"Singapore is considered a leader in green urban development. Here’s why it’s one of the world’s most sustainable cities and what others can learn from it."

Cities and metropolitan areas have a huge impact on worldwide greenhouse emissions. There’s been much discussions on how we could reduce this dangerous trend by making cities greener. In discussing different strategies and policies that can be implemented, Melbourne stood out as the world’s leader of the “15-Minute City” strategy. Cities such as Berlin and Athens were praised for their improvement of the public transportation system over the last months, while Bangkok received a lot of attention for its efforts to create more green areas in the city. The Asian city-state of Singapore is considered a leader in green urban development. We take a look at why it’s one of the world’s most sustainable cities and what other cities can learn from it.

With the introduction of the Smart Nation program in late 2014, Singapore started a nationwide digital revolution and quickly became the leader of the digitalisation wave taking place across Southeast Asia (see Figure 2). The programme introduced a series of innovations across different sectors such as Strategic National Projects, Urban Living, Transport, Health, Government Services, and Businesses. Some concrete examples of how the program was implemented are the introduction of a National Digital Identity and of services to facilitate contactless and e-payments, the completion of smart homes relying on environmental-friendly energy sources, as well as green interventions in urban mobility, such as the launch of trials of autonomous buses and shuttles.