Publications

Urban Life

Towards more inclusive smart cities: Reconciling the divergent logics of data and discourse at the margins

Jane Yeonjae LEE, Orlando WOODS, and Lily KONG

In this article, we survey a growing body of literature within geography and other intersecting fields that trains attention on what inclusive smart cities are, or what they could be. In doing so, we build on debates around smart citizens, smart public participation, and grassroots and bottom-up smart cities that are concerned with making smart cities more inclusive. The growing critical scholarship on such dis- courses, however, alerts us to the knowledge politics that are involved in, and the urban inequalities that are deeply rooted within, the urban. Technological interventions con- tribute to these politics and inequalities in various ways. Accordingly, we discuss limitations of the current discourses around inclusive smart cities and suggest a need for a nuanced definition of ‘inclusiveness’. We also discuss the necessity to further engage with critical data studies in order to ‘know’ what we are critiquing.

LEE, Jane Yeonjae, WOODS, Orlando, & KONG, Lily.(2020). Towards more inclusive smart cities: Reconciling the divergent logics of data and discourse at the margins. Geography Compass, 14(9), 1-12.

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Urban Growth

Geography, trade, and internal migration in China

Lin MA and Tang YANG

This paper quantitatively studies the local welfare impacts of inter-city migration in China. We structurally estimate a trade model with endogenous migration decisions using data from 279 prefecture-level cities. The results suggest that inflows of migrant workers increase welfare in the destination cities between 2000 and 2005 despite their negative impacts on congestion and nominal wage. The positive local impacts of migration depend crucially on the endogenous firm entry. The positive impacts in the destination cities also spill over to the neighboring cities through inter-city trade, often leading to higher welfare gains in the nearby cities than the destination cities themselves. We also show that further relaxing the Hukou restrictions in the largest Chinese cities is welfare-improving to the local residents.

Lin Ma, Yang Tang, Geography, trade, and internal migration in China, Journal of Urban Economics, Volume 115, 2020, 103181, ISSN 0094-1190, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2019.06.004.

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Urban Growth

What is the value of built heritage conservation? Assessing spillover effects of conserving historic sites in Singapore

Shin Bin TAN and Edward TI

Quantifying the economic benefits of built heritage facilitates the formulation and assessment of conservation policies and programs. There is however a lack of empirical research about the economic value of built heritage in Asian cities. This lack is problematic, given the rapid pace of demolition and redevelopment of historic landscapes in Asian cities. This study seeks to reduce the current gap in built heritage research by examining whether real estate premiums are generated by the designation of buildings as ‘conserved’ in Singapore, a city-state in South East Asia. Using 20 years of housing transaction data, and controlling for building, neighborhood and year fixed effects, we found that conservation designation had a positive impact on average sale prices per square meter of built area that was largest at residential locations between 800 m to 1.6 km from the conserved site. Findings also suggest that lower-cost public housing resale units gained a substantially smaller premium compared to private housing units. While our findings suggest an economic justification for building conservation programs in Asian cities, they also raise questions about such programs potential impact on neighborhood gentrification, and the need for appropriate taxation policies to ensure horizontal equity between property owners.

Tan, Shin Bin and TI, Edward S. W.. What is the value of built heritage? Assessing spillover effects of conserving historic sites in Singapore. (2020). Land Use Policy. 91, 1-24.

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Urban Infrastructure, Urban Life

Subverting the logics of "smartness" in Singapore: Smart eldercare and parallel regimes of sustainability

Orlando WOODS

This paper argues that the divergent logics of “smartness” and “sustainability” can lead to parallel regimes of sustainability. Whilst sustainability is often used to justify the need for smart cities, smart cities are often undermined by the neoliberal logics of digital governance. Moreover, because the intersection of digital technologies and society is a negotiated one, smart solutions often fail to provide adequate solutions to social problems. This is especially true when smart solutions are used to augment or replace hitherto human-centred processes, like caregiving.Parallel regimes of sustainability are a response to these failures. Drawing on an analysis of a trial of in-home smart eldercare technologies in Singapore, four binary pairings – public-private, individual-community, remote-proximate and passive-active – are used to define the parallel regimes of sustainable eldercare that emerged in response to smart technologies. To conclude, the need for urban paradigms to evolve in conversation with society is emphasised.

WOODS, Orlando.(2020). Subverting the logics of "smartness" in Singapore: Smart eldercare and parallel regimes of sustainability. Sustainable Cities and Society, 53, 1-7.

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Urban Growth

Compensating Regulation of Land: UK and Singapore Compared

Edward TI

The paper aims to analyse and compare how UK and Singapore deal with compensation with respect to regulation of land (short of a physical taking). The purpose is to determine whether the non-compensation in each jurisdiction is justified. A comparative method using case law, statutes and secondary material across both jurisdictions (as well as some US case law) is adopted. Both the UK and Singapore do not provide compensation when land is affected by regulation, so long as a physical taking has not occurred. Partly because of the abolition of development rights in the UK since 1947, this position may be justified. Conversely, Singapore’s Master Plan seeks a great deal of public reliance and advertises development potential, and non-compensation is not defensible. There is very limited analysis on regulatory effects of land in the UK, and virtually none in Singapore. This would also be the first attempt to compare this aspect of the UK and Singapore’s planning regime.

TI, Seng Wei, Edward. Compensating regulation of land: UK and Singapore compared. (2019). Journal of Property, Planning and Environmental Law. 11, (2), 135-150.

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Urban Growth

Collective best interests in strata collective sales

Edward TI

New South Wales’ (NSW) strata regime has had considerable global influence, inspiring many jurisdictions across and beyond the commonwealth. Both Singapore and British Columbia, Canada have adopted NSW’s strata model. That being said, these jurisdictions have permitted a collective sale by a supermajority of owners for some two decades while NSW only recently enacted legislation allowing for a strata scheme to be redeveloped or collectively sold via a 75% majority. This marks a significant milestone as it departs from the orthodox position requiring unanimity. Given the newness of the legislative amendments, there is no jurisprudential guidance regarding the content of a strata renewal committee’s duty in NSW. Through a comparative analysis of British Columbia and Singapore, this paper suggests how NSW could articulate the duty of care imposed on the strata renewal committee when effecting a collective sale. Being only the second State in Australia to permit strata renewal by a supermajority, the issues raised by the paper may be of some interest in coming years.

TI, Edward S. W.. Collective best interests in strata collective sales. (2019). Australian Law Journal. 93, (12), 1025-1039.

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Urban Growth

Monthly spending dynamics of the elderly following a health shock: Evidence from Singapore

Terence C. CHENG, Jing LI, and Rhema VAITHIANATHAN

We use novel longitudinal data from 19 monthly waves of the Singapore Life Panel to examine the short-term dynamics of the effects health shocks have on household health and non-health spending and income by the elderly. The health shocks we study are the occurrence of new major conditions such as cancer, heart problems, and minor conditions (e.g. diabetes, and hypertension). Our empirical strategy exploits unanticipated changes in health status through the diagnosis of new health conditions, combined with an individual fixed effect framework. We find that major shocks have large and persistent effects while minor shocks have small and mainly contemporaneous effects. We find that household income reduces following a major shock for males but not females. Major health shocks lead to a decrease in households’ non-health expenditures that is particularly pronounced for cancer and stroke sufferers, driven largely by reductions in leisure spending. The financial impact of major shocks on medical saving account balances occur to those without private health insurance, while the impact is on cash balances for privately insured individuals.

CHENG, Terence C.; LI, Jing; and VAITHIANATHAN, Rhema. Monthly spending dynamics of the elderly following a health shock: Evidence from Singapore. (2019). Health Economics. 28, (1), 23-43.

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Urban Growth

The Impact of In-house Unnatural Death on Property Values - Evidence from Hong Kong

Zheng CHANG and Jing LI

The occurrence of in-house unnatural death could negatively affect the value of housing property. This study evaluates the geographic and temporal scope of the impact of unnatural death on property values in Hong Kong. By exploiting the spatial and intertemporal variation of the shock in a difference-in-differences approach, we find significant negative externalities of unnatural death incidence on neighborhood housing values. On average, units in which an unnatural death occurred experience a 25% drop in value following the death. Nearby units on the same floor also show a significant price drop of 4.5%. Prices of units on other floors of the same building decline about 2.6%. Units in other buildings of the same estate observe a price decline of about 1% on average. However, the price for nearby estates within 300 meters shows a positive impact of 0.5%, suggesting a very localized sorting mechanism. Temporally, price evolution after death incidence follows a U shape. Housing prices continue to decline up to 4–5 years after deaths and recover gradually afterwards. We also document the heterogeneity of the impact by the type of death incidence (murder, suicide, or accident) and the type of homebuyers (local buyer, investment firm, and other buyers). We find that the negative externalities of death incidence are largely due to a severe stigma effect, rather than channels through the revealed crime risk or the price contagion effect.

CHANG, Zheng and LI, Jing. The impact of in-house unnatural death on property values: Evidence from Hong Kong. (2018). Regional Science and Urban Economics. 73, 112-126.

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Urban Growth

Strategic Sequential Bidding for Government Land Auction Sales - Evidence from Singapore

Sumit AGARWAL, Jing LI, Ernie TEO, and Alan CHEONG

This paper studies the extent to which equilibrium auction prices are pushed up sequentially due to strategic bidding behaviors in government land auction sales. Using a unique dataset that covers the universe of tendering prices submitted by all developers for all residential land auction sales in Singapore, we find that a tenderer’s bids are significantly higher where there was a previous land parcel sold within two years and located within four kilometers. The elevated price margin decreases with time and geographic distance. Tracking sequential bids submitted by same developers over time, we find that the incumbent winner of a previous auction often participates in subsequent nearby land sales but does not necessarily win the sites. We argue that the incumbent deliberately bids up the subsequent land prices to gain pricing advantages to their own parcels.

AGARWAL, Sumit; LI, Jing; TEO, Ernie; and CHEONG, Alan. Strategic sequential bidding for government land auction sales – Evidence from Singapore. (2018). Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. 57, (4), 535-565.

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Urban Life

Smart eldercare in Singapore: Negotiating agency and apathy at the margins

Lily KONG and Orlando WOODS

Around the world, smart technologies are being embraced as a cost-efficient means of enabling the elderly to be cared for in new, more non-proximate ways. They can facilitate ageing-in-place, and have the potential to relieve pressure on the providers of care. Yet, the fact is that the interface of technology and society is a negotiated one. These negotiations are most acutely felt when technology is used to supplement the hitherto human-centred process of caregiving, especially amongst “marginalised” societal cohorts, like the elderly. With this, there is a need to better understand the ways in which smart eldercare technologies are used, misused, or not used by those that they are designed to benefit. Drawing on qualitative data derived from triallists of three smart eldercare technologies in Singapore, this paper explores how the lived experience of smart eldercare can cause agentic and apathetic behaviours towards technology to manifest. Specifically, we identify four expectations – of understanding, response, compliance and appreciation – that undermine the potential beneficence of smart eldercare. To conclude, we emphasise the need for more collaborative, and more contextually-sensitive, approaches to the design, development and implementation of smart eldercare solutions.

KONG, Lily, & WOODS, Orlando.(2018). Smart eldercare in Singapore: Negotiating agency and apathy at the margins. Journal of Aging Studies, 47, 1-9.

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