Zaheer Allam - Urban Governance and Smart City Planning: Lessons from Singapore (Emerald Points)

About the Author

Zaheer Allam holds a PhD from Curtin University (Australia), an MA (Res) in Political Economy from the University of Sydney (Australia), an MBA from Anglia Ruskin University (UK) and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Architectural Science from Curtin University (Australia). Based in Mauritius, he works as an Urban Strategist for The Port Louis Development Initiative (PLDI) and the Global Creative Leadership Initiative (GCLI) and consults on a number of projects on the thematic of Smart Cities across the African continent and on strategies dwelling in the increasing role of technology in Culture and the Society. Zaheer is also the African representative of the International Society of Biourbanism (ISB), member of the Advisory Circle of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) and a member of a number of other international bodies. For his contributions to society, he was elevated, by the President of Mauritius, to the rank of Officer of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (OSK), the highest distinct order of merit in Mauritius. He is also a recipient of a number of other awards and writes extensively on the thematic of sustainability and resilience in cities. He is also the author of Theology and Urban Sustainability and Cities and the Digital Revolution: Aligning Technology and Humanity.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the Singapore's Centre for Liveable Cities for an invitation for their flagship programme, the International Leaders for Urban Governance, in 2018 and later to attend the World Cities Summit in 2019, during which I was introduced to the challenges faced by the country, their incredibly bold solutions and lessons learnt from their transition from a third to first world country. I am also indebted to Sameerah Aumjaud for the editing of this manuscript.

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