 Welcome to New America. I'm Anne-Marie Slaughter, the President and CEO, and it's my pleasure to introduce this event and to start by thanking the Singapore International Foundation for partnering with New America on this event, but also in their generosity and graciousness in hosting a large number of our fellows last May for a tour of almost a week. And I also want to thank Singapore's ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Ashok Kumar Mirpuri, who has helped us connect with the Singapore International Foundation and we'll be hearing from him shortly. Let me just tell you a few things about New America. For those of you who are more familiar with Singapore than you are New America, so we are dedicated to the renewal of American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the digital age. In less grand language, we're trying to invent what a think tank is. We are about big ideas. We're about bridging policy and technology. We're about connecting to communities and having a broad public conversation. We also have our fellows program, which is really how we got started to create a new generation of public intellectuals. That's 10 to 20 people a year who are hot, who we bring on and renew to develop big ideas and to write them in a publicly accessible way. And we have had six best sellers in the last two years alone for on education, on energy, on health, on a wide range of subjects. Last year, those fellows, the group who were there for last year and this year, program directors and also staff were hosted by the Singapore International Foundation for an exchange. They had a week. They had a chance to meet Singaporean thought leaders, policy makers, and specifically to talk about Singapore's innovations as a city in terms of what we could learn and what we were thinking about. If you follow the weekly wonk, which is our digital magazine, we then published a set of reflections on that trip. I'll just say personally, I first went to Singapore in 2007. My younger son still remembers the airport. He's never quite gotten over the difference between Changi and American airports. And it was an extraordinary immersion in Singapore and in the culture of Southeast Asia as a whole. I was there as part of the ASEAN security strategies. And I came away with many impressions. I mean, Singapore changes constantly. It is extraordinarily well run. It implements a lot of policies that we dream about but cannot, in fact, implement. But what I mostly came away with was the quality of the government officials. And for good reason, they are paid a vast multiple of what our government officials are, but they attract extraordinary talent. And I made and kept a number of friends in Singapore. I just want to tell you, in terms of the exchange, some of our big ideas, New America's big ideas, are inspired by and put into practice in Singapore. We have an asset-building program that has looked at Singapore's central provident fund to think about how to change savings practices in the United States. And on the flip side, Singapore may not know this, but you adopted, as one of your smart nation initiatives, something that was originally a New America big idea. We proposed back in 2002 the use of unlicensed TV channels, or what we call TV white spaces, for super Wi-Fi and for wireless innovation. The FCC adopted this proposal in 2010 and last year Singapore partnered with Microsoft to try out that technology. And we may well see it then implemented on a national scale. So we're going to talk about Singapore. We're going to talk about Singapore in the broader context of the role that cities are playing, cities in this country nationally and certainly from Singapore's perspective, cities internationally. This has been a subject that I've actually studied for about the last 20 years. It was in the early 90s that many cities started doing much more international work. Now one of the areas the United States is probably doing the most on is a subject like climate change, is not through Capitol Hill, it is through the global network of cities. So with that sort of temptation, I would like to, or invitation, I'd like to introduce Ms. Yulien Goh, who is the chairman of the Singapore International Foundation. Thank you. Thank you so much, Anne-Marie. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests and friends. Well, good afternoon. I first met Anne-Marie in Singapore when she was talking about her, I think, very well-known article who says women can't have it all. Women still can't have it all. So I'm delighted, and you will find that in this afternoon's panel, there will be equal, I think, equal space given to both men and women. So I can't have it better from Anne-Marie. What a topic. I am really delighted that I am here to join all of you who have taken time out on this great topic. I think it's very important for all of us, challenges and opportunities for cities. And I think Anne-Marie has given us some broad brushes of what to expect. Singapore International Foundation, let me start a little bit with that, SIF, is an NGO with a public diplomacy mission. Simply put, we look to bridge Singapore and world communities looking to harness friendships and relationships, friendships and relationships with people like New America that will enrich lives and effect positive change for a better world. So four months ago, we had the privilege of hosting, as you heard from Anne-Marie, 15 of New America Fellowes, Programme Directors and Associates for this one-week visit. It was a great opportunity in exchanging insights on the challenges and policy options of Singapore, those that we face as a city-state. And I'm delighted. I think this afternoon, we will see the launch of a Globalization Canary, Singapore at 50. It's a compilation of the visitors' reflections. And this myriad of insights that our American friends have gained from public housing policies in Singapore to savings and asset building programs to our progress since independence and the mounting challenges that we have in our current model. It's something that we have to look forward towards. And I'm confident that through this afternoon's dialogue, we will all learn much together on what we think the future will hold for cities, cities like ourselves in Singapore, cities like for yourselves here in Washington. So this afternoon's dialogue marks the second part of our collaboration. It's a continuation of our efforts at promoting cross-cultural understanding through the exchange of perspectives. What are the conditions and circumstances that spark a city's growth? What policies and practices sustain them? And importantly, for all of us, how do we stay resilient, sustainable and competitive? It is Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Sian-Lung who had mentioned that for Singapore, improving Singapore is a journey without end. And I think you will all agree that that's the same for all of us. Singapore has not been shy at studying other cities carefully and learning from them. We look to London for their public transport. We look to Copenhagen and how they've integrated pocket parks into their downtown. We looked at Bilbao and their experiences. They've gained great success in building arts and culture spaces into their cities. And closer to home, we learn precious lessons too from the United States. We learn about how to manage issues of water scarcity through the reclamation of wastewater adapted from ground water recharge and water reuse schemes pioneered by the Orange County in California. We are looking at a smart nation for the future. And you heard Anne-Marie talk a little bit about, I think, one of the ideas that we have worked on. And we are looking much more towards piloting green technologies, solar panels and solar banks. We recently looked to Manhattan in setting up municipal services for our city and setting up a hotline and a dashboard for our services. But much more important is the question before all of us. So what's next? What's the shape of the cities of the future that will successfully evolve to cater for the generations to come? The new generations, the young generation, the generations with different expectations from people like me. So ladies and gentlemen, this is what this afternoon is about. SIF is greatly honored to be able to work with New America. And I hope that this collaboration will enable us to achieve new milestones as we work together to strengthen the people-to-people relations between our countries. To celebrate Singapore's 50th anniversary, which is next year, we will be launching a publication, Singapore Insights from the inside. And we hope to continue conversation with our American friends, with people like you. So look out for more to come in the year ahead. At this point, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank our panelists, Excellency Ashok Mipuri, Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, Ms. Monica Potts and Mr. Charles Kenney. Thank you for taking time to be with us. And we look forward to your valuable insights. Have an enjoyable afternoon, everyone. Thank you. I was supposed to introduce Excellency Ashok Mipuri, our ambassador here to the United States. Ambassador, please. Thank you. You didn't have to come back to reintroduce me. It's fine. Well, thank you, Anne-Marie, and you, Lien, for your remarks and for focusing on this relationship between the New America Foundation and the Singapore International Foundation. I think it's a very important area for dialogue about cities, what we can learn from each other, and the new areas that we can look as we deal with new challenges, some of which you, Lien, identified just now. I'll speak about cities when I'm on the panel, but I wanted to take a few minutes to step back and speak about the overall relationship between the United States and Singapore. Both Lien and Anne-Marie have mentioned that Singapore is coming up to its 50th anniversary next year. For Singapore, that's a very significant time for us. It has been a very dramatic change in Singapore. Our first Prime Minister titled his book From Third World to First. And that really marks what Singapore was in 1965 when we first got independence out of Malaysia to where we are today. And through all this, it's been very interesting as I reflect back on those 50 years in that the US has played a very critical role in Singapore's success and bringing it us where we are today. When you consider these two countries, and I know we're here to speak about cities, but Singapore is both a country and a city. And you know, we have to always bear that in mind when we address Singapore because sometimes it looks like a very successful city. You also have a country to manage for a long term. When you look at these two countries, there's obviously a very asymmetric relationship. One, a global superpower, one in 1965 probably considered a country that would not succeed. If you look at all the indicators of that time, we were among the lowest of these indicators. High unemployment, low education levels. But it marked a time when the US was actually committed to Southeast Asia. Before today's current pivot into the Asia Pacific, the US has always seen itself as an Asia Pacific power. And it has been respected and encouraged to play that role since that time. It was 1965, it was a time of the Vietnam War. The countries of the region were all facing communist insurgencies. Because the US committed itself to the war, to fighting the Vietnam War, it allowed the countries of Southeast Asia, and Singapore in particular, to focus on economic development, to focus on the future, to help build up our society, to be a far more resilient society to where we are today. And I think there's a very strong recognition of what that US role has played as we've moved out of this post-independence, post-Vietnam role to where we are today. Today we have several pillars of the relationship. One is obviously the political relationship. Our leaders meet very regularly. My Prime Minister was in Washington in June, had a meeting with the President and the Vice President of the White House, and had a long conversation to share strategic insights. Because many of these insights that we have are very similar as we look at what's happening in the Asia Pacific. This political relationship has been complemented by a very strong security relationship. The United States Navy and Air Force use our facilities in Singapore. They're warmly welcome into Singapore. And what they have played in Singapore is an important role that gives that advanced positioning for the US throughout the Asia Pacific. And as I mentioned the US playing that role as resident power, as we're dealing with geopolitical changes, it becomes far more critical for the future. But it hasn't just stopped in terms of this political and security relationship just between Singapore and the US. Singapore has become in many ways the platform for the US to engage into the larger region. Into the Asia Pacific. We have a number of forums and formats to do that. The East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ASEAN Defense Minister's Meeting Plus, that create opportunities that allow the US to play a role, as in many ways a glue that binds together the countries of Southeast Asia. So that role of Singapore playing the platform is very critical in terms of how the US sees its pivot into the Asia Pacific. It's far more obvious in the economic relationship. Singapore and the US have a free trade agreement. We signed this in 2004. In fact, the Prime Minister's trip a few months ago here was to celebrate 10 years of this free trade agreement. It was the first free trade agreement signed between the US and an Asian country. And Singapore and the US, Singapore is now the largest trading partner of the US in Southeast Asia. There's a large amount of US investments in Singapore, far outnumbering the amount of US investments anywhere else in the Asia Pacific. And Singapore companies are investing in the US as well. They are coming here for innovation, for new ideas for entrepreneurship. So it's a very warm, positive relationship. But again, just as a security relationship, using one agreement as a platform for the rest, we have now used the Singapore-US FTA as the platform for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is currently being negotiated, which will help to anchor the US economic engagement with the region. So another very critical part of where we see these relationships moving. New areas have emerged. Education has become a very important part of the links that we have. Everyone wants to know Singapore math. But there's so much that Singapore wants to learn from the US as well, as you have tremendous peaks of education that allow our students to come here, with a large number of undergraduates in universities in the US. We've also signed up a large number of collaborative projects as well. There's a Yale NUS College in Singapore. The Peabody School out in Baltimore has a program with our Conservatory of Music in Singapore. And a couple of weeks ago, I was in MIT, and MIT has set up a university with Singapore called the Singapore University of Technology and Design, re-looking at the whole idea of architecture and design. Really things that we're looking into the future that will strengthen the bonds between our two countries. Again, using education as a platform, we have created a new structure called the Third Country Training Partnership that allows Singapore and US trainers to work together to reach out to regional partners and train them in areas like trade facilitation, investment, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief, just to create that. So in many ways, I see the SIF, New America Foundation is also going in that direction. Where we've started this year with this exchange of these fellows, and I think it's a very good start, we need to look forward to the future. Using SIF and New America Foundation to create a platform to reach out further into the Asia Pacific, that as New America deals with the issues of concern in the United States, engaging with the Asia Pacific still remains very important. There are many ideas and perspectives that you bring. And in many ways, SIF and Singapore can be an excellent partner for this. So today's dialogue is really just the start of that. And I look forward to the conversation later. Thank you. Good. So I just want to thank everyone for coming. My name is Josh Keating. I'm a staff writer at The Slate Magazine, and I write the world blog. And I'm going to be moderating today and hopefully staying out of the way as much as possible. I'll just go right to left, I suppose. On the panel today, we have Monica Potts, who's a fellow here at NAF and a former staff writer for the American Prospect. Charles Kenney is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and author of the books Getting Better and the Upside of Down. A New America book. And a former New America fellow as well as I'll see you. Anne-Marie Slaughter is the president and CEO of the New America Foundation and a former director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department. And of course, Ashok Kumar Mupari is the ambassador of Singapore to the United States. And I think I'll start with you, actually. One of the essays in the book we've got poses the interesting question, should every country be like Singapore? But I want to pose a little bit of a different one. Can every country be like Singapore? I mean, to what, I mean, certainly a lot of the success that the city has had is due to policies enacted by the government. But there are also specific circumstances, both historical and geographical, that led to Singapore to become what it is today. So how many of the successes Singapore has had are really transferable to cities and countries in other contexts? Well, it seems like a very important model for people. And we keep hearing about countries in the Middle East, in Africa, saying we want to be like Singapore. In fact, we caution people to saying you actually find you will not be able to replicate the Singapore experience because of the different history, the different geography. But there are elements that you can learn from. And then you really have to adapt it to the model that you have. We have a very unique history, colonial British colony. The British came because they wanted to set up a trading port in Southeast Asia. And that became a critical part. And today we still remain very much a trading hub. We've taken that history. We have a unique geography where we are as the Suez Canal opened up and energy supplies go down through the Malacca Straits. Everybody's got to stop in Singapore. That is impossible to replicate yet a very safe harbor, unimpacted by typhoons or earthquakes or hurricanes that always give comfort as people went through. And then our unique history becoming independent quite suddenly 50 years ago, without a hinterland, having to create out of this, a model of a country and a city that looked into the future, a unique leadership, but also a very strong focus on the future to make it work. So we're very careful in cautioning people that, yes, there are elements you can learn. You can learn to run an airport better. Your son would appreciate or learn to run a port better. But as a whole model, you really have to fit it into where you are. And that I think that's where we keep reminding people. Emory, as you travel and, you know, see other cities, some of which they're probably trying to replicate the Singapore model. What are other places you see that you think are sort of getting globalization right that are, you know, they're taking advantage of this sort of opportunities and being an international city? Places that are getting globalization right. Well, actually, the first thing that came to mind when you said that was Hong Kong, but that's another very suey, suey, generous situation. But again, I mean, you see, you definitely see similarities in terms of the infrastructure in terms of thinking about planning. I'm not sure I've been in that. I mean, I guess to the ambassador, I think of Singapore is fairly unique. I mean, it really, I've never been anywhere that was that clean. I mean, including any city in the United States, although Chicago looks a lot better since from Emmanuel has taken over. But but honestly, I have this sense that Singapore is a there's a geographic uniqueness. There's a historical uniqueness. There's obviously a you had a great man as your leader. I don't think we can talk about Singapore without talking about Lee Kuan Yew and the fact that Lee Kuan Yew played an unbelievably large role in molding a city that could have otherwise turned into race riots very quickly. That, you know, not everybody gets a leader who is both firmly in charge. It wasn't a democracy. It was he was in charge, but he was wise and prudent, right? And he did the sorts of things that you might want. So I'm not sure I can I see places that are doing individual things, right? But I don't see any place that really is doing it the way Singapore did. Well, Charles, I mean, you sort of tackle development questions very broadly. And I'm curious, you know, or in terms of cities that can really sort of drive societies from poverty to greater prosperity, or are there common features? Is there a kind of special sauce for a city's what can be sort of societally transforming cities? So I mean, Singapore is fairly unique in being a city state. And and that does have these issues about what lessons can we take? I mean, certainly, I think speaking as an economist, the lesson that economists can take from Singapore as a model for growth is whatever model for growth you had as an economist, it's probably wrong. In the, you know, if you look at the Kato Institute comes out with this measure of how liberal is an economy in their terms, I mean, how pro market is it. Singapore is regularly number one or two fighting it out with Hong Kong. On the other hand, it has what a bit of the GDP is produced by state owned companies and 85% of the housing is government. I mean, huge role for government in the sector. So it's satisfactory neither to the sort of free market ideologues nor to the to those who'd like state control of everything. You know, it leaves me going, well, clearly, you know, this is very complex, but in a way that alone is a valuable lesson, right? That it turns out you can't just sort of walk in with a with a simple model and say, here's how you go from being poor to being rich. There are there's a huge role for government and getting government right, including paying, including leaders and paying bureaucrats are lots of money. Yes. Because they're worth it, because they're worth it. But at the same time, you know, clearly, Singapore has found the way to make the private sector really work and deliver as well at producing jobs. And so, you know, if there is a lesson out there is you really want strong government. That doesn't mean mean big government in every sense of the word. It doesn't mean the government has to try and control everything. It shouldn't try and control everything. You really do want a government that can deliver when only governments can deliver. And Singapore seems to have managed to, you know, thread that needle, if you will. Mark, having, having recently to Singapore and running about a viewer about housing issues in particular, here's from what you observed, do you think there are lessons that American cities in particular can borrow from Singapore? It seems like such a different context. But are there are there things that work there that could work here? Yeah, I did think about public housing, especially in contrast to what we do here in the United States. And what we do here is that we we sort of look on government involvement in housing for especially for low income people, which is really where the government is involved in a lot of ways as bad. And so we want people to rely on the private market, the government kind of subsidizes their entry into the private market. It's they don't do it enough. We want that to be temporary. We don't want it to be permanent. Whereas in Singapore, it is 80 percent of the citizens and permanent residents have are in public housing. It's home ownership and they're very much given access to financing to make this a real reality for them, even if they're low income. And so it goes up into the upper middle class, really, the people who access public housing. We don't do that here. We do it kind of in secret ways. We do we have provided housing supports for middle income families here, but we did it through this crazy market based system that sort of failed on us. And we don't we didn't want to we didn't want people to acknowledge that was government involved government involvement, middle income people in America don't think that the government helped them own their house, even though they did. So I think just kind of a stronger role for what government can do is the first thing that we would need to take on. Mr. Bester, I'm curious, you know, looking particularly at the East Asian regions. I mean, are there things you see that, you know, as Chinese as China becomes an urbanized society, for instance, and for everyone who's traveled in China has had this experience of traveling to a city you've never heard of that's bigger than Chicago. But are there particular things you see that that they're borrowing from the Singaporean experience that that they've learned from from what you've gone through? Sure. First, let me clarify some things about Singapore model. I'm not overpaid, but there is a good reason for why we pay our bureaucrats well. But you know, firstly, you need to understand that the model is really unique and operates like an ecosystem. If you try to say, you know, it fits into this capitalist model or that socialist model, it actually does not. There is a large role for government, particularly given our history. As I mentioned, we did become independent, quite an unlikely country to become independent. With no hinterland, we have to import our food. We have no agriculture at all. We have to import our water. You know, everything has to be built up. And in all this, in 1965, who was going to make the bet to invest in Singapore to grow companies? We have an airline, Singapore Airlines, many of you may have heard of it. Some of you may have flown it. It's rated the best airline in the world. There is no domestic market for the airline to fly around. You can just get on in a taxi, you know who is going to invest in an airline in Singapore, except to start off as a government airline. Today it's a listed company. But it's important to understand the model from this context, that in 1965, who would invest in a telco or a utilities firm? So it all becomes, and that's why today you see still a very significant role for government listed linked companies, but all of them run as independent entities because they have their own independent boards. They appoint their own boards. Many are listed companies. The government may still hold a shareholding because of the nature of the economy. And that's really how the model has evolved and created this whole system. Then you've got three particular areas that I think the government has had to play a very significant role, housing. A migrant stock of people needed to have some roots in Singapore with no ability to own their own homes. Singapore in 1965 was essentially squatter colonies and villages. How do you create with them a sense that they have a future in this country without getting them to own their own homes? So there was a massive building program to build houses for them combined with the social security system that allows them to afford it. The next area that has a lot of government involvement is education. Education, the K-12 education in particular, is essentially run in public schools with a lot of emphasis put into educating people because in a country with no other resources, people became so fundamentally important that you had to invest in that. And also a third area has really been health as well, developing the healthcare model. And then you needed to have good people to run this. The higher salaries for civil servants actually only came up in the 1990s. You wanted to have a model that was not corrupt. In the 1990s, because then the private sector started to emerge and then the public service was competing to keep good people in government, that you had to pay them some equivalent to what they may have been getting if they left. So there's a certain formula that works out in terms of that. Now whether this can be put into a city in China or India, both are interesting, the Chinese are building several hundred cities. India has looked at cities. Again, I think it's got to be elements of it rather than the entire thing. And then you have to be quite selective what elements you want to look at. Obviously technology is going to go into any new city, whether you're in China or India. But then sustainability becomes very important as well as you consider particularly some of the new cities that you want to make sure they're sustainable. But I think one very important part that we have in Singapore that these new cities will have to look at is how do you get citizen engagement? It's important that as we look at technology and all of us are very comfortable with technology, there are still people who are coping with a digital divide. How do you get citizens involved? And these are things that we have to consider with what we look at in Singapore. How do we get a citizen-centered sort of engagement of technology to build the city up? And so if a country wants to learn about this, they'll really have to understand that a city is not just infrastructure. It's not just buildings, not just a transport system. It's making sure that people are connected with it. And that's, I think, the biggest challenge. And here too. I think many, well, certainly from the point of view of this city and the federal government, not DC, I would say one of the biggest political issues the United States faces is citizen disengagement. That no sense of being connected to the government. Although I think in our cities, that is substituting. In other words, I think there is much more sense of connection in San Francisco, in Chicago, in Boston, in Atlanta, and in many smaller cities. And in some ways, that's in direct reaction to the sense that the federal government is not paying attention, is not responding. But it's also perhaps the ways in which each city has its very distinct character. I mean, there really is a feeling when people are from Chicago that have characteristics of their city, so that it's small enough to have that sense of engagement. But from a national political level, that is one of the major challenges we're facing. And we're trying to use technology to make a difference. There are a million different ways, you know, people are voting or instant polling or deliberative polling, all through technology. But it's very challenging. You've brought up sort of two different ways in which Singapore may have been lucky to have no choices. One, what you would just say, Amri, there's this sort of disconnect between what cities want in the United States and what the federal government is delivering. Well, in a city state, that state kind of has to deliver what the city wants because that was there. And on the other hand, Singapore sort of had the advantage of not having a hinterland, of not having natural resources, of not having another way to develop apart from through human capital, as you said, and sort of becoming this global entrepreneur, you know, opening up not just obviously to trade, where it's what? Two, three hundred percent of GDP and trade every year. But also in terms of being fairly open to the import of talent as well when required. And when you put those two lack of choices together, maybe that's a recipe for success. I wouldn't call it an advantage not to have a hinterland. I would have loved to have a hinterland here. Mm-hmm. I mean, I guess this is a question for anyone who wants to tackle it. But how, you know, how optimistic are you about sort of efforts to sort of artificially create city-state-like circumstances? I mean, if we talk about this charter city's idea that Paul Romer has talked about, I mean, obviously, most cities are not going to have the political arrangement that Singapore or Hong Kong started with. I mean, is it can we sort of create those systems? Or are they something that just has to evolve naturally? Go ahead. Paul Romer's sort of basic idea is what makes places successful is sort of the institutions of governance. Yeah. And if you don't have the institutions of governance, import them. So, you know, Honduras sort of kind of came close to doing this, which was setting up a bit of land and saying, you know, we'll import the judges from Canada, we'll import the legal system from Britain, oddly. But anyway, despite the fact the judges were coming from Canada, you know, we'll sort of import from South Korea the people to build the buildings because we know they know how. Put all of these things together and with Obama on the coast of Honduras will be this place that looks a bit like Singapore. It didn't work. And I think one of the answers to why is a big answer why is politics, right? The Honduran Parliament wasn't so keen on this idea of giving up sovereignty. And in a way, you know, you can understand why countries go to war for much less. So it seems hard to imagine a political situation where this could happen, sort of de novo like that. But surely, Honduras will not be the last one to try. It would be my guess. Well, a similar kind of idea are the projections that New York and London have far more in common with each other than either one of them does with upstate New York or various parts of Britain. And there are actually proposals of sort of merging some functions between New York and London in ways that would create a larger metropolitan entity. You can imagine, for instance, smoothing taxes across the two. And you've got very similar tax bases. You also have a tremendous amount of inequality in both cities. But the fact that people are proposing that in some sense, you could say, well, look, we came from the Renaissance. We had city states before. We could, in theory, again. But I think rather than actually breaking cities apart from their hinterland, what you might see are just different kinds of political alliances in ways that rural areas are more connected to rural areas and cities more connected to cities. I'm not at all sure that's a good thing. I'm just saying that I've seen proposals that are not just fancifuls between New York and London. I think that's where the sharing comes. In Singapore, it's actually started meeting every two years called the World Cities Summit. One took place just a couple of months ago in Singapore. And it's allowed both people from the public sector and the private sector in the industry to come in and spend some time talking about what they can learn in terms of building up cities. Out of this, an offshoot is called the World Mayors Forum, which takes place in the off-year. And next year, the World Mayors Forum will take place in New York. And so you will invite mayors from around the world to do some of these ideas. How do you connect cities better? What can we learn from each other? Each one has got obviously different challenges, but there is something that I think cities can learn together. So both the World Cities Summit and the World Mayors Forum become these opportunities to talk about to put people together in the room who understand their immediate concerns they're dealing with as a city manager or a city mayor. Say, I've got these particular challenges that some of us outside may in fact be removed from that without quite understanding what these challenges may be. So, I mean, is it the case that we're going to increasingly see city governments or supplanting authority of national-level governments or national-level governments in an urbanized world are national-level governments that include both the hinterland and the city are going to play a less prominent role as societies urbanize? I mean, it might depend on issue by issue. I'm thinking right now about Ebola. Right? So if you wanted, if you want to be talking to the people who are most directly on the front lines of a pandemic, it's not the, I mean, yes, there's the CDC, but it's really, it's the mayor of Houston, it's the mayor of New York. If you really wanted to talk to the people who need to know the protocols, need to be able to put things through their city, you'd get, or if you were the World Health Organization, you'd rather have the mayors there than the presidents in various ways, because the presidents are just going to then go down to the mayors. So you can imagine, you could imagine, I think, different kinds of organizations where cities would be members and others where state governments would be, national governments would be members. I don't think, I mean, if you look 50 years out and you look at whatever the 80% of humankind will live in urban areas, that it seems that why wouldn't you have the heads of those urban areas rather than the heads of those urban areas with the remaining 20% of people? I think on social issues, you see cities pulling the rest of the country along already. And so I think that has some effect on our politics as well. I mean, with a less dramatic example than Ebola is just in New York City, they ban trans fats and they ban smoking and bars. And then you kind of see the policies around the country follow that. And I think that's where they exert most of their power. And in some ways, they're ahead of national politics and they kind of pull us along as well. Well, one area is transport and mobility and technology. In Detroit last month was the World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems and it was cities who represented. It was not countries. It was cities in Asia Pacific, in North America, in South America comparing their different models because certain population size requires public transportation, mobility, these issues. And how do you deal with this in new technologies? And it is something that I think the city managers learn a lot from these ideas that let's come together, let me walk around and see what other cities are doing, trying to move people in from outside in to work and out at the end of the day. It's a very common problem they all have to deal with. I wonder how much the happy families are all the same unhappy families are all different in their own unique way. I wonder how much that's sort of true of cities and rural areas that actually cities worldwide do face many very similar issues. How you get a bus rapid transit system to work doesn't look all that different. I'm sure it looks very different from Curitiba in Singapore, but there will be many areas of similarity. Whereas how you get paddy field irrigation to work as compared to small farming in Africa may be actually really completely different challenges. And so this growing urbanization and we're about to hit peak rural. So not just most of the world now lives in cities, but by 2020, the global rural population will be dropping in absolute terms. There will never be as many people in rural areas as there are in 2019. As we move towards this increasingly urbanized world, because all of the problems that these urban areas are facing are very similar, you'll see a lot more of this world congresses. That's exciting. Well, if we do see a kind of hollowing out of rural areas or a declining population, I mean, cities will obviously still be dependent on rural areas for water, for food, for... Not necessarily for food at all. I mean, vertical farming is very likely to... Singapore is already experimenting with it, but there are full proposals for how you can generate all your food, including livestock within cities. I wouldn't... Water is a different thing. Not for water, we have reclaimed water in Singapore, new water, of course you have desalination. So we Singapore's got to rely basically on its own water resources. We still buy some water from our neighbors, but we rely essentially on having our water and reclaiming it. So even water is due, do we need... What do you need the land for? You need a place to go on the weekend to spend there. We'll flip that around. I mean, that is... To the extent that becomes truer, that's great news for the planet, right? In that we're all terribly worried that we are overtaxing the global commons. We're overtaxing rural areas, water, we're overtaxing forests by chopping them down. If cities can become more and more self-sufficient, this is great news for the places that aren't cities and at the moment are being... Displaced for resources by cities. I go too far, but, you know... So it could be a really positive development. The political upheaval though, I mean, as we were talking, if you're thinking, just think about the United States federal system where Montana gets equal votes with New York in the Senate. And obviously all states have that. The cities tend to be more liberal. The rural areas tend to be more conservative in general, meaning more willing to accept change and less willing to accept change without any particular labels. But in general, that, of course, is a careful balance, right? In every state there's a balance between the city's power and then the rural areas demand roughly equal weight in various ways. So if you really start thinking about cities and cities that are more self-sufficient, the political upheaval, at some point those cities will say we are not going to be dictated to by a very small number of people who are living in the hinterland whom we are not dependent on. And you could get a lot of upheaval. And a lot of disruption on the human level too. I mean, I don't know. There are going to still be farmers who are trying to make their living off the land. And so that's something we would have to think about. And I'm trying to also imagine an America that tells the story of itself without a heartland. And so I can't imagine what that would look like. And so that's a weird thing. The Great Plains. They want to return it to the Great Plains. We would think of that. We have to think of that. I just wanted to ask the panel to reflect a little bit on the recent events in Hong Kong which seems like a kind of textbook case of a city with, for its own historical reasons, very distinct with political and economic culture, which is now coming into clashing with the larger national culture. I mean, obviously Hong Kong is like Singapore as its own very particular history, but are there lessons that other mega cities that other large urban areas should be taking from the sort of political collision we're witnessing in Hong Kong right now? As a half Brit on the panel, can I take responsibility? I think this mess has its origins in the way that Britain ruled Hong Kong when Britain ruled Hong Kong. It waited till a minute to midnight before introducing anything in the way of democracy reforms. And then left. And I think the pressures building up now, it would all look very different if Britain had started transitioning towards a more democratic system in Hong Kong a lot earlier. It would have made the deal signed at hand over much more plausible than, I mean, much more lasting I think than I hope it's not going to turn out to be. So I think that the problems start there. I hope, obviously everybody in this room at least, I'm sure, I hope that this ends up with the government really stepping back and allowing some level of democratization to continue. I don't know, again, because it is so unique, how many lessons that have for elsewhere. I would say it does suggest, well, you can take it either way. Either you can say, well, this is an evidence that the idea that you walk in with a tabula rosa and you can create new democratic institutions overnight is wrong because in a way that's what the UK tried to do. One minute to midnight is a new constitution, if you will. On the other hand, you can take it as a message that there's a real danger in slow but steady progress towards greater democratization. In that, obviously it can stop at some point and even turn around. So I guess depending which side of the debate you can come from, you can take comfort in the Hong Kong model. I mean, I find it actually fairly heartbreaking watching what's happening. Although what's interesting is when, so you can have a standoff for a long time, it really does depend on the protesters themselves. If they are willing to stand their ground such that it requires force to remove them, then you get a reaction from the larger Hong Kong population and that seems to still be true. I mean, there were people even today who were responding to the taking away of the barricades. So there is a setting in which you can imagine just long stalemate because I don't see the Chinese government or the Hong Kong government giving in, but I also don't think they're gonna be willing to use force in the way that they have in the past in Tiananmen or elsewhere to clear this. So it, the most likely outcome is that this is gonna be, the democracy did not take deep enough root, there's a commercial interest against in ending this and it's gonna end, but I'm not 100% convinced. I think putting aside the current politics, I really see it as, what does this mean for the future of Hong Kong? We are the cities in China, like Shanghai and Beijing, because I think that is partly at root as well as they try to understand how do we, there is, Hong Kong is part of China, there is a basic law that has this, one country, two systems and they have to work out a system that they are able to, it's not just cities looking out global, they've got to organize themselves as cities have to with their own domestic constituencies, other cities as well. As New York has to organize itself with Chicago or San Francisco, they have to look at how they organize themselves with the challenges emerging from a Shanghai and Beijing and other potential competitors as well. There's Shenzhen across the border. I think now we'll take some questions from the audience. Do we have a microphone? Microphone's coming. Great, so when, please make your question in the form of a question and when you start, just introduce yourself and where you're from. Hi, good afternoon, my name is Eliza Swedenborg, I'm a social entrepreneur. I have yet to hear discussion from the panel about unemployment, specifically global youth unemployment and as cities are a magnet for those seeking employment, I'm wondering what trends you've seen and what you expect in the future in addressing these issues. Thank you. Well, Singapore is in the fortunate position of not having a very significant unemployment rate. In fact, because we have other demographic issues, including a falling birth rate, we have to bring in people from the outside to work. I think the challenge in cities, including Singapore, is how do you get young people into the new industries of the future? And how do you get them into jobs and careers that they can see they have a stake in the entire system? And I'm not really sure if the traditional types of education, college education, really get someone ready for jobs. This is how do you link up these young people with industry to make it far more relevant for them that they feel that they have a sustainable future in these careers? Quite different from what it was 30 or 40 years ago when you looked at a career as really a 30-year time span. Today, with the way technology changes, how do you keep shifting people, giving them new skills and new education that they just have to keep adjusting for the future? Go ahead. I guess this is another way that Singapore perhaps doesn't provide this clear lessons for the rest of the world and it's actually nowhere provides clear lessons for the rest of the world, to some extent, because the challenge is so different from what it used to be. Most of these Asian-Miracle countries sort of created great new jobs in manufacturing and they weren't all that great to begin with, right? They were hard, $2 a day, very high rates of accidents on the job, but they were better than second best. Manufacturing jobs are disappearing everywhere. I mean, we know they're disappearing in the United States, but they're disappearing in China, they're disappearing in India. They're disappearing in places we'd expecting all else equal to be seeing more and more manufacturing growth. That doesn't mean that there are no new jobs out there. It's just the jobs are in new industries slash services. And as the sort of US experience amongst many others over the last 30 years has shown, if you don't have government involvement of one sort or another in making those services jobs better in one way or another, you see increasing inequality, you see a lot of very dead-end service jobs with no sort of career path or upward mobility. And I think it's a trick that governments are still learning and I'm sure there are lessons from Singapore here. How do you turn these new kinds of jobs? Keep them, more and more of them are globally competitive, but also make them the kind of jobs that people actually should want to get so that do have a career path that do pay decent wages and so on. And it's an ongoing trick and because the world has changed so rapidly in terms of where the jobs are coming from, I don't think anybody has really strong knowledge on exactly how to do it. So I think it's a fascinating question for the next generation of social entrepreneurs, if I may. I just add that, at least in Europe, really high youth unemployment is one of the few counter trends where young people are moving back to the rural areas, partly to move back in with their parents, but partly, at least rural areas, they can be farming, they can survive. But that's not a huge counter trend, but it's a small one. Hi, Charles Self, 227 International. As we continue to see the earth urbanize, what does the model of Singapore say about freedom of speech, freedom of press in the mega cities? It's completely available. You could read The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Everything is available to read. I don't see, where are you looking at the question? We have to have certain as a small homogeneous, so heterogeneous society with race and religious issues being very sensitive. There are certain restrictions on using race and religion in politics and in the church or the mosque, and these are there, but otherwise, it is, you know, everything is, anyone who wants to know anything that's going on in the world as a very globalized city, you just have to be available and have everything accessible to everyone, sure. So as, what does that say as we create? Can you use the microphone, please? So what does that say as we create mega cities? Are we gonna see in the newly emerging mega cities a trend toward more restrictions on speech and press in order to deal with the multiple ethnic and issue groups that emerge in these more densely populated areas? I think every city and every country has to work through their own model. I think that's important to remember as you go into the future. Singapore's worked its own model and it's worked for us for the past 50 years. We've made adjustments along the way, created new avenues in space, and in the world that we have today of social communication, everything is available to everyone, but each country really has to work around their own rules. The Australians who are now dealing with some new challenges as they have migrant populations coming in have had to address some of these issues. Other countries in East Asia have to address this. So I don't really think it's a city-wide problem. It's not necessary city. It's how countries really have to deal with some of these issues in terms of getting speech, ideas, intellectual thinking across that is open, yet maintaining a certain common ideas and a common culture that takes them through. I think that's important to remember whether in an education system or anything else that you put in there, how do you create that common story that ties cities or countries together? One other way to think about it might be that I think in general Singapore, if you think of the spectrum between order and liberty, Singapore falls more on the order side than they're willing to accept restrictions on liberty that the Americans would never accept in the name of social order because they've also had more experience with falling apart. I do think one interesting question if we think about the new economy is also the relationship between what you might call profound disorder in many American cities, but with tremendous creativity and innovation. And is there any link there? There are people who argue there is, that if you can challenge authority all the time, I have this debate with my teenage sons on a regular basis, that this actually allows, it's easier to imagine new worlds, it's easier to question what exists. So the issue I think that tension, and I think Ambassador Merfury is right, you're gonna see it in many cities around the world is thrown into particular relief when you're also trying to participate in a new economy that absolutely privileges innovation. Next time my daughter's misbehaved, I'm gonna say to them, stop imagining new worlds. Right now! But teenage... Once without parental authority. Teenage children around the world are the same. They're all whether you were wherever, they will always want to challenge the authority and then you need to create that space for them. Thank you. I have one comment and one question. Just as a quick follow up comment, to me, freedom is the freedom to be able to walk the streets at night and feel safe. Freedom is the ability to live comfortably with race, any other race, any other religion, without having someone raise inflammatory remarks and that we must be considered to our neighbor, whatever shape or form our neighbor is. So for me, that's the definition of freedom. So that's my comment. As globalization takes shape and people move far more freely across borders to different cities, we talk about engaging our citizenry. How do we engage people, people who come and live in our cities? How do we become a far more inclusive society? A society that will attract people to come and set up the base and engage far more to contribute of their best and their talent. What's a good formula for it? I've asked this of Silicon Valley. How does Silicon Valley engage people? Everyone from all over the world flock there and want to give their best and it's inclusive. What are some thoughts that any of you might have in that context? Thank you. I'm just thinking, having come back from Silicon Valley, I mean, so the answer there is the prospect of making your fortune, right? It's no different than the gold rush. I mean, it is just a new California gold rush. So the thought that you can go and go from develop an app and end up a billionaire, that's the extreme case, captures the imagination of many, many people. We don't hear about all the failures and what we, what you also see in Silicon Valley is that it's priced out just about everyone from, I mean, if you're, I took an Uber, I talked to the drivers, none of them can afford to live in Silicon Valley. There's now far more traffic going out of San Francisco into Silicon Valley every morning than the reverse. So it's also created a bubble, an extraordinarily high priced and quite unequal bubble. Within that bubble, I think there's plenty of inclusion. I think you're right. If you are an Indian engineer or a African American coder or whatever, I think it works, but not so much with the outside. So in that case, I'm not sure that's a great example of civic engagement. It's certainly a great example of economic engagement and there are lots and lots of people who are trying to use their technology for good. I don't mean to say it's only money, but it's a two-edged sword, I think I would say. Sort of within the bubble, I guess it works partially because there is a remarkable sense of equality in that you might always be talking to the next multi-billionaire. Not a problem we face in Washington. But that may have lessons for the sort of outside the bubble too. I mean, one of the things that I think actually the states, although it does far from perfectly, does do a lot better than Europe, for example, is actually treating newcomers equally with people who've been here for a long time. Not completely, I don't mean to have rose tint, but the most visceral bits of the talk radio in the United States would actually be reasonably at home on BBC Question Time in Britain with some of their views on immigration. The views on newcomers in the United Kingdom sort of normal, otherwise well-meaning people have incredibly offensive views about new immigrants. The Polish were the last people to go through this, the Polish immigrants coming to the United Kingdom faced really horrible discrimination, which was encouraged in many ways by the political classes. And so, you know, I think the first and perhaps the only really important step is not to do that kind of thing, to treat newcomers like they're equal with everybody else. And from then on, I think everything's reasonably easy, reasonably easy. Maybe I'm being optimistic. No, there's actually, it's quite challenging because everyone, this is war for talent. Every city wants to attract the best. When you bring them in, they are obviously going to be more successful, better off, generally better educated. You are displacing some of the people who were there originally, who feel very uncomfortable because they feel there is a change in their circumstances. And you're also impacting when they leave a particular place, say an Indian engineer coming to Silicon Valley, what he's left behind, the brain drain that has happened over there, that's another challenge that we don't even think about because it's not something we would be concerned at if he could not move to San Francisco, he may have been doing what he's doing in Mumbai or in Bangalore, in Delhi and lose that, you know. And so that, I think we, we may be a little bit over attracted to the talent and we forget there are citizens we need to engage at both levels as well. Can I ask you not to feel guilty about taking talent from India? I feel like he's not guilty at all, you know, but... And I don't think Silicon Valley should feel guilty about that at all. There wouldn't be Bangalore without a whole bunch of Indian engineers from two generations ago coming to Silicon Valley, learning the skills, meeting the people, all that kind of thing, going back and creating it. I think it has been a massive win-win for the United States and India. Ah, well, now. Well, we'll come out. Hi, my name is JC Hertz, I'm an author and I look at issues of culture, technology and most recently, health. So in the United States, we have 29 million diabetics, seven million of whom don't know they're diabetic and 80 million pre-diabetics. And the American culture is really about individual, you know, we have this sort of individual culture, eat, write, exercise, all of these things. We rarely look at these things in a systemic level. When we do, there's enormous backlash to, you know, Bloomberg's soda statutes and such. And so given that the World Health Organization has, you know, notwithstanding Ebola is on everyone's mind, but last year designated non-communicable diseases as the biggest looming crisis in this country, 65% of our health costs, how do you think about health in the context of your demographics and in the context of an urban environment? And how do you confront these issues? In Singapore, what we've had to do is really public education. We have the same problems of, as we did the transformation from third world to first, we got first world diseases as well. So people eat well and, you know, all the, they moved away from traditional eating lifestyles. We've actually created a health promotion board, which does a lot of effort in public education, putting messages out about exercise, about getting the right food, they even, as you go to the food court, you will actually get a sense of how many calories in here, how to eat well, but that's the best you can do in many ways. People have to take responsibility for their health. I think governments or city managers can, at best, like Bloomberg tried to do, educate you to say that you may want to make a different choice. But how they manage it is really up to them. Well, I would say one of the things we should think about as we, as our cities get bigger here is equity and access to places to exercise and places to eat well, which I think is probably something that cities around the world will have to think about. It's not something we do particularly well here. It is the message we should eat right in exercise, but it is not everywhere available. And so I think that that, you know, that's a thing we have to think about is the extent to which low-income communities have access to the powers to keep track of their own health. Five more minutes, okay, a few more. My name is Prayush Peshkarna. I'm a student at Georgetown University. And the panel talks about how Singapore is unique in that it's a city and a country. For other cities that don't have that same privilege, like for example, China created special economic zones in order to facilitate economic growth within cities that don't have to necessarily subscribe to the same laws as the federal, as national government. Do you see a trend of that happening in other cities around the world? And if not, do you think that that should be a trend? Or do you think you can only work in a select few cases, such as in China when Deng Xiaoping came to Singapore and maybe took that idea from Singapore? We've tried it. We've tried it in a number of US cities at various times. So I don't know that it's only in China. I'm not sure I'm qualified to speak to how well it's succeeded, but I don't see any reason why it isn't something that multiple governments can try. It's partly what Ambassador Mirfori said about creating conditions for startups, for the beginning, and then weaning them off of that, because otherwise, I mean, otherwise you do end up essentially luring business and forgoing your tax base, which does not help. But Charles, you may. I'm gonna sound like a very old man. We've been through all this before. You know, export processing zones were all the rage in the 70s, and in some places, East Asia, where everything works, they really worked. And then in other places, like most of Africa, they really didn't. And I think it's for exactly the kind of reasons that Ann Marie's talking about, that it's not good enough just to say, right, you don't have to follow all these regulations, and we won't tax you forever. That's lovely, and some firms may be attracted, but in order to make that both attractive long-term for those firms, and also helpful to the broader economy, at some point you need to start weaning off the subsidies, and you need to make sure that the human capital, the skilled workforce is there to deliver, and things like electricity work. So they can be part of a package of successful reforms to help build industry. They can also be part of a package of failed reforms that keep the country poor. Depends how you do it. Sorry, that's a deep, unsatisfactory answer. The ones that Singapore did, the whole idea was really to create a test bet and a smaller geography rather than a big, large city geography, and then to create conditions that lead to a success. Then, of course, we end them off, but actually the other impact that was very interesting was the demonstration impact. As other mayors and other bureaucrats came around to see it and said, maybe we can do it our own way, obviously, and create some of these, take some of the learning because you already have a test bet. You've tried out some of these technologies, you've tried out some of these ideas, whether it's a manufacturing zone or Singapore has done an eco city in China as well that has got environment-sustainable technologies. We've done a manufacturing zone, the Succo Industrial Complex. Each one has different learnings and then it really, city managers have to learn on their own which one is most relevant for us and take it back, even as these become embedded in the societies, the wider societies, and some other part may learn from that. I think we're probably gonna have to end it there, but thanks so much to everyone for coming and thanks to the New America Foundation, the Singapore International Foundation for putting this together, and thanks to our panelists for a great conversation. Thank you.