enCity Urban Solutions wins consulting award for championing public engagement through using technology

enCity develops and designs engagement platforms and information portals that enable the public to engage in planning at a large scale.

Planning has always been a collaborative process, and the best outcome often lies in co-creation across multiple stakeholders to ensure a just outcome.

With its mission of transforming cities through innovation, in 2022, international consulting firm enCity Urban Solutions Pte Ltd (enCity) in collaboration with Hubmeta and the Youth Union of Hanoi, developed a digital interactive tool for community engagement to gather ideas for the future of Hanoi.

Their online community engagement platform is an interactive website that allows the public, especially young people, to share their dream for the city by selecting desired programs and infrastructures in various key locations across Hanoi. In just three weeks of being live, 20,000 people visited the platform and cast 100,000 votes to express their hopes for the city. This is the largest feedback collection to date in Vietnam. The platform can be easily scalable and applied to other cities that wish to understand public needs. The platform can also aid with data collection, allowing for more evidence-based decision-making by local governments.

Beyond this platform, enCity has worked with American firm Sasaki to launch an interactive platform that collects citizens’ contributions to Thu Duc city master plan. enCity then developed a GIS-based land use management platform for the city, allowing government officers and the public to view, compare, and extract planning information. 

For its efforts, enCity was given an award in Consulting - Urban Planning in the recently concluded SBR National Business Awards. The prestigious annual awards program launched in 2016 honours local and homegrown companies in Singapore and recognizes outstanding projects that greatly contribute to Singapore’s fast-growing economy.

In giving this award, the judging panel took into consideration the achievements of the company, in particular in the launch of the engagement platform for Hanoi.

Considering that the target audience of this platform is the youth, the panel recognized how enCity took great care in the design of the experience and interface of the platform. This spanned from the style of graphics to the use of colours and the language of the content.

The selection of infrastructure was also carefully curated to be most relevant to the youth. The gamification of the platform made participation engaging and fun so that the public would feel compelled to give their input into the planning process.

This project, amongst others, portrays enCity’s ingenuity and versatility in addressing urban challenges through planning, design, and technology. enCity has worked extensively in the region to transform planning and development practices, as well as in Singapore, notably in its contribution to national long-term planning and the development of innovative, specialized districts. Through its holistic and integrated approach encompassing economic development, climate resiliency, infrastructure investment, land-use management, and urban design, enCity is poised to create large-scale impacts on cities regionally and globally. 

The SBR National Business Awards is presented by Singapore Business Review Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2024 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's exceptional contributions to the local business landscape in Singapore, please contact Bianca Peñaranda at [email protected].