Friends, ladies and gentlemen, mostly online,  thank you for inviting me to this year's  

Singapore Perspectives, to speak  on the important topic of cities.  

There are so many dimensions to cities. They are  full of promise and potential. They are where  

rural populations migrate to in search of a better  life. They are the nerve centres of industries and  

economies, ideas and culture. They are magnets  for humanity, and cauldrons for new ideas  

and social movements. They are where hopes and  dreams are expressed and filled and fulfilled.  

But there is a dark side to cities  too. Cities can also breed crime, vice,  

social inequality, disease, and cause  environmental degradation. So cities are  

filled with paradoxes. Along with triumphs, there  are defeats. Where there is hope and optimism,  

there is also despair. They have been the central  stage where the story of humanity has unfurled,  

reflecting how society societies think  behave and point their moral compasses.  

Today, I will start by recounting the stories  of a few great cities — past and present.  

I will then draw out key lessons from these  cities, and talk about their implications  

for Singapore, both our present as well as  our future. My first example is Jericho,  

in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. It  was one of the oldest human settlements dating  

back 9,000BC. An old city born of geographical  advantage — a combination of good climate, fertile  

soil, and an abundance of fresh water. These  conditions enabled hunter-gatherers to settle  

over time and they cultivated crops. These were a  close-knit people from a very early civilization.  

As their numbers grew, a city is formed. And  then, with accumulated wealth from agriculture,  

the people of Jericho established the  city as a trading station, leveraging the  

strategic location along the Jordan River, and  they were trading with people as far out as Egypt  

and Anatolia. With wealth came the need to  defend the wealth and to protect the wealth.  

Inhabitants built up fortifications, most  famously the walls of Jericho. And defence  

has always been a public good. So you want  to defend the city, it has to raise taxes,  

mobilize and organize resources. And therefore  you see the emergence of a state administration.  

And that leads me to my second set of  examples of great cities — political capitals  

such as Rome, Chang An,  Constantinople, Kaifeng, Pataliputra.  

These too began as well-located settlements,  but they gained strategic significance,  

as their rulers consolidated territories around  them. And eventually, they became the full-fledged  

political and economic capitals of empires.  These capitals, they had a few common features.  

First, they were often situated at a confluence  of trade routes. Kaifeng, for example,  

was located amidst a network of canals  and handled huge volumes of trading cargo.  

Trade was often state-sponsored and driven to  provide the resources to sustain the empires.  

Two, these capitals had defensive strat  advantages. For example, Constantinople guarded  

the only inlet to the Black Sea, and surrounded  by water on three sides. And this left it open to  

only land invasions from the west, but I think the  Ottomans attacked them from the sea in the end.  

Three, they were the seats of great powers, and  developed significant military and technocratic  

powers as capitals of empires. For example, Rome  had a governing Senate, and an established code  

of law, which still forms the foundations of  many modern legal and democratic systems today.  

The third set of examples are the  present-day metropolises — New York City,  

Shanghai, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore. With  industry revolution and technological advancement,  

came the free flow of capital, and the  world became increasingly globalized. And  

the globalized world is characterized by complex  networks of trade, financial services, maritime,  

aviation, infocoms and other activities. And  then, these networks in turn need to be served  

by nodes or exchanges, and global  metropolises that I've listed,  

managed to establish themselves as these  nodes in a global economy. With technology,  

the influence span of a modern metropolis is  no longer limited by the stamina of a horse,  

nor by the proximity to  waterways and canals. Their  

significance is determined by the breadth of their  networks, strategic clustering of industries,  

rich flows of capital and ideas, and most  importantly, their ability to attract and  

retain talent from all over the world. Hence,  London no longer depends on the themes because it  

is not no longer tethered to its maritime roots.  Its transformation into a global financial centre  

and a hub of creativity, culture and the arts  has allowed it to keep its position in the world.  

On the other side of the world, Silicon Valley  and its smallest cities like Palo Alto and  

Cupertino — the start-up and technological  capital of the world — they have overtaken  

the coastal city of San Francisco. The idea of  cities has therefore evolved, from gatherings of  

close-knit people who settled where climatic  and geographical conditions are most benign,  

to political and economic centres from which  nations and empires were ruled and defended,  

to now finally, financial and commercial hubs  in a globalized and interconnected world.  

However they come to be, cities rise and fall  with the tide of history. The same geographical  

luck which gave rise to ancient cities  such as Jericho can also be their undoing.  

Natural disasters, climate change foreign  invasions can all turn a city's fate.  

Today, Jericho is a pale shadow of its former self  as part of a disputed territory in the West Bank.  

As for political capitals such as Rome or  Chang An (now called Xi An), their character  

and significance shifted along with the rise and  fall of their parent empires. Rome, was the roman  

empire rather, was plagued by constant threats of  invasion, and its military and administration were  

overextended to defend a massive territory. There  was an erosion of civic trust in the ruling elite.  

Chang An was decimated at the fall of the  Tang dynasty as the empire fragmented.  

These cities did not 'decline' exactly.  They remain major population centres  

but their character has totally changed. Rome is  still the capital of Italy, but the commercial  

centre has since moved to Milan. Rome literally  has layers of history buried below its surface,  

which makes it very hard for the city  to redevelop and reinvent itself.  

As for the great modern metropolises, we can't  take for granted we will always be there.  

We are constantly jostling for relevance  in a hyper-competitive global economy.  

If a global node can be established, it  can also be unplugged by a competitor.  

Maintaining the vibrance and relevance of a  city over generations is therefore no mean  

feat. I cite these examples because  I think there are lessons in each one  

that can enrich our collective endeavour to keep  Singapore a thriving city at the cutting-edge,  

as well as a stable and sustainable home for  all of us. Singapore cannot be modelled against  

any of the examples I raised, and not even  the modern metropolis. This is because  

history has made us unique. We are city, we are  a state, we are also a nation of one people,  

all rode into one. In Singapore, we find  some of the essence of New York City,  

of Chang An, and also of Jericho. Our future  success depends on us recognizing the importance  

and combining the essence of all  three great cities — past and present.  

Let me start by talking about the New York  City in us. We are a global economic node,  

and this is central to our survival as a  city, the way we earn the living. Because  

without economic opportunities and the prospect  of a better future for our people, a city loses  

by its dynamism and its life. Especially for a  city like Singapore, without a natural hinterland,  

maintaining our economic viability has  always meant being connected to the world.  

One of our pioneer leaders, Mr S. Rajaratnam,  set out our ambition to become a "Global City"  

in a speech to the press club in 1972, a  whole two decades before our next speaker,  

Professor Sassen, would popularise the term. Mr  Rajaratnam saw Singapore as a growingly important  

component of the global economic system, side  by side with the economic giants of the world.  

In large part, we achieved this ambition  through decades of hard work and enterprise.  

We leveraged our geographical location we build a  trading hub first, and from there, other strategic  

industries — manufacturing, tourism, biomedical,  finance, infocoms, aviation, R&D and so on. To use  

a more contemporary analogy, we have become like a  smartphone — with a good operating system and all  

kinds of apps in it. Your contacts, your schedule,  your group chats, music, photos. All personalised  

and stored in here. So this is the value  proposition we want to keep offering to the world.  

Strong enough, so that it is not easy, though  not impossible, to switch out of Singapore.  

The great task before us is to keep reinventing  ourselves to stay relevant and competitive. We  

have made good progress as a smart nation. We are  fast becoming a centre for green finance in the  

world. We have long term plans to reinvent  our cityscape, such as developing the land  

to be vacated by the Paya Lebar Air Base, and  reimagining our city centre with the inclusion  

of the Greater Southern Waterfront, which is the  size of three Marina Bays, and the city centre  

will look entirely different decades from now. But  I believe the biggest opportunity for reinvention  

lies in the post COVID-19 world. In many ways,  the crisis is like a reset button, forcing us to  

rethink the way we do things, to be better, to be  smarter. For example, the post COVID working world  

should embrace a combination of working in office  and at home, as a more efficient arrangement to  

be outcome-focused, and help people juggle  their lives. We should rethink about the  

concept of 'peak' commuting hours, which has  so long dictated the planning and development  

of transport infrastructure. We  can flatten that traffic curve too.  

COVID-19 has pushed many hard-hit brick-and-mortar  establishments onto digital platforms.  

And having gone through Home Based Learning,  education is undergoing another renaissance,  

kicked off with every secondary school kid  equipped with a personal device, embracing  

the digital medium for education, and encouraging  self-directed learning. And in healthcare, we now  

have a much better appreciation of the importance  of primary care, which includes things like  

good hygiene, vaccinations, and home recovery  with the help and support of telemedicine.  

This may be a new beginning for primary preventive  care, which will be actually the most important  

component in a rapidly ageing country. Through  the pandemic, we have also positioned ourselves  

as a hub for vaccine manufacture and distribution.  And the process of coping with the pandemic has  

tested our metal as a city. We had to roll with  the punches and adapt to all kinds of twists and  

turns. We didn't try to shut down every infection  cluster, but we tried to brave through, and ride  

the infection wave. And to do this, we have had  to rely on people's personal responsibility and  

civic consciousness. We have to trust that people  will do the right thing in testing themselves  

and isolating themselves if they are positive  tested positive. While all these have been done  

out of necessity, I believe it has helped  us grow as a people. I hope it is the start  

of a societal attitude that is more forgiving of  imperfections, embracing setbacks and failures,  

appreciating resilience, ruggedness  enterprise and even being unconventional.

There is also a Chang An in us, even  though we are no empire. This is because  

we need to run an effective state. In Singapore,  our people do not have a choice between a  

free-wheeling urban economic centre or a quiet  life in the suburbs. There is also no equivalent  

of a Washington DC, a Canberra, an Ottawa or  Brasilia outside of global city. This city is  

all we got. Within these 730 square kilometres,  lie all the possible choices for 5 million  

people. The Government of Singapore therefore  must defend our city, maintain law and order,  

must ensure all our infrastructure and services  — from healthcare, education and transport to  

utilities and refuse collection, libraries and  parks, are all well provided for and working well.  

What Singapore has been blessed with  is a founding generation that has  

built up a good Government, with a capital 'G'.  This includes the various arms of the state — an  

executive branch that is effective and can get  things done; a non-politicized civil service;  

and a judicial system that upholds the rule of  law without fear or favour. It also includes  

democratic institutions such as parliament,  formed through free and fair elections.  

But the affairs of the state cannot run away  from politics, and therein lies a duality.  

On the one hand, politics facilitates public  discourse, puts the fate of the country  

ultimately in the hands of the people, keeps  powers in check and maintains accountability  

of the executive branch. On the other hand,  politics gone wrong can polarize the population  

and destabilize societies. And we  have seen many recent examples.  

So a critical factor for good governance is  to get politics right. Rather than endless  

bickering and stalemates, the political process  must be constructive, and help bridge divides. The  

objective of politics must be to help the country  find a way forward even if the decisions involve  

very difficult trade-offs. And this is especially  important to Singapore. For what we lack  

in resources and strategic mass, we can make up  with nimbleness, and unity of purpose and action.  

We may be small, but we can be  fast and we do things together.  

What are the starkest political differences  that need to be reconciled today?  

Post Industrial Revolution, throughout 19th  and 20th centuries, the biggest conflict  

has been between the Right and the Left.  Creation versus distribution of wealth.  

Socialism versus Capitalism. And that was  the defining divide that characterised the  

political struggles of almost every country. An  ideological struggle that defined modern history.  

However post globalisation and the Internet,  modern societies face new contradictions.  

Economic and income growth are important and  desired by many, but can also stratify society  

and can hinder social mobility. The challenges  and stresses of international competition  

can make people turn against globalization  and foreigners. Resource exploitation  

depletes the life of our planet. In other words,  inequality, protectionism and climate change.  

These are some of the biggest issues that nations  and their Governments across the world have to  

grapple with today. To reconcile the dilemmas  of modern societies and deal with these issues,  

we actually need a strong state. Otherwise, it  will not be possible to do difficult but necessary  

things such as carbon tax to reduce emission, or  redistributive policies to help the low-income  

move up especially, or reform education, health  or other significant public policies and programs.  

Our policies need to be consistent for the long  term in order to make an impact and make a change,  

improve lives. Unlike bigger countries, Singapore  cannot afford to be caught in fractious politics  

with frequent change of governments and  reorientation of policies that come with it.  

This does not preclude the value of healthy  discourse that take in diverse views,  

and the proper functioning of checks and balances  — both of which can strengthen our health and  

functioning as a state. The success of Singapore  state depends on our ability to achieve both aims.

But the most crucial aspect of  Singapore is the Jericho in us.  

The sense that despite being in a global  city, we are members of a close-knit tribe,  

sharing a common fate and destiny. A  recognition that by working together  

and making sacrifices for one another, we  have a better shot at a brighter future.  

Except unlike the inhabitants of Jericho,  we are not a natural tribe of similar  

origins. Singapore is a far more diverse  and complex city than any ancient city.  

Having a seat at the table at the United Nations,  or a flag to compete under in the Olympics,  

does not a nation make. The litmus  test of what it means to be a nation  

is actually in our Pledge — 'One United  People'. This makes nation building a long term,  

subconscious process. A nation's people will  have to have common experiences, and go through  

trials and tribulations together. Over time,  that togetherness, will forge common ideals  

that transcend primordial tribal instincts, and  overcome forces that deepen social fault lines.  

Then something mysterious can emerge, beyond  security, beyond making a living, beyond  

creature comforts — like, the soul of a nation.  For ancient civilizations like China and India,  

the sense of nationhood is almost second nature,  having been born of millennia in time. In Europe,  

religious beliefs played a big part in forging  that sense of togetherness also over centuries.  

The United States of America that's a relatively  young country, held together by the ideals of  

individual freedom and liberty. In Singapore, we  are working on what it means to be Singaporean,  

day by day. Students singing Majulah Singapura  daily at school assemblies; different  

communities living side by side in HDB estates,  visiting hawker centres public parks together;  

cohorts of youngsters performing National Service  together, total strangers instinctively connecting  

with a Singlish phrase, even thousands of  miles away from home like our secret code;  

and battling crisis like COVID-19  pandemic together. These are all acts  

of nation building. Many of these come through  deliberate policies and programs implemented by  

the state. Take our bicentennial commemoration  in 2019 for instance. We wanted to figure out  

what best describes the Singapore  DNA. So after consulting widely,  

we shortlisted three descriptors — openness,  multiculturalism, and self-determination.  

At the end of the exhibition at Fort Canning,  members of the public were asked to vote for  

the descriptor that resonated with them  the most. I did too. And by a wide margin,  

we chose self-determination. It is not surprising.  Cities don't need it; many states don't even  

think about it; but a young nation like us  dreams of and cherish self-determination.  

It was a pity COVID-19 disrupted the process and  we could not take the exhibition further. But we  

should think of other ways to do so, because there  is a growing consciousness about why we exist as  

Singapore and what makes us Singaporean.  And to put that consciousness into words,  

it is perhaps this: that we are not just a keynote  of the globalised world, but one that connects  

the East and West, and different parts  of Asia, creating vast opportunities that  

surpass the limits of our borders, for  our people and our future generations.  

That the consistent strengths of the institutions  of state will always strive to ensure justice and  

fairness to all, uphold meritocracy, bring out the  best of people, bridge our divides and put us on  

the right path for the long term. That therefore  in this nation, there is a solemn commitment  

to give every community that calls Singapore  home a place under the sun, where everyone also  

exercises a spirit of give and take rather  than pushing their own agendas at the expense  

of others, and in so doing provides space for  something we collectively own as Singaporeans,  

to evolve over time. And with all these, we  will determine our own future, and be a city,  

state, and nation that continue to  thrive for many years to come. Thank you.