The following question was recently posted on Quora:
“What are some urban planning lessons North American cities can learn from Singapore?”
Read the responses below:
Singapore is an amazing city, one I’m very glad to have lived here for the past two years. There are a few things US and other cities should look to Singapore for:
- Urban boundaries to growth are good. Singapore works in part because it’s dense, but it’s dense because it doesn’t have a choice. Cities that aren’t on islands can emulate this by setting urban growth boundaries or green spaces as Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, BC have done. The challenge is doing this early enough to make a difference. Vancouver put up their Agricultural Land Reserve in 1973 and their Green Zone in 1996. This is part of what Vancouver has done right. By comparison, southern Ontario’s Green Belt was established in 2005, long after massive sprawl spread outward from Toronto making it better late than never, I suppose. It’s too late for Phoenix, Los Angeles and most US cities, but other strategies for urban densification are available.
- Making it possible for the less wealthy to live and eat in the city makes good economic sense. Singapore has a huge percentage of its populace living in what would be considered governmental housing, their Housing Development Board flats. These are typically ten to twelve story apartment blocks. Singaporeans are allowed to take out 99 year leases on their units which appreciate in value, so they have lower cost housing with pride of ownership and asset growth, while allowing relocation easily if strategic infrastructure such as an MRT station needs to be built instead. Hawker centres and wet markets were established by the government with low cost rental for stalls and high standards of cleanliness enforced. Singapore has a reputation for being a very expensive city, but housing and food for locals can be very inexpensive. That said, they have imported roughly 2 million guest workers, a large proportion of whom are labourers who live in dormitories, sometimes in shift-bed dormitories. This temporary work force is necessary for the amount of construction and reconstruction they do constantly within their borders.
- Public transit and density go hand-in-hand profitably. Until very recently, no MRT (subway) line was allowed to be started unless it had a business case showing a profit. This was possible because of the density of the city. However, it’s become such a primary form of movement that a couple of lines have been approved with no profits because it’s a strategic investment. The arguments occurring in Toronto about light-rail that actually serves larger portions of Toronto vs subways which are much more expensive and can’t serve most Torontonians don’t happen in Singapore because they are irrelevant. Singapore is dense and growing more dense, so heavy investments in transit make complete fiscal sense.
- Tree cover makes economic sense. For over fifty years, Singapore has had a specific policy of maximizing greenery in the city. This has led to Singapore having more varieties of trees on its tiny island than in the continental United States by one count. It means there are green walls, and trees along roads and shade. The air is cleaner, and walkways and at least the lower parts of buildings are sheltered from the elements. It’s a much more beautiful city than most of its Asian neighbours.
- Preserving and linking waterfront access for all is good. Pathways open to everyone line the rivers and East Coast Parkway waterfront of Singapore. Singaporeans congregate on them -- mostly early in the morning or after dark -- to exercise, stroll, dine or just watch people walk by. Vancouver knows this lesson as well, having had explicit urban planning policies and regulations requiring developers to pay for extension of the Seawall when they build near the water. Sydney, as a counter example, has chopped up their waterfront resource drastically, making following the water impossible, and even getting to the water occasionally tortuous. Toronto has wasted decades with an only partially linked, and as a result underused, Martin Goodman Trail along the water.
- Encouraging ethnic and religious mingling is good - Singapore has more latitude than most in this regard, but they have explicit requirements that each HDB building have the same ratio of ethnicities as Singapore as a whole. This prevents ghettoization, makes radicalization difficult and increases acceptance among ethnicities and religions. The banlieus of Paris and the increasing number of monocultural immigrant subdivisions in Toronto and Vancouver just aren’t possible in Singapore, so the integration challenges faced in those countries don’t exist. Historical ethnic neighbourhoods still manage to exist in Singapore despite this, with focal points like Mustafa’s anchoring Little India for example. It’s less clear to me how western democracies could effectively create the same results without the degree of social control allowed the government in Singapore.
I’m a born and bred Singaporean and I feel a little compelled to write about what has perhaps gone wrong with Singapore urban planning notwithstanding all the great things others have written about.
1. Light Rail Transit (LRT) system - these are small automated trains that run on narrow tracks. They’ll remind you of shuttle trains that run between terminals at some airports. They are currently deployed in 3 HDB estates with varying degrees of acceptance and success. I live in Sengkang where the LRT system is slightly convoluted with two loops with two lines meeting at the same one central station connected to the MRT. (The MRT is the equivalent of a subway or metro). This causes massive crowds to develop at peak hours. The central station also has only 2 platforms that serve trains headed in 4 directions. You’d be confused by the many signs and diagrams alone. In Bukit Panjang, the first estate to get an LRT system, the authorities killed off the neighbourhood bus services when the trains started. Residents had to now walk further to train stations. The bus services did the job well enough so residents could not really understand why the LRT was implemented there in the first place. With several breakdowns in the years to come, some bus services were reintroduced.
2. Trees and greenery - Some years ago the National parks board decided to stop planting a certain species of tree that had branches that would rot easily and break off in bad weather. Many vehicles in open air car parks bore the brunt of this Act Of God. In my neighbourhood, they’ve started planting flowering bushes and small trees on the grass verge between roads and pavement. The new foliage blocks the view for drivers, makes it harder for people to flag taxis off the street, and has become riddled with litter from passers-by.
3. Conservation - we’ve lost some buildings in our hurry to develop. The National Library was one such victim. It was a memorable part of the lives of many who grew up in the 60-80s. It was demolished despite public protest to make way for a short underground road. There’s a significant old housing estate, Tiong Bahru, that’s close to the city and has in recent times become a hispter enclave. Prices of government housing there has more than doubled in ten years. Some 800 Sq ft apartments in these 3-4 storey blocks cost nearly $1m. The lease in these homes has about 40-50 years to go. No one is quite sure what the authorities have planned for this real estate goldmine.