Pushing forth with Access Cities
Creating access to sustainable urban development opportunities in the midst of lockdown and beyond
Singapore, 20 May 2020 / Day 44 of the “Circuit Breaker” measure in Singapore.
I’m rooted here in my tiny home office with a freshly Moka pot brewed cup of Kenyan coffee as I contemplate on the various urban challenges we have curated so far and how we can better engage stakeholders of the Access Cities project with lockdowns all around the world. Here in Singapore, the Singapore Government has introduced the “Circuit Breaker” measure to curb infection in our island nation.
Just before all the restrictions kicked in, the State of Green and Quercus Group hosted the Access Cities Dialogue in Singapore at the end of March when a Danish business delegation led by the Danish Minister for Environment was in town. It was an engaging session focusing on district cooling, energy efficiency and overall greening of the built environment, as well as on leveraging Singapore as a launchpad to the rest of the region.
But now, I have no access to the outside world, at least not physically. I’m confined to this small work cavity while the kids roam freely around the rest of the apartment, terrorizing those daring to venture out. Thankfully, the Internet connection in my office is pretty decent, allowing me to reach out to the outside world and to keep connected. Good coffee is certainly a blessing too.
The main goal of Access Cities is to advance sustainable urban development through collaboration among a network of cities starting with Aarhus, Copenhagen, Munich, New York and Singapore. Quercus Group had been instrumental in the design of the project and is spearheading the project in the Singapore market. The vision is to expand the project to include other cities in the near future. Other key partners of Access Cities include the Danish Industry Foundation, State of Green, Confederation of Danish Industry and Climate-KIC.
In Access Cities, our approach is to identify key challenges in each of the markets by engaging challenge owners who could be government, businesses (particularly large enterprises), NGOs and others. From there, we would then reconnoitre and identify suitable Danish companies from our extensive network to solve the challenges or co-create solutions with local challenge owners, and where possible, drawing inspiration and learnings from the other Access Cities markets.
The gamut of challenges we have curated from the Singapore market include areas of circular economy, packaging waste, food waste, electronic waste, fuel leaks in underground piping and community care. For example, in the food waste challenge, the food waste stream in Singapore is a major waste stream with low recycling rate, and the goal would be to have a solution and program to help consumers and businesses segregate food waste for recycling.
Details of these challenges can be found on the Access Cities Challenges site: https://accesscities.org/category/challenges-open-innovation-calls/singapore/
One of our local partners, the Open Innovation Platform team from the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), has put up challenges from the special innovation call to address some of the biggest issues exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic: https://covid.openinnovation.sg/en/challenges/beyond-covid-19
Many of the challenges come with attractive monetary rewards. More importantly, the challenges provide access to the bigger deployment opportunities and access to new markets and other opportunities ahead. So, if you are an adventurous and innovative Danish SME ready to take on these challenges, please get in touch!
This past month has been peppered with video calls, voice calls, webinars and other forms of digital communications to stay in touch and updated, to keep things moving ahead and also, to keep the mind in shape. Most stakeholders have been responsive and that certainly helps the Access Cities momentum going, while some others in sectors severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic are unable to engage at this moment, which is totally understandable.
We have been exploring various ways of engagement during this unusual time of physical restrictions. Various ideas have surfaced, including conducting online seminars, panel discussions, debates, etc. We are also exploring the “what if” approach of adapting to the new normal of a post COVID-19 world. Through this, we hope to bring multiple stakeholders together to debate, ideate and co-create new models for inclusive growth and development.
Perhaps this could be a good way for us to engage. This also aligns well with our co-creative, human-centric, design-focused, multi-disciplinary (including anthropological) and multi-stakeholder approach of solving problems, engaging communities and finding common grounds amidst conflicting priorities and contradicting agendas.
Access Cities is just in its early days with many great potentials and opportunities ahead for making positive and lasting impact to communities around the world.
Get in touch to start the conversation!
by Allan Han-Huei Teo, Managing Director, Asia Pacific. allan@quercus-group.com
