As an architect and urban strategist with nearly 40 years of experience, Yeo challenges Singapore to design new towns with a more diverse demographic in mind. “Can we then now design the new town looking at a profile of a family that is maybe 70 years old? Because I still want some social space [and] I can still move around, but it’s no longer the way I want to… The question is: ‘Should we still use the same template that we used in the 1960s, 1970s, 1990s [and] today, in the future?’”
Compared to Singapore’s public housing programme from the 1960s to the 1980s, planners and architects today must design for a broader range of residents — especially the elderly. By 2030, one in four Singapore citizens will be aged 65 and above, but towns are designed “from day one, for young parents”, says Yeo Siew Haip, Practice Professor in the Department of Architecture, College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
The formula behind new public housing towns is skewed towards young families. “They divide the flat, they have children, you grow up, you buy a new flat and you move out of the flat. The ones who are left behind are the parents,” says Yeo on a panel at the World Cities Summit (WCS) 2026 on June 15. “The parents remain in the same flat, in the same community, but the parents are no longer 30 [years old]; the parents are now 70 or 80 years old. So, what do you do with the community?”
