White Paper

The Sustainable Urbanisation in Asia Symposium held in January 2025 at Singapore Management University’s Urban Institute invited scholars and practitioners from a broad range of fields to explore the critical drivers and consequences of sustainable urbanisation in the region. The event was organised by the SMU Urban Institute in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Asia Real Estate Initiative (Affiliated with MIT Center for Real Estate), The University of Hong Kong's Urban Systems Institute, and PropertyGuru.

This white paper distils the key insights from the event and outlines emerging strategies for sustainable urbanisation in Asia. It addresses diverse topics, including the environmental impacts of global trade shifts, strategies for green transit-oriented development (GTOD), the role of digital innovation in urban mobility, and the application of data-driven approaches for inclusive and sustainable urban futures. Finally, we propose a way forward by shifting our focus to a new way of understanding urban sustainability. Highlighting how existing approaches overlook crucial aspects of sustainability ecosystems, we outline a holistic metric for tracking the sustainability progress of urban systems in Asia and beyond.

In 2019, the Singapore Management University (SMU) inaugurated a series of engaged discussions involving business, government and experts from academia, on topics that matter to the city. “City Dialogues” aims to bring together invited delegates for frank and open discussions under Chatham House rules, to share ideas and best practices, at the end of which a White Paper is produced to summarise the key discussions and ideas arising that can create societal and community benefits. The second “City Dialogues” session was held from 17 to 18 January 2024 and coincided with the launch of SMU’s Urban Institute, a new research institute dedicated to multi- and inter-disciplinary research on cities in Asia. Given the urgent task of addressing the climate crisis, and the inevitable challenge that developing sustainable cities demands large initial investments, while the benefits often only materialise many years later, the theme of this “City Dialogues” session was “Reconciling the Costs of Sustainable Cities”.