I visited Singapore recently to attend the World Cities Summit, a biennial event that aims to present the best directions urbanism has taken in key cities worldwide. It aims to highlight these great cities as models for how we should shape our metropolises for tomorrow.
Today, the world, the Philippines included, is more urban than rural. By 2050, 70 percent or more of the people on this planet will be living in cities. The world’s population is also expanding, and the challenge is how to accommodate more people into more sustainable cities; marshalling and managing natural and social resources to ensure a quality of life that should only get better.
Of course, a key model city is Singapore itself. It seems the city, which was my second home for 12 years, can’t get any better. But despite an increase of close to a million people since I lived there in the ’90s, the city, or city-state to be precise, has lived up to its billing as the best place to live in Southeast Asia.
One of the key ingredients of this liveability is the fact that the city has one of the most extensive parks and open space systems in the world. Singapore is a city in a garden, not just a garden city, which was the original goal in its earlier decades under Lee Kuan Yew. Mr Lee and the rest of Singapore’s leaders understood, decades before the rest of the world, that being green was one sure way to keep urban problems at bay.
The Flower Dome conservatory is cooled down to support temperate flowering displays.
This year, the city launched its most ambitious green development, its Gardens by the Bay. We glimpsed the lush new park as our shuttle approached the city center and our hotel and convention site — the Marina Bay Sands. I had taken the family to take advantage of the trip and the opportunity to stay at the iconic venue. The view from its 57th floor’s 150-meter-long infinity-edge pool alone was worth the trip. We took a dip every day of our stay.
Our room faced the new park and we strolled over early the first morning before the summit. The 100-hectare Gardens by the Bay accents the city’s new inner harbour, an extension of the city’s original central core. It is twice the size of our Rizal Park and serves to bring people close to nature in the middle of the city.
The park, actually three connected parks, is a product of an international competition won by the landscape architectural firms of Gustafson Porter and Grant Associates. The three main features now open in the Bay South Garden section are the super trees and the two conservatories. The super trees are a cluster of 25-50-meter-tall armatures on which verdant and colorful tropical plant life is now thriving. The “trees” also harvest rain water and produce energy. They are also linked with sky bridges for touring.
We also toured the two fantastic conservatories — the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest. Each conservatory is cooled to recreate cool-dry and cool-moist habitats respectively for plant life not found in Singapore. The conservatories are an amazing way to show visitors plant life, from tropical mountains to the sub-tropical coasts of the Mediterranean and the temperate regions of the globe. Of course, the rest of the park has themed gardens highlighting the tropical plants and flowers of Singapore and the region.
The summit itself was held at the Marina Bay Sands expansive convention and exhibition center. The three-day event covered presentations on the theme “Liveable and Sustainable Cities — Integrated Urban Solutions.” It was the third edition of the event launched in 2008 and each staging gets bigger in size and scope, proving that the topic is gaining more and more relevance globally. Over a hundred city mayors and top government officials and thousands of participants from all over the world attended.
The summit was coorganized by Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the Center for Livable Cities (CLC). Summit participants like me, along with youthful mayors Herbert Bautista of QC and John Rey Tiangco of Navotas, had the chance to visit the URA headquarters to get a briefing on how urban planning and rational physical development helped Singapore achieve its goals. I love that they know where every building, infrastructure and utility line is in Singapore. In Philippine cities, one has to guess all the time as our maps and “as-built” plans are all inaccurate or non-existent.
I went dizzy trying to attend all the presentations I wanted, as the event was an embarrassment of riches in terms of plenary and break-out sessions. Bundled with the event were two other related confabs — Singapore International Water Week and the CleanEnviro Summit Singapore. This was apart from the annual World Cities Summit Mayors Forum, which of course was limited to government officials.
The issue of water as a resource for cities was an important one and there were numerous presentations on new technologies for water management, processing and distribution (many from firms based in Singapore). I even got to visit the famed Marina Barrage at the end of the Gardens by the Bay. Housed in a literally-green building (its lawn sweeps up to its roof), the facility controls what is essentially a dam that stores water in the inner harbour. This water is the island’s 15th reservoir and harvests rainwater, storing it for future use. The structure also houses interactive displays for school kids and other visitors to learn about water conservation and sustainability.
A key event in the summit was the awarding of the Lee Kuan Yew City Prize. The prize is a biennial award given to individuals and organizations that contributed to creating “vibrant, livable and sustainable urban communities around the world.” It honors initiatives in creative planning, good governance and innovation in addressing problems faced by today’s cities.
This year, the prize went to New York City for its transformation in the last 30 years from a lost cause to a place that continues to lead in terms of urban governance, planning and urban design. It is also a city that takes its greens seriously and although Mayor Bloomberg was unable to accept the prize, Adrian Benepe, head of the city’s Parks Department, represented him and the Big Apple. I did attend Benepe’s most interesting talk on the city’s renaissance with special emphasis on parks development and maintenance.
Key to New York’s success, Benepe explained, is PPP. Public-private partnerships were, in fact, a recurring theme in a lot of the presentations. This is something we should learn from in terms of what works and what does not in taking this direction for urban development. I spoke to Cheng Hsing Yao, deputy executive director for the Centre for Liveable Cities, co-organizer of the event. Cheng emphasized this plus the importance of integrating urban solutions into the fabric of city governance, economy and social development.
The lesson from the World Cities Summit can be summarized, paraphrasing one of the keynote speakers and melding his message with key messages from others, thus: “Build the most beautiful city you can… plant as many trees as you can… plan as comprehensively as you can… partner with as many groups in society as you can, towards the creation of improved cities… because there is no excuse not to build better places for our people to live, work and play.”
Today, the world, the Philippines included, is more urban than rural. By 2050, 70 percent or more of the people on this planet will be living in cities. The world’s population is also expanding, and the challenge is how to accommodate more people into more sustainable cities; marshalling and managing natural and social resources to ensure a quality of life that should only get better.
Of course, a key model city is Singapore itself. It seems the city, which was my second home for 12 years, can’t get any better. But despite an increase of close to a million people since I lived there in the ’90s, the city, or city-state to be precise, has lived up to its billing as the best place to live in Southeast Asia.
One of the key ingredients of this liveability is the fact that the city has one of the most extensive parks and open space systems in the world. Singapore is a city in a garden, not just a garden city, which was the original goal in its earlier decades under Lee Kuan Yew. Mr Lee and the rest of Singapore’s leaders understood, decades before the rest of the world, that being green was one sure way to keep urban problems at bay.
The Flower Dome conservatory is cooled down to support temperate flowering displays.
This year, the city launched its most ambitious green development, its Gardens by the Bay. We glimpsed the lush new park as our shuttle approached the city center and our hotel and convention site — the Marina Bay Sands. I had taken the family to take advantage of the trip and the opportunity to stay at the iconic venue. The view from its 57th floor’s 150-meter-long infinity-edge pool alone was worth the trip. We took a dip every day of our stay.
Our room faced the new park and we strolled over early the first morning before the summit. The 100-hectare Gardens by the Bay accents the city’s new inner harbour, an extension of the city’s original central core. It is twice the size of our Rizal Park and serves to bring people close to nature in the middle of the city.
The park, actually three connected parks, is a product of an international competition won by the landscape architectural firms of Gustafson Porter and Grant Associates. The three main features now open in the Bay South Garden section are the super trees and the two conservatories. The super trees are a cluster of 25-50-meter-tall armatures on which verdant and colorful tropical plant life is now thriving. The “trees” also harvest rain water and produce energy. They are also linked with sky bridges for touring.
We also toured the two fantastic conservatories — the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest. Each conservatory is cooled to recreate cool-dry and cool-moist habitats respectively for plant life not found in Singapore. The conservatories are an amazing way to show visitors plant life, from tropical mountains to the sub-tropical coasts of the Mediterranean and the temperate regions of the globe. Of course, the rest of the park has themed gardens highlighting the tropical plants and flowers of Singapore and the region.
The summit itself was held at the Marina Bay Sands expansive convention and exhibition center. The three-day event covered presentations on the theme “Liveable and Sustainable Cities — Integrated Urban Solutions.” It was the third edition of the event launched in 2008 and each staging gets bigger in size and scope, proving that the topic is gaining more and more relevance globally. Over a hundred city mayors and top government officials and thousands of participants from all over the world attended.
The summit was coorganized by Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the Center for Livable Cities (CLC). Summit participants like me, along with youthful mayors Herbert Bautista of QC and John Rey Tiangco of Navotas, had the chance to visit the URA headquarters to get a briefing on how urban planning and rational physical development helped Singapore achieve its goals. I love that they know where every building, infrastructure and utility line is in Singapore. In Philippine cities, one has to guess all the time as our maps and “as-built” plans are all inaccurate or non-existent.
I went dizzy trying to attend all the presentations I wanted, as the event was an embarrassment of riches in terms of plenary and break-out sessions. Bundled with the event were two other related confabs — Singapore International Water Week and the CleanEnviro Summit Singapore. This was apart from the annual World Cities Summit Mayors Forum, which of course was limited to government officials.
The issue of water as a resource for cities was an important one and there were numerous presentations on new technologies for water management, processing and distribution (many from firms based in Singapore). I even got to visit the famed Marina Barrage at the end of the Gardens by the Bay. Housed in a literally-green building (its lawn sweeps up to its roof), the facility controls what is essentially a dam that stores water in the inner harbour. This water is the island’s 15th reservoir and harvests rainwater, storing it for future use. The structure also houses interactive displays for school kids and other visitors to learn about water conservation and sustainability.
A key event in the summit was the awarding of the Lee Kuan Yew City Prize. The prize is a biennial award given to individuals and organizations that contributed to creating “vibrant, livable and sustainable urban communities around the world.” It honors initiatives in creative planning, good governance and innovation in addressing problems faced by today’s cities.
This year, the prize went to New York City for its transformation in the last 30 years from a lost cause to a place that continues to lead in terms of urban governance, planning and urban design. It is also a city that takes its greens seriously and although Mayor Bloomberg was unable to accept the prize, Adrian Benepe, head of the city’s Parks Department, represented him and the Big Apple. I did attend Benepe’s most interesting talk on the city’s renaissance with special emphasis on parks development and maintenance.
Key to New York’s success, Benepe explained, is PPP. Public-private partnerships were, in fact, a recurring theme in a lot of the presentations. This is something we should learn from in terms of what works and what does not in taking this direction for urban development. I spoke to Cheng Hsing Yao, deputy executive director for the Centre for Liveable Cities, co-organizer of the event. Cheng emphasized this plus the importance of integrating urban solutions into the fabric of city governance, economy and social development.
The lesson from the World Cities Summit can be summarized, paraphrasing one of the keynote speakers and melding his message with key messages from others, thus: “Build the most beautiful city you can… plant as many trees as you can… plan as comprehensively as you can… partner with as many groups in society as you can, towards the creation of improved cities… because there is no excuse not to build better places for our people to live, work and play.”
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