Thanks everyone, and happy new year to all. I was looking at some of the closing remarks and preparing it, but I thought one thing that would be quite useful is to give everybody, is a sense of scale. I just travelled over 30 hours, both ways, to the other side of the world, to Colombia of all places. And I wanted to share a little bit about what I learnt as I spoke to the different leaders and ministers on the other side of the world, and to give a sense of where we are in relation to them. 

We've talked about how land-scarce Singapore is and how resource-scarce it is. To put in context, we are 728.6 km2. I know somebody talked about reclamation and everything, I think the numbers have changed, it has either increased or decreased, but I think it's around there. If we were to compare with the US it's 9.8 million km2, Colombia where I’ve just been to, is 1.14 million km2. Closer to our neighbourhood, upstairs or rather north, Malaysia is 330,000 km2. I mean, the order of magnitude is very different. People say that we should compare to Switzerland, well Switzerland is 41,283 km2, or that we should compare to the Scandinavian countries. Denmark is 43,000 km2, Singapore again, is not even in that order of magnitude, we are less than a thousand at 728.6 km2. That sets the context as to how land-scarce we are, and how we need to make do with what we have. 

If I were to be very frank about things, I think this crisis and this pandemic has shown us a couple of things. One is that Singapore is a great place to live because it's so safe and everything. The other thing is Singapore is so small and I need to get out of here, I need to go to a place where there’s bigger space. I think for all of you here, you guys care enough about this 728.6 km2 to spend your Friday afternoon to talk to us about how you want to make sure that this 728.6 km2 can evolve over time to your generation. And that's important because of our size, we need to think about how much goes to green, how much goes to work, how much goes to play, how much goes to our economy, and how much goes to energy. How do we power this and how do we make sure that we live in a very sustainable little island? As always, we always have these different trade-offs. 

The URA Long-Term Plan Review or LTPR is just that. We have to plan 50 years ahead, for sure. One minister I spoke to on one of the plane rides told me this, whatever ideas that I have, I better go and do it now, because my president is going to change, and the next president is going to change everything. They told me that Singapore, even though we're so small, they have much to learn from us. One thing that he told me is that “Singapore you plan long-term”. And this ability for us to plan long term cannot be underscored more. Because if we keep changing our minds, we keep thinking and changing what we do, then I think the whole thing might be lost. What we're trying to do with the URA LTPR, is to say this is a long-term plan of 50 years, but every 10 years, we will look back, take stock, and see what changes. And of course, we've seen significant changes over the last two years because of COVID. 

There is a recent study by LinkedIn, that talked about the difference in the kind of jobs being posted on some of these job sites. I think prior to COVID, 12% included remote kind of jobs, but now, post-COVID I think they've doubled that percentage. So, to many of you we had earlier talked about questions such as, do we need to have a city centre, a CBD or can we be more dispersed? I think these kinds of factors will factor in as Yu-Ning and her URA team start to look at and to consolidate all of the different feedback from these conversations. Digitalisation, ageing population, the shift to work from home, the shift towards the great resignation, the great movement, the great immigration. All of these trends will affect the way we live, work and play, and so too does sustainability.  

I didn't really read my script; I went a bit off script. But I thought about this. I think one thing is for us to continue to think big, and to be bold, in what we decide. The other point is that we also need to be able to look at the world and see how we are compared to other cities. Can we do better in some regards? Can we not do better? What is stopping us from doing better? Well, Luke, to your point, I think it's difficult because we are a clean energy-disadvantaged nation. So, what can we do to offset that? 

Finally, I think it's important for us that even as we build these castles in the air, know that some castles will land well, some castles will remain in the air, but we must continue to build these castles. Some of these castles have become real castles on the ground – Gardens by the Bay, Jewel, Mandai – from castles in the air, figments of our imagination, turned to practical castles on the ground, which our future generations can enjoy. Even as we decide on all of this, don't forget to think of new castles and see which one lands. Make sure that if you guys want to, make sure that you can also find places and areas where you can contribute your ideas and land it on the ground. 

A big call out if any of you are interested, I have a small area in my constituency, I'm putting together some youths to come up with ideas to see how you can reconstruct an area in Little India, or Farrer Park, or Kampung Java, to help to merge sustainability with culture and heritage. We've really gotten started with lots of good ideas. If you want to do something like that, go to Centre for Liveable Cities, or ping me on any of the socials, happy to get you guys involved, and try to implement your ideas on the ground. But what's most important is that we plan and then we execute. That's all I have Anette. Thank you very much for putting this together, the NYC and URA team. Happy new year.