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Left (top-bottom): SMU Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society Winston Chow; SMU Associate Professor Humanities Orlando Woods.
Right: SMU President and Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor of Social Sciences Lily...
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Credit: Singapore Management University
SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer - For most of human history, populations across the world lived in low-density, rural settings. Over the past few centuries, however, this changed dramatically with the trend of urbanisation. Today, more than four billion people live in urban settings worldwide; by 2050, about two thirds of the world's population are expected to live in cities.
Despite their rapid growth, cities do not spring up fully formed, but are shaped by evolving human constructs including government policy, legal frameworks and emerging technologies. It is precisely because much of human life is now led in cities that it is essential to examine these constructs and their implications on city living, said SMU President Professor Lily Kong at the New Cities in the New Normal workshop on 22 January 2021.