Singapore and Dubai as smart city case studies

Dubai and Singapore share a common aesthetic: Modern high-rise towers of glass and steel, sweeping freeways, sprawling shopping plazas and exclusive marinas. Their contemporary urban design also shares deeper similarities. Both are cities built on the regional and global flows of capital, goods and information. They are transit points for the region and destinations for wealth.

In both the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia, these cities have become frontrunners in regional urban development, with recent commitments to “smart city” technologies and master plans. In 2025, Dubai ranked fourth – after Zurich, Oslo and Geneva – in the annual Smart City Index of the Institute for Management Development, while Singapore ranked tenth.

What, though, makes a city smart? And why have these two prioritised smart city strategies?

Smart cities are defined as “urban areas that use digital technology and data to improve infrastructure, service, and quality of life”. This might include the utilisation of just-in-time supply chains and apps, new AI capabilities, the Internet of Things, the analysis of big data and the digital integration of public services. Smart city strategies tend to have two complementary components: urban infrastructural logistics (making the city run more efficiently) and state–citizen relations (improving access to, and quality of, services). For both, the aim is to improve efficiency in the city and hence enable its residents to negotiate their everyday lives in ways that enhance their productivity.

Singapore’s smart city strategy is outlined in its white paper “Smart Nation”. Launched in 2014, then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong described the smart nation as one “where people live meaningful and fulfilled lives, enabled seamlessly by technology”. The strategy focuses on digitalising four key sectors: economy, society, government and security. In 2024, Singapore’s smart city strategy was relaunched as “Smart Nation 2.0”. This second iteration shifted from digitalising services to a greater focus on AI capabilities as a “force for good to uplift and empower our people and businesses”.

Dubai’s smart city strategy was launched by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rahsid Al Maktoum in the same year as Singapore’s. Dubai, too, stressed how smart city technologies might “bring about happiness to all” and promoted the smart phone as the key interface between government and city residents. Ultimately, “Smart Dubai” aims to “eliminate the need to commute to and physically interact with the government”. Dubai stresses that this will be achieved through public–private partnerships.

Despite both cities stressing how digital technologies and smart innovations will improve individual happiness and wellbeing, there remain serious questions around how smart cities alienate their residents from personal data and work to surveil their populations.

While Singapore and Dubai call on the same language to describe their digital efficiencies, there are subtle differences in their smart city strategies that reflect their distinct approaches to urban governance. For Singapore, the smart city is primarily focused on its citizens, seeking to improve their quality of life and shape how they interact with the city. In contrast, Dubai tends to imagine the smart city at the level of the urban environment. It seeks to encourage the private sector and minimise the presence of the state. For Dubai, the city is a machine for economic development, and public–private partnerships and digital technologies might help realise this.

In both cases, an efficient digital city can also service its neighbours and project power beyond the metropolis. For Singapore, this allows its economy to connect with Southeast Asia, Australia, China and the world beyond. While Dubai is able to use its digital expertise to project power across the Gulf and Indian Ocean.

Attracting digital talent and innovation in both Singapore and Dubai has been bolstered by demonstrating cutting-edge digital competence through the urban environment. Efficient and well-connected airports in Changi and Dubai, and the globally significant ports of Jurong and Jebel Ali all demonstrate how a connected city is also connected to the world. This is evident in both cities’ success at attracting fin tech and fostering innovative start-up ecosystems. However, the global nature of these sectors also makes them fickle. To continue thriving, these smart cities will have to remain at the cutting-edge and endlessly innovative.

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Photo: chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons