Building in Flexibility
One way to ensure adaptable plans is to build in flexibility from the onset. Mr Lim, who has been with the URA since 1990 and has seen how change has accelerated over the decades, said: “We must find ways to keep our plans, our policies and our land use very flexible and adaptable. If things change, we would have room to change.”
For instance, one of the biggest game-changers at the moment is working from home. But Mr Lim said that the extent to which businesses will continue to do so post-pandemic and its long-term impact on transport infrastructure and space planning are still unclear.
Nevertheless, one way in which the URA plans flexibly is to allow for the easy adaptation of office space. With schemes like the Strategic Development Incentive, owners of older buildings of at least 20 years old can collaborate with neighbouring property owners to create mixed-use sites that could include a hotel, a residence and some amenities, in addition to offices.
A Progressive Culture
Similarly, the URA itself has a progressive culture that enables flexibility.
In its work, which involves collaboration with many other government agencies, the URA has developed a geospatial urban planning and analytics platform called ePlanner. With this system, planners across relevant agencies can easily access and analyse various land use planning information, helping to facilitate integrated and well-coordinated planning
This is only possible because the URA embraced digitalisation at an early stage, as far back as the early ’90s when it enabled the electronic submission of development plans for approval rather than requiring the physical submission of hard copies.
Just before the pandemic hit, the URA had already digitised all its records, from archival documents to microfiche. “Thus, we could switch to working remotely almost overnight without any major hiccups,” he said.
The URA also quickly came up with a Space Out web application, working with many different venue operators to provide real-time information on crowd levels in malls, supermarkets, markets, stadiums and other venues.
This helped Singaporeans to make better-informed decisions, especially during the COVID-19 circuit breaker, when going out for grocery shopping or recreational activities.
“Our journey toward digitalisation and capability building in data analytics is driven by needs. It is based on our experiences in interacting with people, walking the ground, and solving problems,” he said.
Mr Lim said: “A question often asked of URA staff, at our annual workplace seminars or other forums, is ‘What are the things we hate doing most?’ Can we get rid of it? Can a machine do it for us?”
To overcome such pain points at work, staff learning and experimentation are highly valued at the URA.
One example involves a URA employee who had no prior IT knowledge and formal training. After attending an in-house analytics course, he put together a program that overlays maps digitally and highlights zoning irregularities. In the past, staff had to painstakingly place the hard copy maps on light tables to manually spot and trace out the irregularities.
Mr Lim added: “When we give directives, they are usually given in a broad direction to give our staff room to initiate and innovate. We also encourage our staff to do a lot of bottom-up innovation on a day-to-day basis. In fact, a lot of our innovations come from the ground.”