Steve Rogerson looks at why Singapore has built a reputation as a pioneer in the smart-city movement.

Whenever there is a report on which are the world’s smartest cities, Singapore is either top or thereabouts. As such, because I had a trip booked to visit Singapore in September, I thought I would investigate more and see if it lived up to its reputation.

I contacted the Singapore government beforehand to see what smart-city features a tourist such as myself was likely to encounter, and they sent me a list (www.smartnation.gov.sg/initiatives/urban-living), most of which sadly I was not going to encounter but they still play a big role in the city’s smartness.

These are things that will affect those that live and work there rather than being aimed at visitors, and that is how it should be. The priority for any smart city must be its own citizens, and services aimed at them are there. We are talking about monitoring systems for the elderly, an app for reporting neighbourhood problems, smart water meters and the like.

One item on that list I did use was e-payments. I used card payments for almost everything, even at most – though not all – of the hawker stalls, and for public transport; no need to buy a ticket, I just tapped in and tapped out on each journey on the MRT or buses and the money came off my card in chunks every few days, and made the cost of each trip ridiculously inexpensive.

And that is a good place to start for a tourist visiting a city. How good is the transport network, and in Singapore it is excellent with an extensive underground and overground light rail network and a bus service to fill in the gaps. However, walking around the city’s pedestrianised areas, there was something missing. Unlike the European cities I am used to visiting, there isn’t the army of e-bikes and e-scooters weaving their way between people.

This is because four years ago the city banned all motorised mobility devices on footpaths. You can still rent non-motorised bikes and scooters, and e-bikes are allowed on cycle paths but must be registered, and there are stiff penalties if they are not. The rules can be found at jimove.sg/blogs/news/singapore-ebike-law-explained.

So is this good or bad? It does make walking around the likes of Chinatown and the waterfronts a lot easier, but it also leaves a hole in last-kilometre transportation that manifests itself in the city still having a high car presence; not as bad as it used to be, but there are traffic jams and busy roads in the city centre for pedestrians to negotiate.

My view is a balance has to be found between the unrestricted use in some cities and the bans that others, such as Paris, have enforced. There must be a middle road but I must admit I don’t know what that will look like.

Could autonomous shuttle buses play a role? Well Singapore has one (www.iotm2mcouncil.org/iot-library/news/connected-transportation-news/weride-autonomous-shuttle-launches-in-singapore) and I went on it. This does a fixed route between four hotels on the holiday island of Sentosa and has to negotiate real traffic. There is a safety driver in case something goes wrong, but the one I had told me there had never been an accident since its introduction earlier this year.

To get some idea of the city’s plans for the future, I would recommend dropping into Smart Nation Cityscape (www.smartnation.gov.sg/community/showcases/cityscape). This is a free exhibition near the excellent Maxwell Food Centre and shows how Singapore has grown and is growing, and the role technology has in that growth.

One thing that was clear from my walk round the exhibition was there was a serious commitment from the authorities to embrace technology in making Singapore a smart and pleasant place to live. And it does hope to tackle the traffic problem with a goal for the city to be car-light, prioritising people movement with a mix of buses and light rail, and cycle paths. There are plans for wider pavements (sidewalks) with dedicated lanes for walking, cycling and other mobility devices.

I was particularly impressed with the encouragement given to citizens to be part of this journey. One of the big criticisms of some smart-city attempts has been the way the technology has been imposed on people, breeding resentment. Not so in Singapore. In fact, the exhibition encourages people to volunteer to become a smart nation ambassador to help others understand and use the technology.

This was my third visit to Singapore in as many years – I first went there on work trips more than two decades ago – each as a brief holiday to coincide with the Grand Prix, a night race run on the streets around Marina Bay, a unique experience that I would recommend to anyone. And I love the city, I love the way it modernises while keeping the cultural atmosphere in areas such as Chinatown and Little India. I love the friendliness and the cleanliness; Singapore has extremely high fines for littering, so nobody drops litter. It even has solar-powered litter bins. There is room for improvement – it does need to reduce car use for example – but it seems determined to become even smarter.

I will be back next year.