There’s much more to Singapore’s ambitions to become the world’s first “smart nation” than what you see on the surface. Many countries have already started to make their cities smarter, and it’s only a matter of time before every major city in the developed world turns into a “smart city.” As one of the world’s only true city-states, Singapore is in a unique position to set itself up as the “smart city” exporter from which other nations get the expertise and supplies they need to build their own smart cities.
Singapore has a plan to build a tech utopia – a real-life tomorrowland where inhabitants lead blissful lives under the auspices of all-seeing tech overlords. It calls this the Smart Nation initiative. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s an ambitious government project to use technology from public research and the private sector to improve the lives of Singaporeans, generate jobs, and – in the words of Vivian Balakrishnan, the geeky minister overseeing Smart Nation – create a “cohesive” society. For months, the state’s public relations machinery pitched Smart Nation as the country’s future, a silicon add-on to the garden city. That, I think, is just phase one. What Singapore is really working towards is becoming the model city for the world – an exporter of expertise to anyone who aspires to the same goal. Singapore exporting Smart Nation is inevitable. The country ranks 12th in the world by export value. With a tiny population of 5.4 million, it can’t rely on domestic consumption to fuel its economy.
