October 16th 2025, 6-8pm, NUS SDE4
Civic engagement is the process of involving individuals and groups in community life and development to advance public good. It is key to understanding and responding to diverse needs at every stage of citymaking, from design to policy. Innovative tools and methodologies have emerged to assist urban practitioners in this practice, aiming to transform the urban planning process towards public inclusion and equity. The digital turn participatory action, from civic technologies and citizen assemblies to data storytelling and urban co-design, has raised critical questions about the balance between data-driven insights and lived experience: In what ways can data expand community insight? How can urban practitioners use digital tools to foster more meaningful engagement? How should they navigate competing perspectives and agendas in research and practice? And how is collective knowledge vital in reshaping the future of cities?
These questions were explored in the roundtable, From Data to Action: Civic Engagement with Digital Tools, on October 16th 2025 at the National University of Singapore Department of Architecture. The roundtable marked the launch of the Civic Resilience Laboratory (CiRe), a research laboratory interested in the intersection of civic resilience, community organisation, and the politics of urban development. Co-directed by Dr. Chaewon Ahn and Professor Jeffrey Hou, CiRe aims to engage and experiment civic technologies to develop resilient urban futures in Southeast Asia. The inaugural event gathered three locally based panellists working in the region to discuss how they use digital tools and community data to support civic participation in planning. This included Mr. Larry Yeung of Participate In Design (P!D), Dr. Ryan Gordon Tans of NUS College (NUSC), and Ms. Nabilah Said of Kontinentalist.
Professor Ahn introduces CiRe. Photograph by Wenhao Chen.
Opening remarks from Dr. Ahn and Professor Hou introduced the new laboratory and set the context for the roundtable, framing it as an open discussion on how practitioners can collect and use community data to foster meaningful civic engagement.
Mr. Larry Yeung speaking. Photograph by Ishmam Ahmed.
The first speaker Mr. Larry Yeung is the founder and Executive Director of P!D, a non-profit organisation in Singapore that co-creates public spaces with local communities. Mr. Yeung discussed two recent projects, explaining the various participatory design methodologies that P!D uses.
The first project, developed with the Health Promotion Board, used methods such as digital citizen journaling and walking interviews to understand the everyday barriers that Singaporeans face in terms of healthy living. Participants documented their daily routines and habits, generating rich qualitative data about how the built environment shapes their diet and transportation choices. Mr. Yeung explained how these stories, which he calls “data with a soul”, can be distilled into specific design recommendations, such as the creation of ‘healthy food lanes’ in transportation hubs.
Experiential journey community consultation by Participate !n Design. Credits to Participate !n Design.
The second project Mr. Yeung introduced was a large-scale and multi-stakeholder transportation development project, the North-South Corridor. P!D used citizen-led experiential journeys to study the lived experience of residents along the North-South spine of Singapore, aiming to introduce rich community perspectives into an otherwise top-down mobility and transportation project.
Partnered with many private firms and public agencies P!D navigated challenging issues such as the tradeoff between data depth and scale, and the question of representation in public ethnographies. In response to these challenges, Mr. Yeung explained his belief that quantitative and qualitative data are complementary, working together to provide more people-centric urban solutions.
LARRY YEUNG
The future of engagement is really a hybrid model. It needs civic data frameworks, which are really grounded in live experiences and take a lot of collaboration between research, design, and policy”.
Dr. Ryan Gordon Tans speaking. Photograph by Ishmam Ahmed.
The second presentation, by Dr. Ryan Gordon Tans, lecturer at NUSC, transported the audience to Indonesia for a perspective grounded in collaborative research and civic activism. Dr. Tans introduced Tanahindie, his long-term local partner in Makassar, working in urban research and activism. He explained how a single engagement with a fishing community impacted by coastal reclamation evolved into a long-term collaboration with multiple outputs, including articles, books, exhibitions, and performances.
Satellite images of coastal reclamation in Makassar. Credits to Google Earth.
In his recent article, Social Movements and Climate Adaptation: The Provincial Politics of Coastal Reclamation in Indonesia, Dr. Tans used local news archives and interviews to learn about the experience of land reclamation from the community, highlighting the politics that emerged to resist top-down planning decisions. He also triangulated this rich data with satellite images and archival documents, validating the social and economic losses described by the fishing community with visible ecological loss over time. An interesting finding he raised was that, over the past decade, activism strategies have evolved as activists dynamically combine formal and informal pathways to resist reclamation. These shifting strategies have given rise to new civic formations and coalitions that have been successful in impacting key decision makers and halting future reclamation plans.
Dr. Tans discussed the issue of data ownership, and explained how Tanahindie used the same interview dataset to later inform their practice. Through Tanahindie’s efforts, the data took on a new life in the 2023 Makassar Biennial, an important partner for the group in generating public engagement. This spurred on book projects, art exhibitions, and community performances, which Dr. Tans speculates were factors in the ceasing further coastal reclamation plans.
As partners in this project, Dr. Tans and Tanahindie married their different expertises in academic research and on-the-ground activism respectively, leading to a wider impact for the project. Though resistance efforts were only partially successful, this work exemplifies a model of non-extractive local and international partnership as well as shared data ownership. For Dr. Tans, such projects prompt vital questions about the ethics of research, and how knowledge must be shared amongst the domains of scholarship, activism, and arts.
Ms. Nabilah Said speaking. Photograph by Ishmam Ahmed.
The third speaker was Ms. Nabilah Said, editor of Kontinentalist, a data-storytelling studio in Singapore that uses creative visualisations to share stories about Asia. Ms. Said shared two projects that showcase her approach to complex community data. The first, A Woman’s World, is an interactive data story that explores how South and Southeast Asian women reclaim spaces of joy and leisure despite concerns about urban safety.
Screenshot of Kontinentalist illustration and research on women’s wishes for leisure spaces in their cities. Credits to Kontinentalist.
Collaborating with grassroots partners across India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, Kontinentalist led a mixed-methods research programme that included interviews, focus groups, and surveys. She explained how using multiple methods to crowdsource findings, her team is able to fill gaps in public datasets and cultivate a more critical perspective on broad topics.
The second project Ms. Said introduced was No Place to Work, a story investigating the work-related deaths of migrant workers in Singapore. Scraping data from news reports and public records, Kontinentalist compiled a dataset of 455 migrant deaths in Singapore between 2000 and 2022. Kontinentalist used this rich data to create an interactive and visually captivating story on the precarity of migrant worker safety.
Screenshot of the Migrant Worker Death Map interactive web interface. Credits to Migrant Worker Death Map team and Kontinentalist.
NABILAH SAID
“Even if you disagree with a story, if you have the same data, or better data, you can come to your own conclusions about it. But without data, people are not able to exercise a kind of criticality on the same level, based on the same facts”.
She concluded by emphasising the questions that Kontintentalist asks as they approach any story: (1) Where is the data? Is it easily accessible? Why? (2) Whose voices ought to be amplified? Who is underrepresented? (3) How to best tell this story? With writing and visuals or a collaborative engagement?(4) Who is the right voice to tell this story? Would a different perspective better honour it?
Panel discussion between Dr. Chaewon Ahn, Dr. Ryan Gordon Tans, Ms. Nabilah Said, Mr. Larry Yeung, and Professor Jeffrey Hou (from left to right). Photograph by Ishmam Ahmed.
After the presentations, there was a moderated discussion between the three panellists, Professor Hou, and Dr. Ahn. The speakers first discussed how they navigate the challenges of integrating multiple voices and perspectives. Mr. Yeung described P!D’s process of tagging sentiments and triangulating data, including emotions and outlier perspectives, while Ms. Said stressed the importance of transparency and collaborative verification in data storytelling. Dr. Tans agreed and reflected on how contextualising perspectives can help resolve contradictions or gaps in rich community data.
When asked about conflicting narratives, all three panellists emphasised the value of disagreement: Mr. Yeung suggested that divergent voices can generate richer and more generative discourse; Ms. Said said that complexity makes storytelling more nuanced and interesting; and Dr. Tans explained how different social positions can produce multiple truths even in one community.
A further line of discussion centred on the use of data after project closing. Ms. Said noted that, while data stories rarely produce immediate policy change in the Singaporean context, they still prompt public dialogue, as when her story on public housing racial quotas led to conversation with government agencies. Dr. Tans described how his interviews in Makassar took on a new form in art and activism, extending their impact beyond academia. Mr. Yeung stressed that the impact of participatory data is dependent on the willingness of institutional partners for implementation.
The panellists also reflected on how to cut through the noise of today’s data-saturated environment. Ms. Said spoke about the importance of non-digital data experiences such as workshops to invite citizen engagement and reflection. Mr. Yeung discussed the importance of long-term engagements as well, explaining how P!D’s Citizen Ambassador Programme created a sense of community ownership over time, and Dr. Tans agreed and noted that education also plays a role in sustaining impact.
Audience questions. Photograph by Pari Sen Biswas.
After the moderated discussion, a vibrant audience Q&A drew out further themes and nuances including research ethics, data practices, and education.
Navigating ethics and project constraints
The Q&A opened with a question curious about the ethical challenges of conducting community-based research in Asia when funded by Euro-American institutions, potentially perpetuating extractive systems of knowledge. Dr. Tans responded by emphasizing the importance of engaging local agencies and partners in research, and ensuring flexibility and shared ownership with them. He acknowledged the tensions between community collaboration and political involvement as a cultural outsider, and noted that small and community-focused research grants better allow freedom to conduct participatory research without constraints. Tans also reflected on the value of unpaid, passion-driven projects, noting that this work persists because it stems from deeper personal attachments. He described these as ongoing and evolving efforts, “always with you and never finished”.
Mr Yeung agreed and noted that “play projects” are very important to P!D, allowing for smaller, non-commissioned workshops and initiatives. He described how even creative public projects, such as mural painting, are opportunities to train residents in the public engagement process. By involving communities in brainstorming, discussion, interpretation, and play, P!D aims to foster greater civic responsibility and involvement. He added that,while his work does intersect with government-funded projects, he and his partners advocate for client structures that recognise the value of community engagement. He highlighted the importance of choosing implementation partners that value qualitative insight and have a sense of civic responsibility, seeing this as an essential link between community data to urban action.
Ms. Said expanded on this discussion and described how, even in journalism, academic funding and frameworks impose knowledge hierarchies that may threaten community data sovereignty. She stressed that research norms must be refashioned to prioritise co-creation and stewardship in the long-term.
The Power of Data Visualisation
Audience members observed that, despite the panellist’s different professional backgrounds, their perspectives converged around a central theme of such as qualitative data collection and visualisation. One question focused on the ethics of visual storytelling, asking about how visual design choices can impact interpretation. Responding, Ms. Said stressed that data visuals must not only be engaging and beautiful, but also communicate findings responsibly. She explained that the act of data visualisation simplifies complex and rich data, placing responsibility on the author to make ethical choices. Dr. Tans also brought up the role of photographs and videos, highlighting that open source and time series data can enable collective participation in understanding change.
Linking Urban Research and Pedagogy
The conversation then shifted towards pedagogy and the relationship between research, education, and development. When questioned about the role of citizen juries and assemblies in civic politics, Mr. Yeung said that they are promising but incomplete in Singapore due to persistent gaps in public data access and literacy. He advocates for stronger public education in translating the complexities of statistics, maps, and urban designs to make participatory governance meaningful. Mr. Yeung also raised his work in capacity building, training citizens to become self-starting ambassadors of urban issues in the city.
Along these lines, Ms. Said described Kontinentalist’s interactive storytelling strategies to ensure public readability and accessibility, including modular visualisations, narrative sequencing, and gamification. She added that, while data visuals are inseparable from written storytelling, each graphic should convey only one clear insight to ensure simplicity and clarity.
Dr. Tans agreed, and reflected that his experimental pedagogy with NUSC students in Makassar helps students learn by engaging with communities, experientially understanding otherwise abstract data. He explained that through such engagements, he and his educational institution function as “shepards”, while local communities and partners are the “experts”.
The Life and Death of Data
Another thread of discussion questioned how to keep digitised data alive. The panellists reflected that, while digitising data necessarily isolates and narrows rich insights, it also offers more reach and impact, engaging broader audiences and sparking further research as well. Dr. Tans reflected that through continual engagement, such as through updating, digital data can be given a new life.
RYAN GORDON TANS
“My interviews lived multiple lives because more than one person was engaging with them, and so in that sense, digitizing data is an amazing way to bring it to life, because it opens it up, it allows it to be accessed by many more humans, because you can make it available to so many people.”.
Dr. Chaewon Ahn, Dr. Ryan Gordon Tans, Ms. Nabilah Said (left to right). Photograph by Ishmam Ahmed.
The panellists and audience raised concerns about data accessibility and opacity, bringing up the vast urban datasets that are invisible to the public, working to restrain civic knowledge and agency. These themes segued well into Dr. Ahn’s conclusion, connecting the themes discussed: while governments claim to have a single source of truth through their collection, creation, and use of digital data, the panel’s diverse practices point to the existence and importance of multitudes of urban knowledge. “There is so much data, governments claim they have the mirror image of the city, but why is there no data about things that we actually care about?”. She explained that the goal of civic engagement is to sustain the living forms of knowledge that reflect the diversity, complexity, and plurality of cities, including them in urban data:
CHAEWON AHN
“There is maybe not a single solution, maybe not one model. But collectively working to ensure more equal representation across the board, constantly being alive, being updated, being versioned, maybe”.
Dr. Ahn linked this agenda to the mission of CiRe, envisioned as a hub for communities, activists, and researchers to come together and explore civic data and action.
Dr. Chaewon Ahn, Mr. Larry Yeung, Ms. Nabilah Said, Dr. Ryan Gordon Tans, Pari Sen Biswas (left to right). Photograph by Denise Lee.
Acknowledgements
From Data to Action: Civic Engagement with Digital Tools has been hosted and supported by the National University of Singapore Department of Architecture. We are thankful to our organisers, participants, and audience. The event was organized and publicised by the Department of Architecture and Asia Research Institute.
