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Rapid urbanisation coupled with the increasing impacts from climate change adds numerous challenges to cities and countries. This renders difficulties for devising urban governance models that are resilient, safe and inclusive while preserving what is left of the environment. The issue of regenerating green spaces, while mitigating climate change, with an aim to increase sustainability has been the subject of numerous research studies, but there has been no country that has managed to achieve high levels of commitment and success than that of Singapore. This chapter reviews the approach of Singapore and shares insights on the techniques and key projects that have contributed to the uplifting of its liveability levels.

This position chapter explains the importance of designing policies for smart cities. This chapter aims to provoke discussions that will allow further understanding of the smart cities policy agenda. It is inevitable for various smart cities actors to agree on ways to implement change in smartness. This is because of the different views on developing smart cities (or smart cities initiatives) that will ensure shared benefits for everyone. To achieve a wider understanding of how this might be achieved, the chapter raises the points of designing policy for smartness and the influence of governance on policy design. It explains what we mean by policy and governance and the link between them. Overall, the policy needs to be supported by a governance system, which is widely accepted – for example for truly smart cities, a governance system needs to evaluate the benefits through liveability; these are the environmental, societal, governance, and economic lenses. A liveability approach to the governance system can promote open and democratic processes to smartness.

This introductory chapter sets the scene by introducing the island city-state of Singapore from a historical standpoint and expands on its economical ascension as a result of its strong political governance structure. This chapter also highlights how the role of the urban form has gained from this perspective. Singapore's strategic geographic location played a pivotal part in boosting its role in trade, both regionally and internationally, hence enabling the country to assert a strong geopolitical position and grow economic stronghold. This helped the country to successfully invest in its urban fabric, and is now a world leader in regards to high liveability standards.

In this chapter, we have focused on system processing through incoming data and big data and system analysis after data processing and clustering and then intelligent decision-making that can be driven and done entirely through an Internet of Thing (IoT), AI, BI and the future of fourth technologies, so this new and fast processing has direct effect in consumers choices. Based on the 5th wave and i-Sustainability Plus and DCT (Doost Cultural Theroy) theories, SME 5.0/Hybrid SMEs/Tomorrow's SMEs concept, seven pillars of sustainability (7PS) model, nine pillars of sustainable governance (9PSG) model, 3D soci-eco-environment SME model and the related theories, models and concepts which has been invented, introduced and developed by Hamid Doost Mohammadian 2010–2017, to name examples, a new idea of tomorrow's SMEs, the associated theories, models and concepts, it can be assumed that a thriving Industry 4.0 implementation can take place with this comprehensive tool and method kit. The next technical-technological level represents a barrier, whether in the 5th wave theory simply called ‘Industry 5.0’ or made hardly more tangible with artificial intelligence and hyper-networking. Hybrid forms of work, with known forms of online/offline communication, are expanded with communication interfaces that support people not involved but directly and indirectly affected.

Singapore's rapid gain in notoriety is most certainly due to Lee Kwan Yew's strong political governance structures and vision that led the country towards an ambitious development strategy. Given the pressing challenges of the time, his top-down leadership style, which led to Singapore's success, was often associated to being counter-conducive to participatory planning. Today, as cities seek liveability over functionality and efficiency, there is a need for enhanced public participation to build a more robust civil society. This calls for a change in Singapore's governance structures which are currently being accelerated through the use of technology.