The need to keep cities liveable and sustainable.

Clarke Quay,Singapore

How to keep cities liveable, sustainable?
Impending urban explosion requires long-term planning, experts note

CITIES are the way of the future, so more thought needs to go into planning them and keeping them liveable and sustainable.

That was the key message from world leaders, who tossed up ideas yesterday at two environment meetings at the Marina Bay Sands convention centre.

The events were part of the Singapore International Water Week, World Cities Summit and the inaugural CleanEnviro Summit, which end by Thursday 5 Jul 2012.

The number of megacities – urban areas with more than 10 million people – has grown from just four in 1980 to 21 today, said Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.

By 2050, the United Nations estimates that 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities.

Coping with the stresses on infrastructure that this impending urban explosion will bring will involve some long-term planning, said government, industry and international organisation representatives who spoke at the events.

Japan, for instance, is planning to build a high-speed train that would ferry citizens between Tokyo and Osaka in about an hour, said Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara. The cities are about 500km apart.

This would revive the waning Osaka and ease the pressure on Tokyo, he said.

But cities also need to be self-sufficient, said the panellists.

Dr Balakrishnan gave the example of Singapore, which does not subsidise essentials such as power and water to impress upon citizens the need to conserve resources.

Instead, the Government gives the poor cash.

‘People will then ask themselves, do I want to leave the tap running and pay more, and do I really want to buy more food if it will go to waste?’ he said.

With large populations within a dense, urban environment, sustainability is vital. That involves everything from managing traffic to recycling and being prudent about energy use.

Dr Roland Busch, chief executive of infrastructure and cities at industrial conglomerate Siemens, said there could be road pricing systems that automatically respond to traffic conditions by adjusting toll charges.

Studies have also shown that good practices such as switching off lights when they are not needed could reduce buildings’ energy use by three times, said Mr Henri Proglio, chairman of global electric utility company Electricite de France.

Dr Balakrishnan said cities that provide a green and welcoming environment soothe their citizens and gain a competitive advantage.

‘If you provide blue skies and clean streets, people will want to stay and invest in your economy,’ he said.

The two meetings yesterday were part of a slate of high-profile events throughout the day, which included the Water Lecture by Dutch professor Mark van Loosdrecht, winner of this year’s Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize.

Prof van Loosdrecht was lauded for his work in removing pollutants from used water.

He received his award at a ceremony at Marina Bay Sands last night.

About 15,000 delegates are expected to attend the three summits this week, which will also include business forums and a round-table of water experts.

The closing dinner will be held in the Flower Dome conservatory at the new Gardens by the Bay tomorrow.


By FENG ZENGKUN, zengkun@sph.com.sg
Published on Jul 3, 2012. The Straits Times

What Singapore can learn from New York

At the World Cities Summit held in Singapore 2-4th July 2012, New York City received the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize for its transformation into a greater, greener metropolis. New York City Parks and Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe, 55, gave a lecture describing what makes the city great.

New York City of the 1970s and 80s was a run-down, crime-ridden place.

“When I was young,” said the native New Yorker, “a plan for New York City’s future would have seemed incredible to say the least; New York City seemed unsafe, undesirable and hopeless.”

Today, 85 per cent of its residents live within ten minutes’ walk of a park; the city has hundreds of kilometres of bicycle lanes; and outmoded infrastructure like abandoned rail lines is being put back into public use.

One of those pieces of outmoded infrastructure is an elevated railway line that runs along Manhattan’s industrial south-western edge. More than a decade ago, civic groups began pushing to preserve it, and today, it is the High Line park.

With its coffee and popsicle stalls, artful graffiti, sculptures and community garden patches, the High Line has helped draw people back to the neighbourhood. In fact, it has attracted about $2 billion in private developers’ investment in neighbouring condominiums and apartments, far more than the $115 million the city has spent on it so far.

I was in New York last month and had the chance to visit the slender, 1.6-km park one Sunday. I admired the graffiti and art adorning neighbouring buildings and dodged toddlers underfoot. Sunbathers reclined on decks with a view of the Hudson River.

The tracks, which used to carry trainloads of goods through warehouses and factories, are still present, but now, plants like purple prairie clover and Mexican feather grass bloom between the rails, tended by Friends of the High Line, a non-profit civic group.

The High Line is not the world’s first bit of elevated greenery, Mr Benepe said humbly, pointing to the Promenade Plantee in Paris, another former rail line turned park, and the Forest Walk and Canopy Walk at Singapore’s own Southern Ridges park.

But what struck me most about both Mr Benepe’s talk and the High Line is that city renewal is not just about transforming the physical hardware of a neighbourhood. It’s about tapping the wellspring of civic spirit – dare I say, love for the city – that already exists.

Most of the New York City parks efforts, Mr Benepe said, are not carried out by the city government alone, but are informal public-private partnerships that include community groups and individuals.

“People don’t give money, they give labour,” he said, in tending to plants, organising activities or guiding walks. These are people who clearly love their city enough to step up and contribute.
In New York, it is such non-government civic organisations that provide continuity, especially in a city where mayors come and go and policies may shift, Mr Benepe pointed out.

In Singapore, glimmers of love for the city are already visible in many forms – in the folks who volunteer to guide tours around the Bukit Brown cemetery, in the group of heritage and nature lovers working with government agencies to conserve the Rail Corridor, and in the cycling groups asking for more safety protection for cyclists and sharing their enthusiasm for life on two wheels, to name a few.

Globalisation may mean that people move in and out of Singapore – like they move in and out of New York City – to go wherever the jobs are.

But even as that happens, such civic groups must be nurtured so that they, too, can give residents an opportunity to contribute, and a sense of ownership over their place.

By Grace Chua, caiwj@sph.com.sg
Published on July 2nd, 2012, The Straits Time Blog