Olivier Lim, chairman of StarHub and the Singapore Tourism Board, speaking at the 2024 ULI Singapore Annual Conference.
(ULI)
“How can Singapore remain economically agile and relevant as a city-state while evolving the social contract so that Singaporeans . . . receive but, more importantly, [also] perceive the benefits from the economic strategy?” asked Olivier Lim, chairman of StarHub and the Singapore Tourism Board, contemplating key questions in Singapore’s journey to becoming a “cosmopolitan super-hub.”
During his keynote address at the 2024 ULI Singapore Annual Conference, more than 300 participants gathered at the Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay to hear Lim tell—based upon his 35 years’ experience in real estate, banking, and leadership—how land and real estate shaped Singapore’s path as a nation.
In response to a changing global environment, during the last 20 years, Singapore has strategically evolved from an already successful trading, transportation, and financial hub to something more. Southeast Asia’s chief trading and financial center, famous for its stability and rule of law, skilled workforce, pro-foreign investment, and tourist attractions is now seen as an attractive, cosmopolitan location for global wealth and ideas—as well as great place to live, work, and play.
Alongside economic and taxation policies, a big factor for this success is the city’s master planning, which has been key to attracting global talent and capital flows, and to tackling home ownership while building and maintaining a focus on environmental sustainability.
Lim witnessed the policy evolution over three decades, across many agencies, and he highlighted the leading role of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). In the early 2000s, he sensed a significant shift. “I could feel it,” he said, “but it wasn’t necessarily in the broad public domain, and I believe there was a lot of soul-searching going on in . . . government circles. Our relevance was in question [because of] a lot of competition from North Asia, Dubai, Vietnam, et cetera.”
Ultimately, this competition led to decisions on the development of two integrated casino resorts and the arrival of the iconic F1 night race, which together catalyzed Singapore’s new competitive positioning with regard to its rivals. Momentum from that critical time has continued to build over the last 15 years.
On a domestic level, the path taken by Singapore’s Housing & Development Board (HDB) and URA has defined the housing market today. According to the Singapore Department of Statistics, an estimated 3.19 million residents—or approximately three residents in every four—resided in HDB flats in 2024.
Singapore’s larger policy approaches exemplified a composite approach toward building a globally competitive and successful city. Therefore, regulatory trends including the 2005 Casino Control Act, the development of Marina Bay, the rise of real estate investment trusts (REITs), tax reform, and the deepening of the financial services market have provided a unique and attractive model, which also comes with challenges.
A three-body problem
The global issue of increasing disparities in income and wealth, the local societal pushback to top-down environmental goals, the challenges of zero-cost sustainable energy, and the affordability challenges are all matters that Singapore will also have to reckon with. Lim characterized it as a three-body problem of economy, society, and polity, with real estate playing a core role—possibly more than in any other country worldwide.
Flash data released by HDB reveals that resale prices climbed 2.5 percent in the third quarter of 2024. Meantime, ULI’s 2024 Asia Pacific Home Attainability Index, which covers 48 cities in 11 countries, ranks public housing in Singapore as the most attainable.
After the keynote by Lim, Benett Theseira, managing director and head of Asia Pacific at PGIM Real Estate, brought up the likely consequences of rising real estate costs in Singapore over the next two decades and the competition of virtual space with physical spaces. Lim spoke about how Singapore’s population looks for differentiated experiences, how it impacts regulation, and the way developers value pricing for land, retail, and other important decisions.
Some of Singapore’s globally renowned projects, such as Gardens by the Bay, were not designed as tourist experiences but as urban community projects. They show how Singapore has creatively facilitated richer urban landscapes. That ethos has continued—with Singapore’s other government agencies, including the Singapore Tourism Board and the National Parks Board—to ensure that Singapore remains one of the most biodiverse cities in the world.
Among the challenges global cities will face are the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI), social media’s effects upon the mental health of young people, the rise of virtual spaces, and climate change. For Singapore’s urban planning process, balancing growth, sustainability, and social equity remains critical. Irrespective of the path forward, the private sector, global markets, policymakers, and citizens must work together to achieve it.
As Lim aptly characterized it, “Urban planning is a canvas, but the importance is in the expansion of imagination because, at the end of the day, money has to be put against the land and the ideas. And unless you have that expansion of imagination, you won’t have the developers and the money coming in.”
