, but it's historical only on the record, but it's been like that. Every 20, 30 years, somebody pushed the reset button and destroyed everything we have to build from scratch. We are so used to it, and if you take a look at the TV shows and showing that the Japanese railroad system in Tokyo, and the people are crumpled into the cars, and the station staff pushes you back behind you into the cars. And all of a sudden, I feel like, wait a minute, is this a good place to make a creation or innovation? Or I can be a creative? No, I don't think so. Emerging market nations in Asia has advantage, because you don't need to worry about too much about the legacy, but you have to start from scratch and design a new, jump into the new world, right? Our minister put a cherry from Singapore. He is the senior minister of state of transport, and I think you are supervising the ambitious agenda, smart cities, smart nations. And you are in charge of communication and information, as well as transportation. And we hear a lot about the idea of smart nation from you later. And Secretary Nuan from Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh is one of the biggest cities in the region. It's one of my favorite towns, cities in the region, because every time you go to Ho Chi Minh, I feel like I'm freed. And there's activity of art, and the people who gather from all over the world, the young people. And it's also surrounded by the water, and there's a lot of space of the city. It's under the Venice, it's the level of the sea water. So we have to talk about the resilience of the town leader. And Rebecca is a designer and architect. But she's not just designing the building itself, but also she would be able to share your view on how to design the whole space as a container of the human, and what is the design thinking in terms of designing the cities in the future. And you are the founder of the plaza and the partners, which is sort of a team of designer, architects, and the interior coordinator, and the urban planner. So she might bring a new idea of designing. And Vish, you're from Cisco, for information technology companies, you know, the supervising whole region, not just the ASEAN, but also the Pacific region, too, right? He has a lot of experience in designing the cities in India and China, as well as in Singapore. So I'm so excited to have you here. Marcus is my old friend from Bangkok, and how long have you been in Bangkok? You seem to have settled down in Bangkok, but he's from the Germans, a German company, and he knows a lot of things about the transportation infrastructure and the power supply. Okay, let's talk. Let's begin with the conversation with the minister. Smart nation, smart city. We are so used to the idea of smart, but we don't really understand what's the meaning of the smart. At the beginning of the project, I thought I was in Singapore, that the Singapore government is just trying to make a full use of technology in designing a city. But it seems like you are trying to transform nation itself into something new. Would you give us some ideas about really what you're trying to do? You just hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what we're trying to do. If you look back in Singapore's history, we've had a very aggressive approach to redesigning our economy, to looking at how we will redesign the physical nature of our city, as well as the opportunities for our people. Every five to seven years, we've had to think of what we needed to intervene, what space we needed to intervene in, what are the levers we needed to insert. But this particular wave has smart nation as a big part of it, because the impact of technology is going to be quite different. And so that idea of transformation through technology is at the heart of what we want to do without smart nation. We want to reconfigure our economy, reconfigure the social aspects of our society, as well as government. Three major strategies, three major areas, and tease it all, tie it all together in a way that generates a sense of opportunity and hope going forward. We are a resource constrained nation, small island. Those things are not going to change anytime soon. How do we then use the transformative power that technology can afford us in order to then think of what we can do forward? Smart then, from our definition point of view, needs to be transformative. Not every project that the agencies come to us for funding, we're going to give them funding, especially if it isn't transformative. Transformative. Transformative. It needs to generate a new set of opportunities. It needs to generate jobs. It needs to generate real world outcomes on the basis of today's assessment. And it needs to create an opportunity for change. And that opportunity for change needs to be on two levels. It needs to generate in Singapore some capability that we didn't already previously have. No point looking at a project and calling it a smart nation project. If all it is is about digitizing business as usual. It needs to have a runway which is going to generate some capability in our people, in our ecosystem, in our businesses that we don't currently have today. And it needs to generate an opportunity for policy optimization, regulatory optimization, legislative change. So again, make the assumption that we want to disrupt ourselves. So transformation through technology, the generation of new opportunities and generation of new capabilities cannot be business as usual. So for us, the line between smart nation and smart city is not an issue. Our nation is our city and our city is our nation. We don't have to wrestle with that problem. We will leave that to larger jurisdictions to settle. But it means that our appetite for risk, how we deal with the risks associated with this journey have to be dealt with in a very different way compared to other jurisdictions. We don't have a second location that we can try something if a whole nation deployment goes wrong. But it also generates a sense around the social aspects where we must almost by design think about a 100% inclusion for our citizens in whatever opportunity is created. Because if we don't, if we take an 80-20 rule, if we take a first mover, late adopter rule, the people who benefit are living cheek by jowl with the people who are left behind. So by design, we have to be 100% inclusive. So that's the sort of big picture view of how we see ourselves as smart nation, why we believe that this is just merely the latest wave in that series of ongoing transformations that we've engaged in since our independent nation. That's very interesting. Transformativeness. So in terms of, in other words, it's maybe flexibility and resilience, maybe? Absolutely. So we insist that when we look at the projects and the ideas that are being looked for, that are asking for funding under our smart nation project, that it needs to meet certain criteria, one of which is the idea of interoperability, both with our legacy systems, but also with the modules that they come along with, such that we can now subsequently swap things in and swap things out and not have a capture under a particular technology or process. The second is that it should increase system resilience going forward rather than lead to a single critical point of failure. So what it means is then in our smart nation journey, we're prepared to be a little bit less efficient in order to generate a better resilience going forward. That's very interesting. So the image of the future city is like soft. It's moving the flexible. It's not the rigid skyscraper and concrete, but also more like flexible moving, changing itself type of things, isn't it? Well, absolutely. Wearing now my other hat in the Ministry of Transport, we would very much like to take a flexible approach to our urban renewal in Singapore. We have in our history, history, and I know you were not hoping to think about history, but in our history, we've had some very aggressive approaches around land acquisition and redevelopment. But going forward, realistically, we need to take a softer approach and a much more incremental progressive approach and diffuse some of these opportunities across various parts of Singapore. If you're familiar with Singapore, there's a concentration towards the south and we need to sort of create opportunities in a number of centres and think about how we redesign our city. The answer to the question is yes. It's interesting. Rebecca, I need to hear from your view from the point of view of designer. And what do you think is the real issue we have to really focus on now when it comes to designing the future? We cannot just throw the draft, but you have to know and you have to identify the issues you are looking at, right? Yes, that's correct. While it is great to be optimistic to look really forward, I think if we apply the design thinking process into designing our future cities, we must first look at an informed view of the past and the present in order to create design solutions that look forward. And in saying this, I think it's important first to address three major challenges that we must overcome in order to look at our future cities. First and foremost, much of our infrastructure in the region is really still built on the 20th century design principles when in fact we are dealing with 21st century situations and conditions and requirements. So that definitely needs to be addressed. At the moment, four billion people live in cities. That is half the world's population and that is also more than there were people in the 1970s. In the 1900s, there were only 13% of the world's population were living in cities. So now we must really address this. We must address scale and I think to move forward that needs to be considered. But in the speed of which we've been moving, I think we have forgotten the human scale. In the 1960s after the post-war, we began to build cities with lanes, with car lanes that were about 6, 8, 10 lanes wide and we then began to build cities for cars and not people. Yeah, because of it. Yes, exactly. And I think in doing that, we forgot ourselves. We then began to build cities that were for the scale of dinosaurs and not people, not the human scale. And there's a Danish architect, Jan Gel. He pointed out that we began building cities that moved at 5, we started 150 years ago building cities that moved at 5 km per hour and then we moved to 60 km per hour and everything just started moving so fast and we forgot the human scale. So we must be designing cities with people at the epicenter of the town planning narrative. And I think as you mentioned one of the most important imperatives that we can no longer ignore is climate change. As we speak at the moment Manila is again being plagued by what they call yet again the most destructive typhoon of the year. And this poses a threat to cities every year. So how do we start building cities that address all of these? And I think first and foremost we must be designing cities for 20, 30, 40, 60, 80 million people. And I think it's an opportunistic time and a really exciting time for us in the ASEAN because previously where we used to look at our western counterparts for precedents we now must create our own solutions. We must... We can no longer rely on precedents. It must come from within and I think that's why it makes it so exciting to be an architect at this day and age. And doing so like I said people must be at the epicenter of all of this. People are the lifeblood of cities. People are the lifeblood of relationships and relationships are the lifeblood of stories and it is stories, relationships and all these humanistic endeavors that really shape humanity. And this is what shapes the architecture that in turn shapes the cities that then shape us. So all of this can be addressed with a holistic environmental approach whereby we achieve livability in the broadest sense through the pedestrianization of cities. All these gentlemen have really great ideas to share about technological advancements in transport but these can only be done if the framework of the city addresses accessible transport accessible public transportation. Small scalable human scale city blocks. Actually I prefer walking to riding the cars or taking the train. This is a natural behavior of the human race. Yes it is and I think we have, especially in designing cities for dinosaurs. And actually you say that it's quite fascinating a few days ago I was walking around the old quarter of Hanoi and you know this was designed years and years and years back and so it was nice because it was all human scale. It was designed with people at the core and then of course there's climate change where we must be creating cities that are convenient and sustainable and they must be equipped to recover quickly from climate disasters with minimal financial implications. So we are so used to the idea of the 20th century type of cities where people have to be, have to live and spend time in a small place space and to work for the sake of the efficiency or the jobs or economic growth or income growth under the stress. But come to the original point we have I think, so what is the benefit, what is a good place for the human. So that's what you were talking about and you talked about the scale of the town. You have a lot of experience in Asia and other regions. What do you think of the appropriate scale of the smart cities in the future? See actually the fundamental challenges in Asia we are seeing rapid urbanization. So just in this one hour that we are talking about the people who are migrating from villages to cities and why is that? Just in ASEAN I think by 2030 90 million people will move from villages, rural markets to urban markets. The fundamental question you need to ask is why are people migrating? They are migrating to find jobs, they are migrating to get quality healthcare, they are migrating and to your point to have a better quality of life. And that I think is the fundamental force change that we are seeing. That puts significant stress on existing cities that were not designed for this level of mass urbanization. Now in this context you got to look at when you look at it from an Asia-Pacific perspective there are two types of cities. There are mega cities that are 15-20 million that are bursting already where there is more and more people coming in. And then there are smaller cities which I feel is where the next engine of focus needs to be in larger countries where they really need to make these services affordable and available. That's where I think technology can play a key role. The reason I say that is if you really look at the way cities were built before you build physical infrastructure, you build architecture and that's how cities were built. But today if you were to reinvent that same norm, you can actually build physical and digital infrastructure simultaneously so that you can make available all these services the citizen, they get go. I feel in Asia I think it need to make smaller cities more attractive to live in so that you can decongest the major cities. The major cities, if you really look at it, what are the physical and technological options that you have? The option is to actually urbanize the infrastructure with a lot of sensors so that you actually at least know like let's take smart transportation which Janel spoke about. If you really know where the pockets of congestion are in the stations, in the train stations, in the metro stations, in the buses you can use that knowledge to redirect and probably reconfigure how those systems will be engineered and we've physically seen for example in our initial deployments around smart transportation I think more and more people with disposable income are buying cars and I think on the road we realize that 20% of the traffic is actually trying to find parking space so if you can just have these systems talking to each other and make it easy for a citizen on a mobile phone to go to the right place you're going to get orders of magnitude of efficiency and the other area is I think for most cities, I think everyone says I want to make it smart what is the business model what is the financial model and will it be viable and that's where you really need to think of who's going to fund this is it going to be only the government because all the governments in every country want to do more with less so that's again an area where private and public need to come together to stitch the right business model that makes sense to offer more affordable services with an efficient execution model so it's not I think the challenge is technological I think is the easier part the business model part is a little harder but the most important thing is to general's point is how do you ensure that with these new sets of capabilities the way you used to design your city needs to completely be changed build vertical silos the way you build cities now with technology those silos make no more as much sense so how you can actually retrain people retrain mindsets to fully monetize the opportunity I think is a big challenge that we have in this part of the world I found the radicca and the dish brought the very important issue the points which is the human scale is the original base in a way we should start thinking about the future human should be the center of this issue not the cause talking about the infrastructure of the transportation I think Marcus knows things about it when it comes to the next generation of the transportation system we tend to to think about speed and efficiency but as Rebecca says I think there's two ways Minster if you have a congestion in the traffic in the city like Manila or Jakarta there's only two ways one is to broaden the road have more traffic capacity increase the number of cars and Singapore seems to be trying to the second one using more buses and sharing economy I've let you Marcus talk about it sharing economy it's amazing phenomenon I think this afternoon the Gojek, the Indonesian entrepreneur has just announced entering the market in Vietnam with a joint venture which means the innovation of business model hasn't happened in Japan for example but in Jakarta which means you don't really need the broader road but you have the bikes and the share economy so when it comes to the new transportation system in the future Marcus what do you think your business might be altering I think definitely there is a high demand especially when you see on the traffic congestion in the cities which have a huge impact on the economy itself on the environment and for sure on the quality of living and these all work together and that is something what needs to be achieved don't have this congestion anymore you and we need transport systems which are on one hand intelligence but I would even say once they further you have to a totally integrated intelligence infrastructure it starts with the mass transportation with the metro lines is one of the things another topic is what has to come in the future here and there some words already spend about it is cars e-cars, smart e-charging the same topic for bikes to minimize to reduce at least I would say the quantity of the vehicles in town if you share it I would say reduction autonomous driving that is something also which is going to come on a long term but for this of course you need the regulatory framework people have to follow rules and regulations otherwise it will not work but the smartness smartness to collect all the data for the new future cities to have them in a cloud based IOT open platform and make out of apps use of it we mentioned it or we heard about smart parking all these kind of things to optimize the timing and don't waste the time also to limit the time these vehicles are on the roads and block them I think this is something that needs to come which needs to come but it's a long way to go and I think the future when it comes to data I was saying that is something which helps us to make a better life in the cities to simulate based on the existing data how the future cities needs to be readjusted to make it I would say livable to have a better life to have more time for their own life to have more time maybe for working maybe for learning it will on a long run it will benefit to each and everybody and we are I would say at the stage where certain technologies are available already these days and it's time to embrace it Singapore is of course an excellent example what they have already integrated when it comes to the train system when you come even I would say digital assets management and all these kind of things predicted on maintenance to avoid the breakdowns on the streets which is another additional congestion I would say topic and issue so this has to come for the future make particular maintenance repair before it breaks down and that gives relief I was saying for all the people involved in these cities and we will not as it was said before avoid the urbanization the urbanization is a global trend it happened in Europe especially in Asia and therefore we need definitely find some smart solutions and this goes with intelligence infrastructure and then I think this is the way for what we have to go to the new end the Ho Chi Minh is changed so rapidly so if you visit there in three years time you will see the different scenery and I think the subway is still under construction but every time I visit there I see the different views from the hotel windows what do you think the charm of the Ho Chi Minh city why the Ho Chi Minh is attracting people from the regions and what is your intention what kind of city do you want to make the Ho Chi Minh would be the charm is one side the challenges are the other side of the city historically the Ho Chi Minh city location where people from different region came to us 200 years ago some group of Chinese people from the north to us they stayed there the French priests they came to introduce Christianity in Ho Chi Minh city so historically we were open to different country different ethnic groups so this is tradition so we accept the differences we don't become alert if we see something different so the differences is one reason where new thing is promoted to be there I go back to the other side 100 years ago the French people designed the city for maximum 3 million people so 10 times then population but now we are 10 million so all technical infrastructure are overloaded so big city big problem that we have 3 times higher than the nation average in productivity 2.5 times higher than person income so people come to the city and according to our law we cannot prevent people to move from rural center to urban center and now every 5 years we have 1 million more citizens in the city every 5 years how to cope with this situation so we learn from Singapore in the sense we should look careful in the future in planning process so that we won't be supplied by problem we have to be recognized earlier so if we design smart city concept we set 4 targets the first one to ensure sustainable and relatively high growth of economy so how can we do it we have to collect data from the past and we have to simulate the development and we create forecast if we see the traffic jam is increasing every day we ask why and I check this one 20 years ago out of 100 people we have 25 motorbikes and today 100 people have 100 motorbikes and cars and by 2025 100 people have 150 car or motorbikes so if we don't change anything we will move to red nation we will die by traffic jam so for our smart city means smart management smart administration administration based on analysis and forecast one example so if we can accept 100 people and 150 motorbike and car we have to make solution so that they don't have the need to have somatic car with flooding you mentioned beginning people realize flooding is more frequent and lasts longer each time and why we look at the past and the history now we realize the rain is more frequent heavy rain more rain and the sea level is rising every year 1 cm the surface of the city sinking every year 1 cm so the three combinations more rain, rising sea level and sinking earth surface create the flooding and why the surface is sinking we use too much water underground water so we are now developing a new solution to limit and to stop using groundwater in order to keep the surface sustainable and you can simulate if we keep living that way how long and how deep we will under the water so for us is smart city means smart management smart design I call back to example with transportation need history has to be one center in the middle even on move the center and if so they commute every day now we come to the next strategy satellite center satellite city with the big city so if they stay satellite town they have enough service they don't have to move every day to the center so we need smart design of the city one point and the last point I escape the two other point the role of citizens you cannot have an administration of 10,000 people and manage 10 million people and won't go 10 million people and 10 million head with smart idea we have to collect the suggestions to get the feedback so we learn from Singapore every citizens eat a social sensor sensor every person is a social sensor they see happening in the city they convey the picture message to us and they make suggestion so utilize the human resource to serve the human problem in combination but we just finish we just launch the smart city concept one year we have to wait one year more to see the result from your talk I think two points pops up in my mind one is the role of the government and let everything do that the market I don't think the market can resolve all the issues so they have to the government has to play and it comes to the point where we should discuss about democracy and if democracy is the best solution for designing a city this may be too complicated so we put it but I have a question to Rebecca the secretary mentioned the French design French people were so smart enough very good designing a city centralized Washington DC for example Paris there is a center the star type of the ship the road is coming out from the center the rim of the rings but there is a premise is that there should be a center of a city which may be connected to the idea of the power of governance but what do you think from designer's point of view what is do we need a really center of the town when people are connected through the broadband and you can work at home what do you think I actually think that it is now a time of democratizing it is a time of democratizing information and I think it is a great time to be rethinking our urban services and particularly the monolithic infrastructure monolithic institutions of the past I think that we must start breaking down the barriers of these institutions and letting them come down so that again back to what I keep stressing on people social engagement can happen between the institution and the community and society I think as we move forward we must be creating a socially relevant architecture that works as a network of inclusive and barrier free spaces and these monolithic institutions in the future will be replaced by a series of localized network of smaller versions of this that are closer to people that are more accessible and relevant to that specific community an example of this is actually a library that an architecture firm in the Philippines has been exploring this is called the book stop in the Philippines the libraries are not necessarily the greatest buildings that we have but it is really about access to information so what that experiment of the book stop was doing was creating free libraries around the city leaving these small 10 square meter boxes of libraries whereby people leave a book and you take a book but then you now give you now make information accessible to everybody and it worked it works so what you are doing now is adjusting the center and creating multipolar course and centers around the city so that people don't really have to walk so far anymore people don't really have to travel so far anymore another thing that we are doing is breaking down even shopping centers whereby previously in the past people would have to drive the American model and shopping centers you would have to drive to the outskirts of the city to get your groceries but now you see the rise of corner shops and smaller local supermarkets whereby you would just need to walk and I think that's really what we are moving towards I spent quite some time in London and you would see the breakdown well not the breakdown but the smaller Sainsbury locals and Tesco metros became more popular than the big big big supermarket format so I think we are moving toward that and in effect cities become you have several course and multipolar centers what is the Singapore's idea of the centralization and the pluralization and the reason why I like Singapore I've lived in Singapore for 3 years is everything is in work distance and if you like you can walk to the office if you like the mood of riding the bike then you can move then if you want to reach the green you can take just a pass for the trains compact I don't see there is any specific center of the nation well it's because of the simple it's because of the scale of the nation but when it comes to the center and the connecting the people equally what is the idea of the smart city smart nation well I think it's not quite so simple and I think the assumption that it's in either or it over simplifies what is a really specific human behavior we like to gather we are social and sometimes that gathering needs to happen on a smaller intimate local level and sometimes the gathering has to happen on a larger scale that is the nature of the human response I'll answer this in two parts one is to actually talk about libraries and the experience that we've had in Singapore and what the human behavior has demonstrated to us is the development of our public library spaces and some of it was around the kind of thinking that Rebecca talked about how do you take a resource a national public good and distribute it out into every town and so forth that involves a significant amount of technology and transformation and e-books and audio books and a digital platform but what we saw as a result of removing some of the obstacles associated with engaging with the libraries that have been occurred so now today one in two Singaporeans will have visited a library, a public library over the last year and our regular users of it so the attendance at libraries went up as a result of our process but it wasn't necessarily that it was going up in a decentralized manner because there are just some things for which you need to go to the Central National Library on Victoria Street and you have to then pay the price of the congestion and the crowdedness but it's worthwhile because you've become engaged in that process so the human behavior around our increase in convenience in a way tells us that perhaps it's not quite so simple as that there are times we want to decentralize and there are times we want to come together and so part of that process of course has to be about one aspect that I've just mentioned which is about getting the price right and in Singapore we've had to take quite a lot of political heat but we think we think got on the right direction for pricing our roads and our road congestions correctly the price of owning a car in Singapore is very high the taxation is high, the paper use is high the cost of petrol is high and on top of that we make sure that the price of parking is high none of which is popular but as a result we've had the position of zero vehicle growth rate now for a number of years and we're holding on to that position now we're seeing the car the household car ownership come down so only 37% or 39% I think we saw a reduction this year below 40% of households having access to a car now that is it even though we have had population growth so getting the price right and understanding the human behavior I think is going to be essential to designing that future city but as far as that issue of the center versus the periphery and the design of our city and what we're trying to do in the next bound we're trying to encourage a significant increase in walking, cycling riding public transport we want to go from a 67% mode share of public transport today to 75% in 2030 but what it means is we're going to need to have multiple centers in every town walkable access to facilities and amenities a distribution of businesses to where they work but I think we also need to appreciate that human need to gather once in a while and what that means is this cannot be an excuse for us to not invest in the kind of infrastructure to bring people to the city center our current plans are $20 billion of public transport infrastructure over the next five years because people will continue to want to come to Orchard Road and Marina Bay those are the centers for national gathering but I haven't mentioned food because every Singaporean argues about where the best center for food is not going to open that debate but I think we need to think in those terms there is a need for human local centers there is a need for us then to appreciate that you do need those large central centers once in a while and what is the correct costing model, operating model for 10 years and that is the position that we're taking I guess it's a phenomenon that for the first time is the number of cars declining the number of cars is remaining the same but the number of households that have access to cars is declining so what that means is that under our system of a certificate of entitlement you buy a piece of paper that allows you to own a car for 10 years and that certificates then get recycled we may have to make the assumption that those vehicles now are being used either in the taxi industry or the point-to-point industry they're being recycled for commercial purposes rather than for private ownership as a household the number of vehicles on the road has remained static but the amount of private ownership has begun to decline it's the consequence of the policy I mean the tax system well I think it's a consequence of a number of things you need to get the price right the ownership, the taxation, the fuel, the parking but you need to then have the public transport opportunities that's there that is something that we've had to struggle with until quite recently we've had to invest quite a lot over the last 5 years to increase our public transport infrastructure but I think that is now paying off in these kinds of statistics that we're seeing and I won't downplay the positive impact that we have seen in terms of the new business models that both the point-to-point car industry and the bike-sharing industry have brought there are just many more options and I think that has also added to that progress along that front very interesting I'd like to move on to the aspect of the culture and art and creativity which is an important function of town I think cities because I feel like when I first went to the city of the Singapore maybe 5-6 years ago as a visitor I found that the Marina Bay is so weird having this ship shape of things on the top of the building and it's so unstable I mean as a person who came from an earthquake nation it's so scary right but at the time I spent 3 years there and I feel like this is charm I mean this reminds me that at the beginning of the Eiffel Tower in Paris was built Dr. Eiffel was under heavy attack by the citizens of the city saying this is such an ugly building so it doesn't fit Paris but now it became the icon of the town so probably the Marina Bay becoming the icon of the people anyway so I have a question to Marcus you live in Bangkok chaotic town congestion and traffic jams it's incredible but I still like Bangkok because of this energy you know coming out from the people and the people whole about the racial background and the religious background and the white people a lot of people getting together there to make a lot of noises and it's fun which I miss in Singapore actually I mean everything is so neat we go to Bangkok and I should say Manila and I guess Japan and Tokyo is losing that power I mean everything is so homogeneous and people behave so neatly and nicely You should go to Bangkok I think the dynamism of the city comes from that part of the activity so this is a good function of the city which is the origin and source of the creativity and the new culture and I see that element in the ultimate too so what is the charm you live in Bangkok for 5-6 years a little bit over 4 years it doesn't want to leave which means what makes you think that way you think that the GMOs have the center office in Bangkok not in Singapore no no no we have the regional center in Singapore but nevertheless we are taking care out of Thailand and neighboring countries like Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos I would say of course when it comes to entertainment multicultural and the spirit it was probably a little bit more entertaining and enjoying than in Singapore nevertheless I think Bangkok itself when it comes also to the quality of living there is a lot to improve they did already a lot on the metro lines the current government is spending also fortune on expanding also this metro system, monorail system ramp and on which eases a little bit up but nevertheless when you see how fast it is growing and how the road were built traffic congestion is getting more and more and more and one of the negative aspects generally of traffic congestion between spending a lot of time there losing time there is one hand but the other hand it gives you also an environmental impact the air quality goes dramatically up in the bad way when you see in these years there were a lot of haystakes which is not healthy for anybody living in that city and that is of course the counter effect and in this regard I think we all have to optimize it it starts from the traffic itself but it's not only to the traffic it's the whole design the design of the buildings to make them more energy efficient make a higher energy efficient use how to do it do the smart metering even on water management to see a leakage a stage rather than whenever it comes out of the ground all these kind of things are needed for I would say for the cities of the future to make them I would say more comfortable for the people regardless if it's a vibrating city or if it's a more regulated city enhancement for the people for their people lives it's very important and there are so many aspects to be considered and this luckily can all be solved on a long term due to technology which is available these days and it's going to be available in the future which was not the case a decade ago Secretary Nguyen this may be a mean question but we tend to compare Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh are you you chair the discussion you can raise any confession are you from this region originally? both I was born in the south but I grew up in the north that's not a good answer but you are running a city of the Ho Chi Minh now so you can see the Ho Chi Minh side I see major difference between two towns it depends but I make a few differences okay in Hanoi at 10pm the shop almost closed all no food at all Ho Chi Minh city midnight still eating I agree for that people in Ho Chi Minh city they have three special characteristics the foreign observe want to make study how it's with learning in the city the school in the evening half of the school attendant are adults so people willing to learn not theoretically but practically almost lifelong so we learn if we work we work also very hard we compete because we have very early market economy through interaction but we enjoy life so the three point learning hard working and enjoy life and the last one I mentioned accepting diversity of culture and ethnic so these are the three four feature make the city attractive for certain people and sometimes noisy for some people sounds like I prefer the last point Hanoi has long history modern 1000 year capital of the land and Ho Chi Minh city is 300 years old young young city different kind of people interaction strong so we are late comer we have to work hard working hard enjoy life same time we have so many Korean restaurant we have so many Japanese restaurant we have so many Indian cuisine in Ho Chi Minh city we have the choice we are computing together well such an activity culture activity I would say is one of the most important function of the mega town and huge towns I want to ask you about the something called design thinking and designing is not just design the outlook of the things materials but also well you have to design the human behavior in there as a designer or architect so what do you have in your mind if you have a free hand to draw the whole picture of the future town the design from scratch what do you think is the most important element to boost the people's creativity to accelerate the creativity of the people well as I mentioned earlier the we need to address the challenges but I think in order to address these challenges there are obvious solutions but the process of the how is what is really important and the how must be highlighted and I think that's where the design thinking really takes center stage so I think first and foremost similar to what the gentleman said earlier is that we must involve all of the stakeholders in the design of future cities great cities are a product of collaboration and inclusion collaboration of architects business leaders designers engineers government officials we need to create what serves our current needs and also our ever evolving needs I think that also apart from collaboration and innovation we go back to social relevance we need to create buildings again that are socially relevant we need to create cities that respond to our needs and through all this data and the data analysis and all these new applications of new technology we are able to create buildings and cities that are adaptable we talked about the population of cities growing exponentially over the last years and that being one of the reasons for which our cities no longer service our needs the future city that we create must be adaptable and responsive we must move toward buildings that are that do not rigidly determine the way we use them and instead just highlight our creativity and highlight the way that we use them and encourage encourage growth and development and that I think feeds and informs culture and how that influences future cities I see you are talking about the inclusiveness of the different stakeholders so city and the future is not just given by the government neither by the party right the beach finally I think we have more time to pick up the question from the floor so just briefly I want to ask you talking about the India for example you have a lot of experience in India to create new towns what is the biggest learning you have got from your experience and utilizing the technology to design new features maybe different from the experience for your security for Singapore I think look when you have a new city to be built and there are a few new cities that are being built with close partnership with the Singapore government so that we can learn especially in the state of Telangana in the state of Andhra Pradesh I think it's the same point that German Nan meant which is about satellite centers because you have cities which are 15-20 million so there is a whole collection of satellite centers or satellite cities that are being built ground up and there actually the government has the ability to think of physical spaces to think of green spaces and I think the most important point is why will the person go and stay in a satellite city he'll only stay if his quality of life is better and he's got an experiential, aspirational experience from that city so the way we are seeing things like music, architecture movies, the way the malls are being designed is to provide that aha experience for every consumer and then also building the supporting ecosystem in terms of schools in terms of hospitals in terms of making it attractive for large companies to decongest and make it interesting for them to actually move their businesses to those satellite centers so essentially one of the things that there is a real focus on move the fulcrum from the major city to the smaller city but I think that would require it to be aspirational to require it to be affordable and it needs to be available for folks to actually move and that's the only sustainable way to make this reverse trend of urbanization to smaller urban towns and I think that's where I think music, architecture and I think in India people love to watch movies so it's actually Friday evening is where most of the movie halls are completely full so having enough capacity in those malls in those movie halls is extremely important for people to congregate to your point so I feel that's where we need to think creatively on both sides of the equation you can't move everything will not move to the satellite cities, some of them will stay but how you actually walk the talk is actually very important okay with that do we have time to pick up the question no sorry we talk too much but I need a final comment from minister because we have ministers do you really think we can really design the future of the city yes you want a longer answer I don't know if I have time but I mean I would say that one of the things that I'm proudest of in Singapore is the fact that what we celebrate today the outcomes from decisions that were made 30 or 40 years ago and what the people who began designing our city our economy, our structures our companies did is design our city of today so the most important lesson that I have to learn as a Singaporean of today is I need to think of what they did and how they did it and why they did it to design the Singapore of tomorrow so it has been done before I'm the beneficiary my generation is the beneficiary of one example and we are not the only example and what you've cited in Ho Chi Minh that was an intentional approach to designing a city in our modern era and there are lessons to be learned but if we learn those lessons well we get to design better cities for tomorrow so my short answer is yes that is the encouraging comment thank you very much everybody put a big hand with all the panelists thank you very much