Spatial Planning For A Sustainable Singapore

This book analyses and provides an insight to Singapore’s planning system and practices associated with sustainable development. It takes a reflective approach in reviewing the direction, impact and significance of sustainable development in Singapore planning and the future challenges facing the city-state, which is often looked upon by many developing countries as a model.

This book offers theoretical and practical insights into land use, transport, and national policies in one of world’s well-known urban concrete jungle, none other than the Singapore city. The emphasis is situated on Singapore’s attempt to promote walking and cycling. Greater appreciation of walkability thrives on Singapore’s rich history, green city, people and the gastronomic kopitiam and hawker culture. The book offers a comprehensive coverage of walkability as a crucial component of urban design to reduce vehicular congestion with the associated carbon emissions, foster a healthy lifestyle and community participation and create jobs to help the economy. A high income per capita and an aging society, lessons drawn from Singapore’s experience will be useful to other societies. Scholars in sustainable tourism field, urban planners, government bodies, tourist boards, entrepreneurs, national parks board, residents, and inbound travellers will benefit from reading the book.

This book attempts to provide insights into the achievement of a sustainable urban form, through spatial planning and implementation; here, we focus on planning experiences at the levels of local cities and some metropolitan areas in Asian countries. This book investigates the impact of planning policy on spatial planning implementation, from multidisciplinary viewpoints encompassing land-use patterns, housing development, transportation, green design, and agricultural and ecological systems in the urbanization process. We seek to learn from researchers in an integrated multidisciplinary platform that reflects a variety of perspectives, such as economic development, social equality, and ecological protection, with a view to achieving a sustainable urban form.​

This book examines how institutional and environmental features in neighbourhoods can contribute to social resilience, highlighting the related socio-demographic issues, as well as the infrastructure, planning, design and policies issues. It is divided into three themes – infrastructure, planning, and community. Infrastructure examines how physical features such as parks and street patterns influence neighborliness and resilience, while planning studies how urban design enhances social interactions. Lastly, community discusses policies that can forge social bonds, either through racial integration, grassroots activities, or social service. Overall, the book combines research and empirical work with scholarly models of resilience and governance philosophy, focusing on Singapore’s urban planning and social policies.

This book describes the journey of Singapore ́s development and the fundamental role that water has had in shaping it. What makes this case so unique is that the quest for self-sufficiency in terms of water availability in a fast-changing urban context has been crucial to the way development policies and agendas have been planned throughout the years.

' 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore is an accessible and comprehensive volume on Singapore''s planning approach to urbanization. Organized into three parts, the first section of the volume, ''Paradigms, Policies, and Processes'', provides an overview of the ideologies and strategies underpinning urban planning in Singapore; the second section, ''The Built Environment as a Sum of Parts'', delves into the key land use sectors of Singapore''s urban planning system; and the third section, ''Urban Complexities and Creative Solutions'', examines the challenges and considerations of planning for the Singapore of tomorrow. The volume brings together the diverse perspectives of practitioners and academics in the professional and research fields of planning, architecture, urbanism, and city-making. Contents:Paradigms, Policies & Processes:The Early Years of Nation-Building: Reflections on Singapore''s Urban History (Alan F C Choe)Planning & Urbanisation in Singapore: A 50-Year Journey (Liu Thai Ker)Economic Planning for Productivity, Growth, and Prosperity (Philip Yeo)Environmental Planning for Sustainable Development (Tan Yong Soon)The Built Environment as a Sum of Parts:Planning to Overcome the Constraints of Scarcity (Ng Lang)Making Singapore a Liveable and Sustainable City: Our Urban Systems Approach (Khoo Teng Chye and Remy Guo)The Evolution of HDB Towns (Cheong Koon Hean)Transportation: Mobility, Accessibility, and Connectivity (Mohinder Singh)Industry Planning in Singapore (Tang Hsiao Ling)Greening Singapore: Past Achievements, Emerging Challenges (Tan Puay Yok)50 Years of Urban Planning & Tourism (Pamelia Lee)Shaping Singapore''s Cityscape Through Urban Design (Goh Hup Chor & Heng Chye Kiang)Urban Complexities & Creative Solutions:Conserving Urban Heritage: Remembering the Past in a Developmental City-State (Lily Kong)Public Housing and Community Development: Planning for Urban Diversity in a City-State (Tan Ern Ser)Era of Globalisation: Singapore''s New Urban Economy and the Rise of a World Asian City (Ho Kong Chong)Towards Greater Sustainability and Liveability in an Urban Age (Heng Chye Kiang and Yeo Su-Jan)Perspectives on the Future of Urban Planning in SingaporeChallenges for a New Era (Peter Ho) Readership: Urban planning, architecture, and urban conservation and heritage practitioners; introductory-level urban studies, public policy, and urban administration students; and members of the general public interested in learning more about the history of urban planning in Singapore over the past 50 years. '

This open access book highlights Singapore’s development into a city in which water and greenery, along with associated environmental, technical, social and political aspects have been harnessed and cultivated into a liveable sustainable way of life. It is also a story about a unique and thoroughgoing approach to large-scale and potentially transferable water sustainability, within largely urbanized circumstances, which can be achieved, along with complementary roles of environmental conservation, ecology, public open-space management and the greening of buildings, together with infrastructural improvements.

Two hundred years ago, Sir Stamford Raffles established the modern settlement of Singapore with the intent of seeing it become ‘a great commercial emporium and fulcrum’. But by the time independence was achieved in 1965, the city faced daunting problems of housing shortage, slums and high unemployment. Since then, Singapore has become one of the richest countries on earth, providing, in Sir Peter Hall’s words, ‘perhaps the most extraordinary case of economic development in the history of the world’. The story of Singapore’s remarkable achievements in the first half century after its independence is now widely known. In Planning Singapore: The Experimental City, Stephen Hamnett and Belinda Yuen have brought together a set of chapters on Singapore’s planning achievements, aspirations and challenges, which are united in their focus on what might happen next in the planning of the island-state. Chapters range over Singapore’s planning system, innovation and future economy, housing, biodiversity, water and waste, climate change, transport, and the potential transferability of Singapore’s planning knowledge. A key question is whether the planning approaches, which have served Singapore so well until now, will suffice to meet the emerging challenges of a changing global economy, demographic shifts, new technologies and the existential threat of climate change. Singapore as a global city is becoming more unequal and more diverse. This has the potential to weaken the social compact which has largely existed since independence and to undermine the social resilience undoubtedly needed to cope with the shocks and disruptions of the twenty-first century. The book concludes, however, that Singapore is better-placed than most to respond to the challenges which it will certainly face thanks to its outstanding systems of planning and implementation, a proven capacity to experiment and a highly developed ability to adapt quickly, purposefully and pragmatically to changing circumstances.