Rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and increasing heat are only a few of the many climate issues that have besieged cities worldwide, and will affect cities even more in the future. Hence, there is a critical need to strengthen collective effort in resilience to not only improve the wellbeing of their residents but more critically ensure the survival of cities.
In support of such endeavour, the Temasek Foundation Urban Resilience Programme (TFURP), jointly supported by Temasek Foundation (TF), Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) and Resilient Cities Network (R-Cities), was conceived to bring together city leaders and urban practitioners across the Asia Pacific to enhance urban resilience and liveability of their cities. This was achieved through developing the capacity of the senior city officials with introduction to progressive mid- and long-term policy frameworks, such as the Singapore Liveability Framework, and practical implementation strategies based on Singapore’s experience in decades of nation-building efforts.
The sharing of such knowledge and provision of mentoring support enabled the cities to apply appropriate systems thinking into their strategic planning of urban development and design of critical infrastructure projects for urban resilience, drive institutional and systemic change and, where possible, to benefit from accelerated investment in their projects.
Key Components of the TFURP
In cultivating peer-learning and capacity-building relationships between Singapore and TFURP cities in Asia, the TFURP served well as a platform for city officials to develop concept proposals, institutionalize the tools they acquire, and pitch projects to entice funding support from potential investors.
To build up their capacities incrementally to do the above, the programme comprised four components, as follows:
- Component 1: Capacity Building, where city leaders would be familiarised with liveability and resilience principles and frameworks drawing insights from case examples based on Singapore’s experiences in integrated urban planning and governance. This would help them to incorporate best practices particularly in integrated urban planning and governance as part of their city development plans.
- Component 2: Project Development Support, where three cities – Surat City of India, Jambi City of Indonesia, and Seberang Perai City of Malaysia - were shortlisted out of eight TFURP participating cities to further develop their project ideas and incorporate resilience elements into their respective projects with guidance by the CLC resource persons and R-Cities team.
- Component 3: Pitch Session at the World Cities Summit (WCS) 2022, where the three cities
refined their projects and approaches to address their urban challenges prepared detailed project pitches that were eventually presented to potential solution providers, who were Singapore/ Singapore-based companies in key players in the I&E sector as well as international financial institutions, at the Smart Cities Workshop during the World Cities Summit (WCS) 2022 in Singapore.
- Component 4: Review & Cascading, where each city project’s status and implementation progress were assessed through follow-up discussions and site visits. R-Cities and the CLC visited each of the cities and multiple consultations were set up to support them in their project development journey while keeping in mind that every city faced its own challenges in taking on this endeavour.
Jambi, Indonesia
"Integrated Wastewater Management in Sipin Lake”
Jambi City’s participation at the TFURP at the Mayoral level was inspired by the success of Singapore in implementing sustainable urban development during urbanisation. Like many other urban cities in the world, they identified transportation, air pollution, education, health, solid waste and wastewater issues as some of the key urban challenges that needed to be addressed. TFURP had helped Jambi City to firstly, be fully cognisant of the type of challenges they have identified and secondly, to consider the tools and approaches that may suitably address their range of developmental challenges.
One of the more pressing projects that the Mayor of Jambi City, Dr Syarif Fasha, was determined to pursue was to establish Integrated Wastewater Management in Sipin Lake and to diversify the use of the lake for public social benefits. Through improving the quality of the lake and its surroundings including nearby residents’ living conditions, the city could also enhance Sipin Lake as a tourism destination and economic resource, and improve the overall well-being of Jambi City’s residents.
In the long run, Sipin Lake was planned to hold clean water, enabling the lake to be a reservoir safe to use, a destination joyful to relax, and an opportunity for business to prosper.
In further consulting R-Cities and the CLC, the Mayor and his team agreed to prepare a feasibility study and master plan to cement long-term development plans for Sipin Lake that could instil confidence in the community and investors alike in the effort to garner support and funding for the implementation of the projects. One of the key immediate outcomes following Jambi City’s participation at TFURP was a strong demonstration of their commitment in establishing a multi-agency standing committee for the development Sipin Lake that would comprise representatives from city departments and communities.
In addition, it was recommended that the city seek financing support from multilateral organisations and the provincial and national government; consider public-private partnerships for the project; and incorporate land-value capture concepts in the development proposal. Taken together, these initiatives would help the Jambi team achieve the objectives of the Sipin Lake project.
Jambi City Mayor Dr. Syarif Fasha and his team at the Smart Cities Workshop during the week of World Cities Summit 2022.
Jambi city officials in deep discussion with solution providers at the Smart Cities Workshop.