Singapore: Smart City, Smart State

How Singapore’s solutions to common problems can provide examples for other societies.

Nearly everyone knows that Singapore has one of the most efficient governments and is among the most competitive advanced economies in the world. But can this unique city-state of some 5.5 million residents serve as a model for other advanced economies as well as for the emerging world? Respected East Asia expert Kent Calder provides clear answers to this intriguing question in his new, groundbreaking book.

Calder describes Singapore as a laboratory for solutions to problems experienced by urban societies around the world. Through information technology and sophisticated data collection and analysis, and with a focus on innovation and adaptive governance, Singapore has dealt successfully with education, energy, environmental, housing, and transportation challenges. It has become a model smart city, smart state. And many of its solutions can be adapted for other societies.

Singapore consistently ranks at the top in world surveys measuring competitiveness, ease of doing business, protection of intellectual property, and absence of corruption. But there are caveats: the city-state comes in at only "partly free" in the Freedom House democracy rankings and like many other developed nations, faces growing inequality. Singapore: Smart City, Smart State addresses these deficits while also offering concrete insights and a lucid appreciation of how many of Singapore's answers to near-universal problems can have a much broader relevance, even in very different societies.