Inspiration can strike anywhere – so what turns certain unexpected places into hubs for entire industries and ideas, while other centres fade and fail? Despite the rise of remote working, proximity and placemaking still have the power to create an infrastructure for investment, collaboration and R&D.

If the question is “Where is the next Silicon Valley?” there’s currently no shortage of cities – from Hong Kong to New York – investing in their own contenders. Singapore is no different. Its new Punggol Digital District (PDD) is the island nation’s first meaningful attempt at a purpose-built start-up hub. The 50-hectare mixed-use development opened at the end of 2024 and its first tenants arrived in February this year.

With a focus on businesses in digital sectors, from robotics and AI to cybersecurity, the district is on the northeastern shore and has been hailed by prime minister Lawrence Wong as “Singapore’s first-ever smart district.” This being Singapore, there’s also a mall, as well as a hawker centre.

The PDD is a greenfield development that combines a business park with community facilities and the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) university campus. Even before opening, 65 per cent of the office spaces were snapped up; tenants include OCBC Bank, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore and blockchain solutions provider Wanxiang Singapore. But what might come as a surprise to visitors is the lack of towering skyscrapers in this high-rise city. Instead, there’s a rustle of casuarina trees from Coney Island park and an unexpectedly relaxed atmosphere in the neighbourhood that feels far removed from the densely packed Central Business District (CBD) beyond.

Steady US government backing was crucial to Silicon Valley’s early development. Singapore is similarly investing in the PDD to set it up for success, though for now things remain in the future tense. “It will be a smart and sustainable district,” says David Tan, the assistant chief executive of JTC Corporation, the government-owned body that acts as the precinct’s master-planner and developer. “In the past we used to put on the digital infrastructure after the physical infrastructure but, at Punggol, both were installed around the same time,” says Tan. This explains the pleasingly human-scale buildings and walkable spaces, freckled with greenery.

The buildings and precinct are themselves an innovation. At the core of their infrastructure and spatial design is the Open Digital Platform (ODP), a master operating system that enables everything from the lifts and the fire alarms to the air conditioning to “talk” to one another. Employing some 20,000 sensors planted across the area, the system monitors and controls various things in real time, including the temperature and streetlights.

All of that ambition, data and interactivity have proved to be a big draw for firms specialising in AI. Singapore-based robotics company DConstruct decided to shift its entire operation to PDD. “To deploy autonomous robots, you need this environment,” says its chief executive officer, Chinn Lim. His suite of robots, which are designed to assist with train inspections, deliveries and surveillance, can navigate lifts and turnstiles autonomously. For the firm, the PDD is a handy “sandbox” in which to study how humans will interact with its robots.

“We believe that the future will be more like the PDD,” says Lim. He adds that, to become a real rival to the likes of Silicon Valley, the district’s systems need to integrate with the city as a whole. A connection to a place where people want to be and live is vital to creating space for professional innovation. One of the harder-to-measure elements of Silicon Valley’s appeal to entrepreneurs is quality of life: the promise of a space where the lines between work and play can blur.

Offices today aren’t – and can’t be – sterile cubes and need to allow for more playful and informal interactions. The PDD’s solution is to be a car-lite town, where the main roads are placed at the fringes and all access roads, car parks and public transport links are underground. All of that space-saving paves the way for a handsome 800-metre boulevard that ties together offices, the campus, retail and food options, and a waterfront promenade.

“The result is a community-centric park-like district,” says Mun Summ Wong, the founding director of architecture firm WOHA, which was involved in master-planning PDD. The team has also preserved a patch of forest and transformed it into a 1.3km heritage trail (40 per cent of the district is now covered in greenery). “Through biophilic design – helping people to work closer to nature – we enhance their productivity,” says Wong. Renowned for its role in shaping iconic Singapore hotels with sky gardens, such as the award-winning Pan Pacific Orchard, WOHA has given the same restful qualities to the PDD’s office spaces, from cabana-like pods to lush courtyards.

The most significant (and elusive) piece of the puzzle for any budding start-up scene, however, is talent. Singaporean start-ups are known to err on the side of caution when it comes to risk, perhaps inhibited by higher operating costs and a relatively small domestic market. Shiyan Koh, co-founder of a global pre-seed venture fund, and Karen Tay, who coaches start-ups in the US and Singapore, write about the differences between the Bay Area and the city-state in the essay collection America: A Singapore Perspective. “Trying and failing [in Silicon Valley] are seen as valuable learning experiences rather than a judgement on someone’s competency,” they note. “Contrast this to the attitude of most Asian employers, who prefer candidates with credentials and experiences at other large companies.”

The JTC team is clear-eyed about such prevailing attitudes in the region. In the hope of increasing Singaporeans’ appetite for risk at a younger age, the developer has reached out to SIT and connected undergraduates with businesses in the new district. Multiple partnerships have also been put in place, such as OCBC’s bond-free scholarships for SIT students and its funding of a “state-of-the-art analytics and innovation lab” to provide hands-on experiences on financial-analysis tools, cutting-edge technologies and beyond.

Standing on a bridge overlooking the boulevard, JTC’s Tan describes the PDD as a “living lab”, highlighting how the ODP’s digital twin component allows everyone to test prototypes and attain actionable insights. “At the PDD, companies with new technologies can test them in a virtual environment before deployment.” His team has clearly put in place world-class infrastructure; now it’s up to entrepreneurs and students to take that and run with it.

“Instead of copying Silicon Valley,” says Tan, “we want to create our own identity.”