Our Favourite Place is a programme that encourages and supports community-initiated projects to transform existing public spaces into active community spaces. Public spaces play an important part in our everyday lives. Well-designed public spaces serve as a gathering place for people to engage in leisure and social activities and enhance community interactions. Enjoyable public spaces not only make Singapore a more attractive city, but also create and sustain shared memories that bind the community.
The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has formalised a public space programme – Our Favourite Place – to support projects initiated by the community to enliven public spaces across Singapore to facilitate community interactions and create shared memories. The programme will provide more opportunities for the community to step forward and activate public spaces, and allow more people to experience and enjoy interesting public spaces.
In 2013, URA piloted a public space programme to involve the community in enlivening public spaces through good design and programming. URA worked with private and public organisations on a variety of pop-up installation projects, such as Chairs in Squares (movable chairs), Picnic in the Park (picnic tables and swings) and Play Space (3-D play set). The projects were well-received by the public and showed how communities could be brought together in meaningful ways through simple but creative ideas. The community also came forth with their own pop-up projects, such as KamPONG (ping pong tables) and Play it Forward (artistically transformed pianos).
At the SGfuture dialogue on public spaces held earlier this year, participants also expressed interest for more of such opportunities for the community to participate in the activation of public spaces.
To support and facilitate more ground-up interest in activating public spaces – be it a space under viaduct, a disused plot of vacant land or a public area within a commercial or public building – URA has formalised a public space programme, Our Favourite Place.
Under Our Favourite Place programme, proposals will be assessed on three key criteria – location, timing and activities. Eligible proposals must be primarily community-centric and non-commercial in nature, relate well to the proposed site and supported by the local community.
URA will provide successful applicants varying levels of support which may include:
Full details on eligibility criteria can be found in Annex A [PDF, 142kb]. Interested applicants can apply here.
In addition, URA will organise networking workshops for people to learn about Our Favourite Place programme, share and exchange ideas and form a network of like-minded individuals interested in activating public spaces. The first workshop is scheduled for May 2016 where interested applicants will also be able to learn from past project owners about project implementation.
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