Speech by Minister Lawrence Wong at the World Cities Summit Mayors Forum

Jul 8, 2018


As they say, all good things must come to an end. I want to start by thanking all for your very active participation in this year’s Mayors Forum. This is the ninth edition of the forum, and I think that the quality of the conversations gets richer and better every year.

The highlight for me this year, is when the Mayor of Leipzig asked for ideas to improve property tax, and without skipping a beat, the Mayor of Antwerp replied with an idea for revenue generation. I think if Greg had allowed us to spend more time brainstorming for ideas, we would probably have 10 more ideas to raise revenue and we would solve all our financing problems. But this goes with the heart of what we are trying to achieve with the Mayors Forum – to have candid open conversations with one another, even serendipitous encounters that will catalyse new ideas, inspire new conversations, and I think we have very much achieved this this year. 

I would like to acknowledge two particular groups of people who have helped us with this year’s forum. Firstly, the presenting cities and organisations who put in a lot of effort to provide case studies for us. Secondly, our moderator Greg Clark. Greg has been a partner with us for many years, since the beginning of the World Cities Summit, if I am not mistaken. Every year that he does it, I marvel at the way he is able to moderate across so many different conversations, and at the end of the day, distil and summarise the key ideas so succinctly. So thank you again to all our presenting cities, and to our moderator Professor Greg Clark.

There have been many good ideas thrown up during our conversation – about disruptive innovation, and infrastructure. But what struck me about this year’s conversation, is that many of you also brought it back to an important point, which is, underlying all the things that we do, is the ultimate objective of wanting to make life better and happier for our citizens. So many of you spoke about the need for our urban development to be human-centred, and to be people-centred. I think that is extremely important, particularly in a time when we see growing inequality, rising divisions and polarisations in many cities, everywhere in the world, in many urban centers. 

So it means all of us as city leaders need to work even harder to promote mutual trust and understanding across the different communities. We need to work even harder at inclusive developments so that no one gets left behind, and we need to continue to harness the power of diversity, so that while we are different, all of us in spite of our differences, or because of our differences, can contribute to a larger cause. 

These are very important principles and ideas that we can leave this forum with – the need for more human and people-centred developments. I am reminded of an example of what a city is sometimes likened to; there are many analogies and metaphors of what cities are. One of my favourites is that a city is sometimes seen as a social reactor, not a nuclear reactor, but a social reactor that catalyses human connections and aggregate human relationships. That is what good cities do – they provide a platform that maximises social interactions which maximises human connections. I think that is what all of us would like to achieve in our cities. 

With that in mind, I would like to remind all of us that the opportunities for human connections continue beyond today’s forum. There is a networking session tonight, and of course the World Cities Summit continues tomorrow and the day after. There will be many opportunities to network with one another, with industry leaders, and hopefully more concrete projects can be spun out of these conversations.  

Finally, I think all of us receive many invitations to go to many different places all over the world, but the most important invitation is next year’s Mayors Forum at Medellin, Columbia. I heard the very inspiring message from the mayor as well as the video. We all look forward to visiting the City of Eternal Spring next year in July for the Mayors Forum. We look forward to seeing all of you at next year’s session. 

It is also an important year because next year is the 10th year of our Mayors Forum in the World Cities Summit. We have been doing this for 10 years. Some of you are regular attendees, and some of you are here for the first time. We thank everyone for the support and we look forward to seeing you all again. Thank you very much and have a good evening.