Interdisciplinary project work in Singapore
During their third semester of the MSc study spatial development and infrastructure systems our students have to work on an interdisciplinary planning project. Organization as well as the project area change from year to year under contribution of six different chairs.
This year our project area lies outside of Switzerland for the first time. With the support of the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) and ETH Singapore, our students are working on a strategy for a sustainable development of the Changi airport region in Singapore. For the start of this year’s IPA our 29 students traveled to the global city in southeast Asia for an excursion of two weeks. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey, Markus Nollert, Manuel Sudau and Thomas Hug traveled with them for our institute to supervise our students at place in the FCL. During many interesting keynotes, short trips to all different parts of the city and during several visits of local and national authorities, our students learned about the history, current challenges and future goals of Singapore.
Besides the spatial and thematic introduction to this year’s project area, the project work further strengthens the relations of IRL and FCL and makes a wide network of experts accessible for our students. For example: Justine Sanders, project coordinator of the external pageNatural Capital Singapore (NCS) project, introduced our students to the project which was initiated by Adrienne Grêt-Regamey and is part of our institutes work in Singapore. Furthermore, a visit and keynote at the external pagenational parks board (nPark) gave deep insights on how the local authorities implement their respective thematic strategies into their city development. More visits, discussions and keynotes were on the students agenda during the two weeks to learn about the challenges, goals and strategies of Singapore for its future development. Hence, we visited the external pageUrban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the external pageLand and Transport Authority (LTA) and the external pageHousing and Development Board (HDB) and many more.
The diverse and interesting program for our students helped them a lot to understand the contrasting and conflictual development of Singapore which made it one of today’s global cities. During the upcoming months our students will work on ideas and strategies to transform the rapid and dynamic growth and development of Singapore into a sustainable and responsible role of the city in a global, regional and local network – economically, politically and socially. Besides all the valuable impressions the excursion was also a full success on a personal side: during one of the many common dinners, coffee breaks or free weekend trips: the close and daily contact between students, professors and assistants strengthened the team spirit and was a lot of fun!