Session 1 / Singapore Live Program: Attaining Urban Wellness Through Paradigmatic Shifts

Ruzica Bozovic-Stamenovic
Associate Professor, Leader Urbanism Research Cluster
National University of Singapore, Singapore

The 2020 pandemic brought global health into the spotlight, however despite the consensus on the importance of health, there are few well-defined new paths to achieving this goal. Singapore, a city-state known for its unprecedented development and forward-looking practices, has the resilience gene in its very core. Its progress in recent years has demonstrated the ability to reuse scarce resources and reinterpret well-known urban paradigms in order to reinvent itself as an emerging wellness city.

In this presentation issues of wellness and resilience are situated in the frames of known paradigms of planning and design in order to explore future paradigms. Through case studies, an emergent urban phenomenon is portrayed through the coexistence of diverse urban realities sharing the same space.

Although descending from the era of multiple crises, this tendency is already recognized as game-changing in both architectural practices and strategic planning for the future. Topics like typology, zoning, biocentrism, rural and urban, farming, user-centric and smart, to cite just a few, become obsolete in their original sense, yet once recomposed they become powerful intersectional design tools for future city of wellness. This presentation is a reorientation point that moves from our confinement in a professional routine rather than a question of singular ontology.