Over the past 50 years, Singapore has successfully built a reputation as a highly liveable and sustainable ‘City In A Garden’. To sustain Singapore’s success in the decades ahead and to do more for our future city, the Cities of Tomorrow R&D Programme (CoT) is a multi-agency effort, led by MND, that recognises the challenges that cities face and seeks to leverage R&D to address the challenges.

Vision

The vision of CoT is to establish Singapore as a highly liveable, sustainable, and resilient city of the future, and as a vibrant urban solutions hub – a living model which features cutting-edge urban solutions. This will be achieved through the development of integrated R&D solutions to address new and existing challenges that impact our ability to deliver a liveable, inclusive, and green living environment. The integrated development of R&D will be focused in 5 key verticals, namely a) Advanced Construction, b) Resilient Infrastructure, c) New Spaces, d) Greater Sustainability, and e) City in Nature. These are supported by 3 enabling horizontals of Urban Environment Analytics, Complexity Science for Urban Solutions, and Smart & Advanced Facilities Management (FM).

More details on USS can be found at: https://nrf.gov.sg/rie2025-plan/urban-solutions-and-sustainability

Focus on Value Chain Approach and Innovation & Enterprise

The CoT will support R&D across the value chain from upstream research to downstream technology deployment and adoption, with emphasis on projects that have a high potential for practical implementation and commercialisation. It is a collective effort that requires the whole R&D value chain, including stakeholders from industry, research community, and the government, to work in tandem to address challenges. Different approaches would be undertaken to strengthen collaborations across the 3 groups to develop innovative R&D solutions. This includes open call for proposals, setting up of consortiums, and joint labs.