The Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities launched “The Future of Cities” program in November 2014 with seven studies. Funded by the National Research Foundation and the Ministry of National Development, these studies examine the opportunities and challenges for Singapore over the next twenty-five years in seven areas, Future Economy, Future Society – Imagining the New Diversity, Data Economy, Future Transportation, Future Urban Typologies for Enhancing Liveability in Singapore, Sustainable Futures, Living with Technology – Future of Work, Education, and Healthcare
The Chen Tianqiao Programme on Urban Innovation is designed around a better understanding of what innovation means in today’s cities, why it is so important to producing better outcomes, the multi-faceted processes and actors that propel it, and its implications for society and policy.
The Lee Li Ming Programme in Ageing Urbanism aims to bring together a pluri-disciplinary research programme to study population ageing and the city. Ageing is one of the major challenges faced by Singapore and cities around the world. Yet, comparatively little research has been conducted on ageing in the development sphere. This research will analyse and enhance the current understanding of older people’s appropriation and needs in the city, develop innovative designs and solutions to meet those needs, and disseminate theoretically rich but practical and context-specific frameworks for action.
Urban science, resting on the proliferation of urban data and new ways to analyse such data, is an emerging approach to understand the function and development of cities. Centred at the LKYCIC, Cities and Urban Science is a university-wide initiative and multi-disciplinary research programme that explores the potential of ‘big data’ in an urban context. Current research examines the role of citizens in urbanisation processes, liveability, mobility and compact living.
This programme studies how resources such as food, water, energy and nature, are “consumed” in cities and how consumers can adopt sustainable practices through technological/design, policy and behavioural interventions. At a broader scale, it evaluates how large-scale infrastructural planning and developmental goals (such as “healthy city”) can strengthen urban sustainability. Beyond empirical research, the programme also seeks to understand the theoretical convergences and divergences between cognate concepts such as resilient, sustainable and ecological cities.