When Team Omusubi took the stage at the 2023 ULI Asia Pacific Summit in Singapore, they were applauded not just for their winning entry in a prestigious urban development competition. The team of four students from Waseda University in Tokyo also had the unique honor of being the first-ever winners of the Asia Pacific ULI Hines Student Competition.
Modeled on the annual Americas competition now in its 22nd year, the inaugural Asia Pacific contest tasked students with devising a development plan for an actual site in Singapore. The winning proposal, “Jurong Urban Health Campus,” envisions the Jurong Lake District (JLD)—poised to become the largest business district outside Singapore’s city center—as a model for the future of healthy urban living. The sustainable design plan is intended to transform JLD into a livable as well as connected environment with thriving neighborhoods served by community-centric amenities and green spaces.
More than two decades after the competition launched in North America and three years after it expanded to Europe, the inaugural Asia Pacific competition means that students in all three of the Institute’s regions can now participate. The competition was the brainchild of the late Gerald D. Hines, who in 1957 founded the global real estate investment, development, and property management firm that bears his name to this day.
Honoring Gerald D. Hines
In 2002, Hines received the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, but he declined the prize money. Instead, he matched it to launch the ULI Hines Student Competition and provided a substantial endowment to ensure its longevity.
A ULI life trustee and Institute member for over 60 years, Hines passed away in 2020 at age 95. As a result of his generosity, more than 11,000 students across 2,000-plus teams have competed, fulfilling his vision of challenging and inspiring future generations of real estate professionals.
“He was a true advocate and pioneer for innovation, education, and opportunities for the future leaders in the real estate industry,” says Raymond Lawler, chief executive officer, Asia Pacific, at Hines. Lawler, who served on the six-member jury that selected this year’s winner, believes that it only made sense to bring the competition to the Asia Pacific region.
“As the fastest-growing economic powerhouse in the world, the region faces challenges such as rapid population growth, aging populations, climate change, and urban migration,” Lawler says. “Through the competition, we hope to inspire the next generation of leaders to create more livable and sustainable communities in the region.”
A partnership between ULI and the Hines company, the now-global Hines competition is one of the Institute’s core education initiatives. Its aim, according to ULI, is “to raise interest among young people in creating better communities, improving development patterns, and increasing awareness of the need for multidisciplinary solutions to development and design challenges.” The competition sits at the nexus of ULI’s mission—to shape the future of the built environment for transformative impact in communities worldwide—and its status as the oldest and largest network of cross-disciplinary real estate and land use experts in the world.
Shaping the Future
At the 2023 ULI Asia Pacific Summit in Singapore, global CEO Ron Pressman applauded the teams that competed in the inaugural Asia Pacific contest.
“These young people all did such impressive work to devise plans for sustainable, inclusive, thriving communities where people can live, work, and play,” Pressman said. “They truly are the future of our industry, and they will shape the future of our world. We at ULI are honored to play a role in helping them learn new skills, gain new experiences, and—we hope—be inspired to do great things.”
Nineteen teams representing universities in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam competed this year. When they received the 44-page competition brief on March 4—outlining the purpose, process, and parameters of the competition, including a detailed description of the site and key objectives to address—they had only three weeks to devise a comprehensive design and development proposal.
The goal: a plan to “transform the [Jurong Lake District] into a thriving, mixed-use, transit-oriented neighborhood.” Teams were tasked with addressing issues of equity, housing affordability, sustainability, resilience, access to neighborhood services, and connectivity to surrounding communities.
Improving Urban Health
Team Omusubi—comprising three graduate students pursuing master of architecture degrees and one undergraduate set to complete her bachelor of liberal studies degree later this year with a minor in urban planning—divvied up responsibilities based on their areas of study. Kento Yoshino’s main roles were concept development and urban design. Taichi Kawasaki focused on landscape design. Haoyang Xu took the lead on architectural design. And Misato Fujii spearheaded urban and financial planning.
Yoshino, who lived in Singapore as a high school student, saw their development plan as complementing efforts already underway there to address environmental and health challenges. “Singapore is putting [in] some efforts to improve environment problems of urban health,” Yoshino says. “If somehow we could share [knowledge with the public], why we need to change, and how we could change, then we thought that we could actually speed up the process of improving urban health.”
Sharing knowledge and information with the public was a key principle for the Jurong Urban Health Campus proposal. “We tried to make sure there was some kind of educational takeaway from each aspect of the designs,” Fujii says, “like the roadside, the waterfront, the buildings, and our [urban health] center.”In order to anchor that concept, the team envisioned the adaptive use of the site’s existing Science Centre. “This building could [go] from the hub of scientific curiosity to a hub of urban health improvement,” Yoshino says, “not only among the region, but among the entire country.”
The team members agreed that their biggest challenge was balancing the intense three-week timeline with other schoolwork and life events. Kawasaki was job hunting. Fujii had an internship. And Xu, who is from China, worked with the rest of the team remotely due to COVID-related travel restrictions.
But Yoshino attributes the team’s victory in part to the way that these challenges sharpened their focus. “It was only four of us, and each member [had] a lot of things to do,” he says.
Crossing Disciplines
Working across disciplines was an enlightening experience, especially for Fujii, the only undergraduate on the team. “This was my first experience being a part of a competition and putting my research and education in urban planning to use, and also working with graduate students, who I learned so much from,” she says. “I didn’t know so much about architecture or waterfront design or creating a master plan, which my other teammates really helped me understand, and I think putting our ideas together and creating this concept was so much fun.”
