Page 93 - EW November 2024

processes at the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
The federal council recently received proposals from an
expert group, chaired by Serge Gaillard, aimed at reducing
federal spending by up to CHF5 billion. Among the mea-
sures put forward in the Gaillard report were cuts of up to
10 percent from the SNSF’s budget from 2027. These cuts,
Dr. Sala says, “would not only wipe out the small increase
that has just been decided but would also drastically reduce
the SNSF’s financial resources compared (with) the status
quo”. He adds: “Although no final decision has yet been
taken, this scenario threatens to seriously weaken Swiss
research.”

ASIA
Urban design boom

ORE THAN HALF OF THE POPULATION OF Jakarta citizens: intractable problems
Asia and the Pacific region live in cities and about
Ma billion more people are expected to join them and towns that are needed,” says Stephen Cairns, professor
by the middle of the century. Of the world’s 33 “megacities” of urban design at Monash University Indonesia. “Demand
— defined as hosting more than 10 million citizens — 17 can for urban designers is growing in Indonesia, with almost all
be found here. the major developers employing them.”
With such rapid and intensive urbanisation come chal- While some institutions have been training students
lenges. Take Jakarta, for example, which is densely popu- to plan and manage cities for decades — the University of
lated, highly polluted and has begun to sink into the ocean Hong Kong claims to be the first in Asia to have offered
— problems so seemingly intractable that, instead of at- a postgraduate programme in urban design, launching a
tempting to fix them, Indonesia has decided to relocate the Master’s degree in 1988 — many universities in the region
country’s capital to a different island entirely. Although are introducing new programmes to meet the demand for
other leaders in the region are yet to take such drastic ac- what were once seen as relatively niche skills.
tion, many of Asia’s megacities face similar problems as “As urban challenges become more prominent, educa-
the effects of climate change and population growth mount. tional institutions are expanding their offerings and stu-
For students and academics, this presents an opportu- dents are increasingly aware of the career opportunities in
nity — knowing how to better design, plan and manage cit- urban management,” says Yau Yung, professor of urban
ies are skills that are both in demand and offer them the studies at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University.
chance to meaningfully improve the lives of those around Lingnan began offering a Ph D course in urban studies
them. Similarly, more research into urbanisation — once in September 2023, building on a cities and governance
concentrated in Europe and America — is urgently needed Master’s that was launched in 2020. According to Prof. Yau,
to help Asia’s cities develop sustainably and face the envi- although fewer than 20 students originally enrolled in the
ronmental challenges ahead. Master’s, this has now increased to around 70.
“It is widely acknowledged that Asia is the fastest-ur- A distinctly Asian approach to these subjects is also
banising region in the world, with the speed and scale of emerging. While much of urban planning and design has
change causing massive disruption to pre-existing ways of traditionally been rooted in North American and European
living, working, governing and more,” says Orlando Woods, scholarship, there is a growing acceptance that these An-
director of the recently opened Urban Institute at Singapore glocentric approaches might not be fit for the future and
Management University (SMU). academics in the region are keen to make space for some-
“Academic research that focuses explicitly on Asian cities thing new.
is needed to understand, help manage and ideally help miti- “One of the primary issues we tackle is the radically dif-
gate the deleterious effects of these changes,” adds Woods. ferent kind of urbanisation pressure that is shaping the
A 2020 study of built environment professionals in Com- settlement patterns of southeast, east and south Asia,”
monwealth countries found a “critical lack of capacity” in says Monash’s Prof. Cairns. “This basic fact means that we
many of the countries that are rapidly urbanising, includ- have to think about and practise urban design in quite dif-
ing India and Pakistan, which are projected to experience ferent ways. It’s an exceptionally challenging and exciting
the world’s largest increases in their urban populations by context.”
2050, alongside Nigeria.
“There is not nearly enough expertise to deliver the cities (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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