Research Projects

Project TOT City - Tokyo Olympics 2020: Transformations, City and Citizenship - explores how Tokyo's hosting of the 2020 Olympics catalyzed shifts in urban infrastructure and civic identity. This multilateral project pursues the question of how the Olympic Games impacted Tokyo neighbourhood dynamics and the urban metropolitan region and contributes towards the understanding of social, political, and economic transformations within the urban context. By analyzing the Tokyo 2020 Games, the project aims to provide insights into the broader implications of hosting such events on city dynamics and citizenship. 

Co-PIs: Naomi C. HANAKATA (NUS), Filippo BIGNAMI (SUPSI)

Funding: Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS)

Duration: 2019-2021

This project investigates the challenges and opportunities of integrating renewable energy production into high-density urban areas and bringing sites of energy production and consumption spatially closer together.

This localisation of energy production can facilitate a reduction of a city’s energy and carbon footprint, an increasing resilience towards external shocks global networks are exposed to, but also a growing awareness for energy consumption, leveraging on new technologies, and a new, integrated planning approach.

PI: Naomi C. HANAKATA (NUS)

Funding: NUS

Duration: 2021-2025

What is the future of the manifold agricultural territories across the world that support contemporary cities? While discussions on urban sustainability have focused on cities and urban regions, many agricultural territories are equally exposed to rapid and far-reaching urban transformation processes with massive social and environmental implications, opening a research gap for ‘agri-urbanisms’.

The New Urban Agendas under Planetary Urbanisation module aims to address the gap by analysing selected processes of ‘extended urbanisation’ in agricultural territories across Europe and Asia in three typical forms of extended urbanisation: 1) operationalised landscapes of industrial agriculture; 2) peripheralised mountain regions; and 3) enclosed and fragmented agricultural landscapes in extended metropolitan regions.

Co-PI: Naomi C. HANAKATA (NUS),

FCL Co-PIs: Christian SCHMID (ETHZ), Milica TOPALOVIC (ETHZ) 

Collaborators: Adrienne GRÊT-​REGAMEY (ETHZ), Johan SIX (USYS), Christoph Kueffer (ETHZ)

Funding: Future Cities Laboratory Global

Duration: 2021-2025

Highlights: 

• [DESIGN] Hanakata, N. C., Topalovic, M., & Schmid, C. (2024). Urbanisation Processes in Agrarian Territories. Singapore.

• [DESIGN] Hanakata, N. C., Schmid, C., & Topalovic, M. (2023). Urbanisation Processes in Agrarian Territories. Zurich.

This project through a workshop aims to gather selected scholars working in the field of urban studies and at the intersection of social, political and technical disciplines, to discuss and elaborate upon the process of digital platformization in urban areas. It aims at focus on both online and offline processes, to further our understanding of changing citizenship conceptions and to generate a shared methodological approach to address the virtual and physical processes defining platform urbanization. More specifically, the workshop delves into the intersection between three dimensions, namely: the urban as an environment with material and immaterial dimension; its urban governance and means of regulation and control; citizenship and related rights, duties, practices and modes of participation.  

Co-PIs: Naomi C. HANAKATA (NUS), Filippo BIGNAMI (SUPSI)

Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation

Duration: 2023

Highlights:

• [PUBLICATION] Hanakata, Naomi C., and Filippo Bignami. 2023. "Platform Urbanization, its recent acceleration, and implications on citizenship. The case of Singapore." Citizenship Studies. 

• [PUBLICATION] Hanakata, Naomi C. and Filippo Bignami. 2023. “When Platforms Meet Citizens: Patterns of Platform Urbanization and Its Uneven Performance.” Paper presented at the Cities and Human Mobility Research Collaborative – Vienna Research Symposium, IWM, Vienna.

This project seeks to explore the potentials and implications of the renewable energy transition in Southeast Asia by studying the role of Singapore in this process. It takes renewable energy (production) as lens to investigate the relationship between extended urban regions as productive territories and urban centralities as sites of consumption and control and the (newly emerging) topologies of social just implications. It takes the conceptualisation of extended and concentrated urban territories as a framework to analyse the implications of the energy transition in the context of contemporary urbanization processes, ultimately studied through and from diverse urban conditions. 

PI: Naomi C. HANAKATA (NUS)

Collaborators: Filip BIJIECKI (NUS), Hiromi INAGAKI (SEC). 

Funding: Humanities and Social Sciences Seed Grant, Singapore

Duration: 2024-2025

The project explores the transformative impact of digital platforms on urban environments and contemporary notions of citizenship, examining how the integration of platforms into urban infrastructure reshapes spatial, social, and political dynamics within cities. By analyzing the interplay between technology, governance, and everyday urban life, the research highlights how platformization challenges traditional understandings of public space, civic participation, and citizen rights. Through interdisciplinary inquiry, the project contributes to critical debates on urban transformation in the digital age. 

PI: Naomi C. HANAKATA (NUS), Filippo BIGNAMI (SUPSI)

Funding: Leading House Asia, ETH Zurich

Duration: 2024-2025

This research aims to develop a robust strategy for adaptive planning for the long-term development of urban areas. It specifically addresses the challenges of urban, coastal zones by considering the multi-stressors and dynamic conditions this area is characterised by. The proposal transgresses conventional planning by making time a key planning parameter allowing to incorporate uncertainties into the planning process and the possibilities for multiple, optimal outcomes. 

PI: Naomi C. HANAKATA (NUS)

Collaborators: Xiaobo LI (NUS), Dorothy TANG (NUS), Guoqing GENG (NUS), Yuzhu LI(NUS), Vincent GAN (NUS)

Funding: Ministry of Education

Duration: 2024-2026