Ever had an idea for how the physical environment around you could be improved? The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and Real Estate Developers’ Association of Singapore (REDAS) are looking for creative inventions that can raise the quality of the built environment. Participants in the URA-REDAS SPARK Challenge will have a chance to develop their own prototypes and test them with the public in shopping malls. The inaugural edition, launched this evening by Minister for National Development and Second Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong at REDAS’ 58th Anniversary Dinner, seeks solutions to enhance health and wellness within the built environment. The best prototype stands to win $10,000. “The places where we spend our time can have a big effect on our physical, mental, emotional and social well-being. By placing prototypes that make a difference to our health in commercial developments, we hope to add to the buzz of these places while showing people that creative ideas to improve our built environment can come from anyone,” said URA Chief Executive Officer Lim Eng Hwee. “We are glad to partner URA to seek creative ideas to enhance the environments of our commercial developments. Our developers are always looking for new and better ways of providing interesting and memorable experiences. We believe the people who frequent our developments could have some of the best ideas,” said REDAS president Augustine Tan. The public can register and submit project proposals online from 14 November 2017 to 7 February 2018. Subsequently, three proposals will be selected, and the participants given $5,000 each to develop two prototypes. A total of six prototypes will be developed and placed at malls owned by REDAS members: City Square Mall, Millenia Walk, Orchard Central, Raffles City, The Centrepoint and Velocity @ Novena Square. The public will be able to interact with the prototypes over three weeks, and vote for their favourites. The winning prototype will then be chosen based on their fulfillment of the judging criteria as well as the public’s response. More details on the competition can be found at http://bit.ly/spark_challenge