What makes a city truly liveable? Designers and planners are looking beyond buildings and infrastructure

The definition of a truly liveable city is evolving, with designers and planners shifting their focus from mere buildings and infrastructure to the emotional and experiential quality of urban life. A striking example is the "Blueprint of a Shophouse" mural in Singapore, which depicts vignettes of the neighborhood's past, present, and future. Lee Hui Lian, the principal architect behind the project, sees such public art as another way of practicing architecture, emphasizing how design can shape not just a city's appearance but its lived experience.

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Buildings and infrastructure are the framework that enables meaningful experiences. I'm interested in how people relate to spaces emotionally and how design can create moments of pause, curiosity and connection. A mural is another way of practising architecture, just at a different scale and through a different medium.

This shift reflects a growing concern among built environment practitioners about enhancing well-being, creativity, and joy within urban spaces. Chong Keng Hua, a co-founder of the design consultancy COLOURS: Collectively Ours, argues that a city can be environmentally efficient yet emotionally draining, or economically successful yet socially fragmented. He believes the next stage of city-making involves moving beyond questions of productivity and sustainability to asking whether a city enables its inhabitants to flourish.

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A city can be environmentally efficient yet emotionally exhausting, or economically successful yet socially fragmented. The next evolution of city-making is to move beyond asking whether a city is productive or sustainable, and begin asking whether it enables people to flourish.

The "Art of Citymaking" event in Singapore highlighted this need for a deeper rethink, with festival director Anupam Yog pointing to "city quitting" movements and the normalization of urban loneliness as indicators that cities must offer more to inspire their residents. Daniel Liu, managing director of urban advisory firm MORROW, underscores the importance of understanding how urban dwellers experience their cities daily, including challenges with routines and access to amenities, to improve their lives.

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I feel like we really need to radically reimagine these places. The city has to be something more, it needs to inspire us.

Assessing how people feel about their urban environment is no longer considered secondary. Chong Keng Hua notes that while cities might excel in economic or environmental metrics, they can fail to foster emotional resilience or a sense of belonging. The focus is now on creating spaces that facilitate human connection and emotional engagement, recognizing that a city's success is ultimately measured by the quality of life it provides its people.

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We want people who live in cities to have better lives. Understanding how urban dwellers can experience them – the challenges of daily routine, the access to amenities and entertainment – these all matter.