Greetings from NUS Cities, and welcome to the fourth issue of our newsletter!

The built environment is inseparable from the urban fabric. As consciousness of issues such as public health and climate change increases, researchers and practitioners working in the field have advanced our understanding of how the built environment can be shaped to ensure that our cities are sustainable and liveable. We are pleased to present three articles from distinguished experts that touch on these topics.

Professor Lam Khee Poh is the Provost’s Chair Professor of Architecture and the Built Environment at NUS, and a pioneer in introducing the principles of total building performance in Singapore through his involvement in projects like the URA Centre (Urban Redevelopment Authority) and NUS SDE4. He has contributed to the development of regulations like the BCA-HPB Green Mark for Healthier Workplaces. We sat down with him to learn how architecture can improve the well-being and health of buildings’ occupants and the challenges of persuading others to adopt new practices.

The smart city – the idea of the urban landscape outfitted with sensors, and informed and regulated by data for the benefit of its dwellers – has captured the imaginations of many. But how can this be realised in practice? Dr Martín Mosteiro Romero, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Architectural Engineering and Technology at the Technical University in Delft, explains how organisations can marshal sensors, data, and policy to reduce the energy needed to cool their buildings as more of their staff work from home. Pradeep Alva, Research Associate at NUS’ Department of Architecture and at the Future Resilient Systems programme at Singapore ETH-Centre, and Dr Rudi Stouffs, Dean's Chair Associate Professor and Assistant Dean (Research and Technology) at NUS’ Department of Architecture, explore the possibility of using Urban Digital Twins and AI to inform planning and policy decisions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment.

Apart from reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of buildings, reducing urban waste is also critical to making cities more sustainable. Preston Wong, CEO & Co-founder of treatsure, a company that provides a platform for businesses to bring surplus food to consumers, shares about his team’s efforts to help businesses and the public realise the value of surplus food. To reduce food waste, changing entrenched perceptions is key.

Water is essential to human life, but cities are facing challenges in meeting this most basic need – balancing water conservation and consumption can be difficult especially for dense urban centres. Water is also both a blessing and a threat – especially as climate change, sea level rise, and erratic weather test the resilience of many cities. We interview Professor Tony Wong, Professor of Sustainable Development at Monash University’s Sustainable Development Institute and pioneer of the Water Sensitive Cities approach to ask him about how cities can be transformed to harness water for the good of communities, and in a sustainable manner.

Games are not just for fun – they can be the catalysts for learning about complex topics like urban planning and real estate development. How these games are implemented affects the learning outcome. TK Bean, Associate at NUS Cities, examines the pedagogical benefits and limitations of city-building games (CBGs) and in-person simulations. They use the UrbanPlan workshop, co-organised by NUS Cities and the Urban Land Institute (ULI), as a case study.

Finally, Professors Sumit Agarwal, Yi Fan, Qian Wenlan and Sing Tien Foo from the NUS Department of Real Estate, through the case study of Singapore’s Build-to-Order (BTO) scheme, demonstrate how affordable public housing creates opportunities for intergenerational mobility, even for families which come from lower income brackets.

There is much to explore in this issue, and we hope that the ideas represented in it will inspire you to imagine more sustainable, liveable and resilient futures for our cities.