Becoming the CERN of urban planning

(Repost from ETH news) The Future Cities Lab (FCL) in Singapore tackles concrete problems that will only become a reality in temperate climate zones such as Switzerland in the future.

According to Peter Edwards, the outgoing director of the ETH hub in Asia, and Gerhard Schmitt, who is set to take over this post once again, this opens up opportunities to use expert knowledge to tackle challenges in metropolitan areas.

Asian cityscape
Large Asian urban conglomerations are a source of knowledge since universal urban problems occur more urgently than in other regions.  (Image: FCL Singapore)

The scale is vast. A modern, multi-ethnic city state, still underdeveloped just 50 years ago, formed and grown rapidly since independence, now with 6 million inhabitants and double the population density of Zurich – and all this in a tropical climate in which physical limits are quickly reached: "Urgent questions are being asked in Singapore that are also relevant to central Europe," says Peter Edwards, ETH Professor of Ecology, who has been Director of the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC) since 2013. After all, challenges such as climate change, ageing populations and energy and water supply are common to all growing urban systems.

See the full article in ETH News

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