Participatory Planning in Singapore

OVERVIEW

Welcome to the home of Participatory Planning in Singapore (PP in SG), an ongoing user research project aiming to study tools, processes, and epistemologies employed by participatory planning practitioners in Singapore’s context.

Rapid urbanisation has resulted in increasingly complex problems, requiring collective action from diverse stakeholders to produce appropriate and effective solutions. Participatory Planning (PP) enables this by allowing diverse knowledge types, like empirical and anecdotal, to be consolidated to inform planning outcomes. However, the wealth of knowledge can be a double-edged sword for planning experts to manage, which led to the development of PP tools. From recent technological advancements and shift towards smart cities, a boom in digital tools encompassing various functions emerged – allowing for enriched sharing of information layers.

Ironically in smart cities, digital tools struggle to gain traction in participatory planning processes. The plethora of tools available and varying capacities of participants might contribute to this difficulty for experts to select project-appropriate tools. To investigate this further, the study situates itself within Singapore, a nation-state in Southeast Asia with high digital literacy and strong digitisation initiatives by the state. While PP is typically a ground-up process, PP in Singapore differs from its hybrid approach – involving proactive community engagement with strong top-down coordination between practitioners and implementing agencies. As such, experts play the vital role of balancing the needs of various stakeholders, making the selection of a suitable tool crucial. Hence, the study aims to investigate the role of tools in PP processes. Through semi-structured expert interviews, findings seek to uncover the types and factors for selection of tools. Research outcomes can then suggest the development of tools suitable for PP in smart cities.