百瑞·威尔逊

中国国际城市化发展战略研究委员会委员、英国注册景观建筑师

香港园境师协会董事、香港注册园境师

英国景观建筑师学会和香港园境师学会成员

　　百瑞先生是香港城市设计学会副会长，由他创立的百瑞隽思项目咨询有限公司在解决中国大陆和香港的城市化问题方面已有20余年的实践经验。www.initiatives.com.hk

　　Barry Wilson is Vice President of the Hong Kong Institute of Urban Design. His practice, Barry Wilson Project Initiatives, have been tackling urbanisation issues in Hong Kong and China for over 20 years. www.initiatives.com.hk

作者寄语

　　城市从未像现在这样复杂，多方面的问题会影响到城市建设中的理念、规划、开发、管理和老化。在时间维度下，人口聚集过程承载着社会、政治、健康、文化和经济背景。故此涉及到的社会领域包罗万象，包括社会历史学、城市社会学、建筑史和考古学，还有医疗健康与教育、城市地理学与经济学理论。

　　在这个专栏中，我将游走在世界各地，与各领域的专家、远见者、变革者一道讨论让城市生活更美好的基本要素。并在不同关键维度上，分享他们对未来城市生活的独特见解。

（百瑞·威尔逊于2018年8月深圳）

　　新加坡总是给人一种进步、现代化和高效率的城市印象。而新加坡目前的发展又似乎大大超越了这些，并因其在促进创新、前瞻性思维、可持续城市生活方式的领先地位而赢得了越来越多的美誉。这座曾被视为在“巨人”间立足，并勇于向别国学习的亚洲小国现如今已在彭博创新指数中排名世界第三，领先于德国和瑞士等欧洲国家。另外，在展示城市创新和转型产业最杰出行动方案和项目的世界智能城市博览会（Smart City Expo World Congress）上，新加坡被选为2018年度智慧城市。如今的新加坡已经成为一个展示智慧城市解决方案的“灯塔”，通过独具价值的实现方式，不仅增强城市的功能性，还可提升市民服务并通过这些服务提高市民的生活质量。

　　Singapore has always given people the impression of being a progressive, modern and efficient city. But it seems to be currently developing well beyond that and forging an increased reputation for being at the forefront of promoting innovative, forward thinking, approaches to sustainable urban living. Where once it was seen as a city learning from others, and ‘walking amongst giants’ the city now ranks third, ahead of European countries like Germany and Switzerland in the Bloomberg Innovation Index and was chosen as the Smart City of 2018 at the Smart City Expo World Congress, which recognizes the most outstanding initiatives and projects in the urban innovation and transformation industry. Singapore has now become a global beacon of how to implement smart urban solutions in a meaningful manner that not only enhances the city’s functioning but also improves the services provided to its citizens and through them their quality of life. 

　　在本期采访中，我有幸会见了负责土地利用规划和保护的新加坡市区重建局卓越建筑与城市设计署署长陈思慧小姐。陈思慧小姐博学多才，当她阐述在这座城市中所做令人激动的工作和由此对测试应对城市变化的替代方案在全球范围内有着至关重要的意义时，干练且滔滔不绝的言谈间无不显露着她对此的热情。

　　In this interview I meet with Elaine TAN Sze Hui, Director of Architecture and Urban Design Excellence at the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which is tasked with land use planning and conservation for the city. Brimming with erudition, Elaine is clearly well practiced in efficiently and eloquently expressing both her passion for the exciting work being undertaken in the city as well as its global importance in rapidly testing alternatives approaches to urban change. 

 展望未来

 ENVISIONING A FUTURE　

　　在香港城市设计学会积极老龄化行动的研讨会前一天，陈思慧告诉我，“2005年是一个激动人心的时间点，我离开了私营商业部门并进入了政府公共部门工作”。现如今，你很少听说有人离开私营部门到政府工作是因为其所带来的兴奋感与机遇。她透露：“我想加入一个团队，去实现时代愿景，同时用一个未知的特殊因素（X因素）去创造城市。”作为前任市区重建局的战略研究主管，陈思慧总能探索新的突破性思考，并设法将这些想法和如何支持概念规划和构思结合起来，使其成为城市发展的塑造者。她认为“构想”是市建局最重要的职能，同时引导卓越的建筑和城市设计意味着突破“好”设计的前沿和边界，特别是推动行业合作。这听起来确实是令人兴奋的管制方式，她进而谈到的一点是，政府与学术研究人员、行业专业人士的融合合作，有助于形成具有远见卓识的政策和形成性发展。今日之环境比往日更具挑战性，过往来说，参考和借鉴他国的解决方案是举世公认的行动模式，而当下的时代环境需要城市的自我创新，以产生对于新加坡独特城市环境来说恰如其分的解决方案。

百瑞先生专访陈思慧
Barry interviews Elaine Tan

　　“It was an exciting time in 2005 to leave private practice and move into the public sector,” Elaine tells me the day before her presentation at the Hong Kong Institute of Urban Design Conference on Actions for Active Ageing. It’s not often nowadays that you hear of leaving the private sector to work in government is due to the excitement of the opportunities. “I wanted to be in the team that was responsible for meeting the vision of the time, to create the city with an ‘X Factor’, that unknown something special” she reveals. As former Director of Strategic Research at the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Elaine was able to study new emergent ideas and address how these could support concept panning and envisioning as the shapers of development for the city. ‘Envisioning’ is the key role of the URA she suggests, whilst directing Architecture and Urban Design Excellence meant pushing the frontiers and boundaries of good design, particularly in working in collaboration with industry. This does indeed sound like exciting governance, one she explains where a special synthesis of the government working with both academic researchers and industry is adopted to help to forge the required visionary policy and formative development. Today’s environment is a more challenging dynamic than that of the past, where observing and adapting others solutions was the accepted mode, and this has required self-innovation in the city to generate solutions specifically suitable to Singapore’s unique urban context.

　　An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

　　Oscar Wilde

　　“一个想法若称不上危险,那么它就不值得被称作为想法”

　　王尔德

　　新加坡的精神似乎围绕着“愿景”、“伙伴关系”和“社区”这三个不同的核心而形成，以便通过开发实现更大程度的产权共享、产品和赋能。在解决问题的同时，加强对社区解决方案的重视是避免仅听一家之言的一个关键因素。新加坡政府认识到所有问题的复杂性，并认识到在土地开发方面，包括基础设施、住房、交通、社区治理和老龄化等方面，需要加强系统间的相互依赖性。陈思慧建议，“多维问题需要多维方法”，并进一步解释新加坡如何越来越多地走向大众合作。因此对于形成统筹兼顾、全面细致的综合性解决方案来说，需要的是不仅仅征求意见，又或是公共部门和私营部门的合作，还需要学术界、非政府组织、非营利组织等的合作。

　　The Singapore ethos seems to form around the three distinct cores of ‘vision’, ‘partnership’ and ‘community’ in order to achieve a greater sense of joint ownership, product and empowerment through development. Increasing the emphasis on community solutions is a key factor in ensuring no single perspective dominates whilst addressing problems. The Singapore government recognises the complexity surrounding all issues and the need for greater interdependency of systems in land development, including infrastructure, housing, transport, community governance and ageing. “Multi-dimensional issues need multidimensional approaches” Elaine suggests, explaining further how Singapore is moving increasingly to mass co-operation, not just of public and private sectors but also ensuring academia, NGO’s, and non-profits are collaborators in creating holistic, comprehensive, integrated solutions and not just consulted for opinion.

 老龄化

 AGEING

　　她的目标是解决城市人口老龄化问题。我好奇的是，对于陈思慧来说为什么老龄化社会的需求至关重要？“我觉得不做一个‘被动式的公务员’很重要”她表示。这一点促使她对自己正在参与解决的问题产生了浓厚的兴趣，并从一开始就清楚地理解这些问题。作为市建局的研究总监，她可以清楚地看到潜在的老龄化趋势是未来的一个重要课题，但要真正了解一个包容社会的意义，她就必须经常性地探访医院、护理设施、养老院和家庭中心。她解释说:“亲临一线是增强意识的关键”，“对于工作的热情就是在这种沉浸感中成长起来的”。有一种观点认为新加坡本可以在更早的时候着手解决人口老龄化问题，特别是考虑到已有的日本经验。然而，真正唤醒意识的似乎是一个人们已经认识到了的事实——这座城市中的100万人将会在2030年成为老人。这一数字让公众和政策制定者都引起了共鸣。不过，她认为，晚些着手解决这一问题，也使新加坡具备了更好的条件，掌握如何解决这些问题的知识，并拥有更多的数据和技术资源来解决这些问题。新型社区正在崛起,近期完工的新加坡海军部综合体社区就是其中一个例子。高密度老年住房单元被植入现有的社区中，并提供包含市民服务和医疗支持的综合设施。这不仅仅是为了新的开发项目, 而且在于在构建多年龄层社区解决方案的同时给更大范围的社区提供额外的好处。新加坡在持续研究如何扩大住房类别，通过缩小居住单元面积或提供多世代混合居住的方式来实现年龄层间的良好流动。陈思慧解释说，混合多样的住房产品供应和分配应满足个体性需求、流动性和功能性，而不仅仅是满足所对应的收入群体。社区需要允许不同形式的“老有所居”，无论是独立生活还是辅助护理下的生活、又或是社区和居家养老。理解社会需求而不是“一刀切”，是提供一个及时反馈物理环境的关键。其中一个有趣的方式是，鼓励年轻夫妇选择离长者所在地步行可达的距离内居住。这就是我们所说的“汤模式”，你可以带着一碗热汤在其变冷之前来到你的家人身边。通过向这类夫妇提供财政补贴，新加坡政府在财政上已经认识到，这样的做法可以为老年人和年轻人的跨世代支持带来诸多益处。虽然这样的实践实现在一个城市的层面上，但我也想知道，这样的实践是否也在更大的环境背景下依然具有价值。比如，如何利用这样的模式进一步解决全球农村- -城市人口移徙和农村人口减少的问题呢?

　　With her intention to address issues of the ageing urban population, I’m curious as to why the needs of the ageing society is of particular importance to Elaine. “I feel it's very important not to be a ‘passive civil servant’ she confides. This drives her interest to become critically involved with the subject she is dealing with at the very rock face, to understand clearly the issues from the ground up. As Director of Research at URA she could identify the underlying trends showing ageing to be a critical issue going forward, but to really understand the meaning of an inclusive society she would make frequent and regular visits to hospitals, care facilities, nursing homes and family centres. “It’s essential to be on the ground to gain a heightened state of awareness” she explains. “The passion for your work grows through such immersion”. There is a school of thought that addressing demographic ageing issues could have been initiated earlier by Singapore, especially in the light of Japan’s experience, however the catalyst for such awareness seems to have been the realisation that 1 million of the city citizens would be ‘elderly’ by 2030, a figure that resonated with public and  policy makers alike. Addressing the issue later however has given Singapore the advantages of being better armed with an understanding of how to tackle the issues as well as having more resources in terms of data and technology to address them she feels. New types of community are emerging, such as that recently completed at Kampung Admiralty, where high density elderly housing units have been plugged into an existing community to provide integrated facilities of amenity, service and medical support, not just for the new development but for the additional benefit of an existing wider catchment whilst structuring a multi- age district wide solution. Singapore continues to research how to widen the housing palette, to allow age mobility through both downsizing to smaller units or providing multi-generational homes. A matrix of housing product supply and allocation should respond to individual’s needs, mobility and functional capability rather than income groups alone Elaine explains. Communities need to allow for differing forms of ageing in place, both independently or with assisted living, community or family support. Understanding the social needs is key to providing a responsive physical environment where no ‘one size fits all’. One interesting facet is that of incentivising young couples to adopt housing within walking distance of their elders. What we might call the “soup model” of housing where you can travel to your family within the time it takes to walk with a hot bowl of soup before it gets cold. By supplying financial subsidies to such couples, Singapore’s government is financially recognising the significant benefits this can bring in cross-generational support of both elderly and very young together. Whilst this is  employed at a large city level, I do also wonder about how this might also be relevant in a larger context. How perhaps could this be used as a further instrument related to dealing with the global problems of rural - urban migration and depopulation of rural economies?

 未来

 FUTURE

　　作为一个直接承担开发前瞻性城市解决方案的负责人，陈思慧必然对未来抱有愿景，我忍不住要和她谈谈未来。虽然她不想被人们当作一个技术官僚，但她深知技术可以在智能设计方面带来巨大的帮助。在便利赡养老年人方面，她认为通过在线预约和咨询，辅以数字化测试和监控，我们可以预期由远程视频监控给我们带来的诸多益处。新加坡也已在努力创建老年痴呆友好社区，通过教育社区成员(如零售店主)可以发挥作用，而通过技术支持似乎确实存在独特的机会来实现这一目标。她补充提醒道，我们使用的技术和硬科学越来越多，因此也需要更多的社会科学知识来平衡。历史表明，两者缺一不可，对于技术变革所带来的社会影响，我们的认识总是受到时间延迟的影响。通过采用人工智能预测模型，会改变这种情况吗？通过提供大数据，我们每天都能获得更多的信息，从而能够在城市发展中做出更有针对性的功能响应，而在过去，由于缺乏确凿的信息，规划师和城市塑造者可能对这些更是一种期待。陈思慧向我分享着她的“箴言”，提供服务应该基于三个层次:-首先是“接近性”;其次是“可接近性”;最后是,“便利性”。持续对社会系统、特别是老年人行为进行基于数据的研究，有助于为发展规划提供“适当规模和适当地点”的解决方案。

　　As someone directly responsible for developing forward looking urban solutions, Elaine must have visions of the future, and I can’t resist touching upon these. Whilst she doesn’t want to be considered as a technocrat, she does consider the massive assistance in providing informed design that technology can bring. In terms of facilitating elderly support, she feels we might anticipate the benefits of more remote supervision, initially through online appointments and consultation, assisted by digital testing and monitoring. Singapore has already made efforts towards creating dementia friendly communities, whereby educating community members such as shopkeepers can make a difference, but there do appear to be particular opportunities in providing technology support. In a note of caution, she adds that the more technology and hard science that we employ then we also need to have more social science knowledge to balance this. History shows that the one cannot go without the other and our knowledge of the social impacts of technological change has always been impaired by time delay. Can this possibly change through adoption of AI predictive modelling? Every day we are becoming better informed through the provision of big data in being able to allow more targeted functional responses in urban development, whereas perhaps in the past these have been more aspirational on the part of planners and city shapers due to lack of hard information. Elaine shares her ‘mantra’ that provision of services should be based on three constructs: - firstly ‘Proximity; followed by ‘Accessibility’; and finally, ‘Convenience’. Continued data-based research on social systems and elderly behaviour in particular are able to help to provide solutions of the “Right Size and Right Site” for development programming.

　　她表示，当下我们似乎处于城市变革中的一个阶段，定期和实时数据应用将使规划和设施的优化成为可能。这将允许我们“深入肌理，了解实际问题”，从而提供恰如其分的城市空间布局。我向她提出了在未来5年内急需解决的紧迫领域，并立即得到了发展抗灾能力的建议优先事项，即发展硬件层面和社会层面的适应韧性，以应对气候变化危机。其他需要新方法的关键领域还包括：向可持续及优化的交通形态迅速转变；通过更优的数字化、利用率和分析来改进数据应用，从而进行问题预测; 以及解决因时变而生的社会问题，例如死亡率的上升和对共享经济的依赖。她同时向我介绍了一个称之为“复杂性科学”的特殊新领域，这一领域兴起于过去的十几年中，是一种研究动态、不可预测和多维度系统与问题的方法。虽然这门科学最早是在医疗行业发展起来的，但考虑到城市内部的各种联系与构成部分，它的适用性似乎是不可否认的。与传统的“因果”或线性思维不同，复杂性科学的特点是非线性，适合我们在21世纪初期所处的复杂世界。它使用了新的理论，让我们以全新的视角看待老问题，强大的计算能力和庞大的数据集为我们提供了新见解，进一步理解网络、全球化和可持续发展等概念下互相关联的世界基本运作方式。正如陈思慧所指出的那样，城市不是未来的问题，而是未来的解决方案。我们可预见的未来必然是不可预见的，而我们应该为这些不可预见之事做好万全准备，然后建立相应的系统，在未来到来时从容应对。

　　We seem to be at a point of urban revolution she suggests, whereby regular and real time data will be able to allow us to plan and optimise facilities significantly better. It will allow us to “get under the skin and into the real issues” of providing appropriate city fabric. I press her for the urgent areas needing to be addressed in the next five years and immediately receive the suggested priority of developing resilience to meet the climate emergency, in terms of both physical and social resilience. Other key areas needing new approaches include rapid movement to sustainable and optimised transport nodes; improved leveraging of data with better digitisation, utilisation and analytics to predict problems; and the importance of addressing social issues arising from change, such as increases in the death rate and reliance on a sharing economy. One particular area she draws me into is the new field of ‘complexity science’ that has emerged in the last decade and is an approach to systems and problems that are dynamic, unpredictable and multi-dimensional. Whilst this has primarily been developed in the healthcare sector its appropriateness for considering the interconnected relationships and parts making up the city seems undeniable. Unlike traditional “cause and effect” or linear thinking, complexity science is characterized by non-linearity appropriate for the complex world we live in at the turn of the 21st century. It uses new theories that let us look at age old problems with a fresh perspective that leverages the use of powerful computation and the large data sets that are offering us new insight into the fundamental workings of our interconnected world of networks, globalization and sustainability. As Elaine points out, cities are solutions to the future and not the problems. Our future is to expect the unexpected, be as best prepared as possible for such eventualities and then to have systems in place to deal calmly with the future as it arises.