Smart Communities: Singapore the “Garden City”

Located in Southeast Asia, Singapore is a highly urbanized modern city-state and island country with a population of approximately 5,469,700 (2014 Department of Statistics Singapore). Singapore is rated as one of the world’s greatest cities (CNN travel) for many reasons, including unique but cheap food, greatest living politician, best health care infrastructures, invention of NeWater etc. Among all of Singapore’s attractions, the most extraordinary one is Singapore’s connection and integration of nature into the city’s dense concrete jungle and the city’s sustainable lifestyle.

The Asian Green City Index, a research project conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, records measures and rates the environmental performance of 22 Asian cities. According to the Asian Green City Index, Singapore is the Index leader with a well above average ranking overall. The city has a performance of above average in 6 out of the 8 categories, including energy and CO₂, transport, air quality, land use and buildings, sanitation, and environmental governance. Singapore is well above average in 2 out of the 8 categories, including water and waste. Being the 4^th richest city (among the 22 cities analyzed during the survey) with a GDP per person of $36,500, Singapore has access to abundant resources, can afford major investments in its transportation system, cutting edge water recycling plants and waste to energy facilities.

The government’s role in city planning is highly important and is key to success. Unlike other cities, the government system in Singapore isn’t split between competing levels of administration. Singapore has a highly trained civil service with a high degree of transparency (Singapore was fourth place in Transparency International’s corruption Perception Index). This unique government system along with the capacity to approach their cities as single entities improves the ability for Singapore and government officials to address environmental issues. Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew implemented the vision of Singapore as a garden city in 1968. In 1992, the Singapore Green Plan was first issued as Singapore’s first formal environmental blueprint in order to ensure that Singapore achieves sustainable economic development through sound environmental management. In 1999, review of first green plan took place and new ideas were formulated and integrated in to Singapore Green Plan 2012 that was launched in August 2002. Many goals within the plan have already been met but new international and domestic changes require constant update to current plan and goals. In 2008, the government established Singapore’s Center for Livable Cities where expertise from the public and private sectors come together and produces events, research and reports on sustainable urban development and environmental management.

With few freshwater sources and tension with neighbor Malaysia, Singapore is pushed to be independent and sufficient when it comes to water supply. Currently there are several strategies that Singapore uses to increase availability of freshwater supply; the most innovative of them all is the purification of wastewater “NEWater”. Wastewater is collected and flows through two types of filtration (micro-filtration and reverse osmosis) to remove any suspended particles, salts, metals and most pathogens. After filtration, water undergoes ultraviolet light treatment to remove and kill off any remaining microbes. Currently, NEWater is used mainly by non-domestic users. The government started by pumping only small amounts of NEWater into the reservoir system that links directly to drinking supply. Overtime, residents are became more acceptance to NEWater allowing NEWater to supply 30% of drinking consumption in Singapore in 2010.

Green buildings and land use policies are highlights in Singapore. The city has well-established policies to contain urban sprawl and protect green spaces from negative consequences caused by development. Currently, Singapore has 66 square meters of green space per person. Policies are also in place to promote eco-efficiency in new buildings, green standards for public buildings and create incentives to motivate households and businesses to save energy. By 2030, the goal is for 80% of all buildings to meet Singapore’s minimum “Green Mark Certified” energy efficiency standards. In order to achieve this, standards are mandatory for new buildings and the city provide cash incentive scheme to encourage existing buildings to upgrade and adopt the new standards. By 2020, the government also aims to increase park space from 3,300 hectares to 4,200 hectares while adding more ecolinks i.e. eco-corridors between parks to allow wildlife to move freely from one park to the other.

In 2007, Singapore had 100km of eco connections and the government aims to raise this figure to 360km by 2020. In 2009, the Singapore Green Building Council was officially launched on October 28^th in order to advocate green building design, practices and technologies and drive environmental sustainability in the building and construction industry (SGBC). Unique green designs can be observed all around Singapore, a few examples are Fusionopolis, 313@somerset, hotel Parkroyal and Nanyang Technological University.

Overall, Singapore is outstanding and successful at containing sprawl and progressing towards sustainability. New research and new policies need to be implemented to keep up with globalization and climate change.

Guest Contributor: Linda Chen

References

Department of Statistics Singapore - <Population Trends 2014> - http://www.singstat.gov.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-library/publications/publications_and_papers/population_and_population_structure/population2014.pdf

CNN International <12 reasons why Singapore is the greenest city on Earth> - http://travel.cnn.com/singapore/none/12-reasons-why-singapore-greenest-city-914640

CNN <50 reasons why Singapore is No.1> - http://travel.cnn.com/singapore/none/worlds-greatest-city-50-reasons-why-singapore-no-1-399897

Asian Green City Index <Assessing the environmental performance of Asia’s major cities> - http://www.thecrystal.org/assets/download/Asian-Green-City-Index.pdf

Singapore Green Plan - <Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources> http://www.uncsd2012.org/content/documents/The%20Singapore%20Green%20Plan%202012.pdf

Singapore Green Building Council - http://www.sgbc.sg/about-us/about-sgbc/introduction/

Fusionopolis - http://inhabitat.com/fusionopolis-singapore’s-new-green-skyscraper/

Singapore takes the lead in green building in Asia - http://e360.yale.edu/feature/singapore_takes_the_lead_in_green_building_in_asia/2720/

Nanyang Technological University - http://greensource.construction.com/projects/2009/05_Nanyang-Technological-University.asp

Figure 1 Fusionopolis

100km of eco connections and the government aims to raise this figure to 360 km by 2020. In 2009, the Singapore Green Building Council was officially launched on October 28^th in order to advocate green building design, practices and technologies and drive environmental sustainability in the building and construction industry (SGBC). Unique green designs can be observed all around Singapore, a few examples are Fusionopolis, 313@somerset, hotel Parkroyal and Nanyang Technological University.