10 Principles for Liveable High Density Cities: Lessons from Singapore

by Robert Krueger

New Publication Shows How Urban Density Can Be Managed with Innovative Planning, Development and Governance

•  http://www.uli.org/press-release/10-principles-singapore/

SINGAPORE (January 24, 2013) – Innovative planning, design and development practices that emphasize a “people-first” focus can help ensure that rapid urbanization does not compromise liveability and sustainability, according to a new publication by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC).

10 Principles for Liveable High Density Cities: Lessons from Singapore draws upon Singapore’s successful urbanization experience – despite its population density, the city-state has consistently ranked favorably in various surveys measuring the liveability and sustainability of cities around the globe.

The ten principles in the publication were developed during two workshops hosted in 2012 by the CLC and ULI Asia Pacific, bringing together 62 thought leaders, experts and practitioners from different disciplines related to urban planning and development. Discussions at the first workshop centred around the four case study districts in Singapore that both organizations consider to be both densely populated and highly liveable: the mixed-use downtown district of Marina Bay; the commercial corridor of Orchard Road, and two new public housing developments in Toa Payoh and Tampines. The ideas and principles so generated were further developed, corroborated, and condensed into ten principles.

Read the report.

In the foreword to the publication, Mr Khaw Boon Wan, Singapore’s Minister for National Development, points to the lasting benefits of building cities for people. “The inexorable trend of urban population growth in modern times is not likely to stop. Even for countries with no shortage of land, the growth of their urban populations has confronted their cities with constant challenges to the quality of their living environment…For Singapore, these challenges have been compounded by the limitations of its size as a small island,” he said. “Maintaining a good quality, liveable high-density urban landscape in which all Singaporeans can find and make a home is crucial to the survival of the Singapore nation.”

“Expansive, rapid urbanization is adding challenges to the business of building cities that are prosperous, liveable, and able to withstand time and change,” notes ULI Chief Executive Officer Patrick L. Phillips. “Through our work with the CLC, we are aiming to demonstrate how well-planned design and development is the foundation for a physical environment that is conducive to a competitive economy, sustainable environment and a high quality of life. Ultimately, cities are about what’s best for people, not buildings or cars. The places that are built to reflect this reality will have a competitive edge in our globalized economy.”

“Singapore is seen as a high density, high liveability development model. We saw some relevance of Singapore’s experience to others, particularly emerging cities, many of whom are high density and want to raise the quality of life for their people. We hope this joint publication will contribute in some way towards people having a more optimistic view of living in high density cities,” said Khoo Teng Chye, Executive Director, CLC.

Each of the 10 principles in the publication reflects Singapore’s integrated model of planning and development, which weaves together the physical, economic, social and environmental aspects of urban living. The ten principles are:

• Plan for long-term growth and renewal –A highly dense city usually does not have much choice but to make efficient use of every square inch of its scarce land. Yet city planners need to do this in a way that does not make the city feel cramped and unliveable. A combination of long-term planning, responsive land policies, development control and good design has enabled Singapore to have dense developments that do not feel overly crowded, and, in fact, are both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
  
  
• Embrace diversity, foster inclusiveness – There is a need to ensure that diversity is not divisive, particularly in densely populated cities where people live in close proximity to one another. Density and diversity work in Singapore because there has always been a concurrent focus on creating a sense of inclusiveness through encouraging greater interaction.
  
  
• Draw nature closer to people – Blending nature into the city helps soften the hard edges of a highly built up cityscape and provides the city dwellers pockets of respite from the bustle of urban life. By adopting a strategy of pervasive greenery and by transforming its parks and water bodies into lifestyle spaces for community activities, Singapore integrated nature with its dense developments. Nearly half of Singapore is now under green cover, which is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also improves the air quality and mitigates heat from the tropical sun.
  
  
• Develop affordable, mixed-use neighbourhoods – The ease of living in a compact neighbourhood that is relatively self-contained can add to the pleasure of city living. With density, it becomes more cost effective to provide common amenities. Neighbourhoods in Singapore’s new towns have a mix of public and private developments which are served with a full range of facilities that are easy to access and generally affordable.
  
  
• Make public spaces work harder – Often, parcels of land that adjoin or surround the city’s infrastructure are dormant, empty spaces. Singapore has sought to maximize the potential of these spaces by unlocking them for commercial and leisure activities, The idea is to make all space, including infrastructural spaces, serve multiple uses and users.
  
  
• Prioritise green transport and building options – An overall reduction in energy consumption and dependence adds to city sustainability. Singapore has adopted a resource-conscious growth strategy that relies on planning, design and the use of low-energy environmental systems for its buildings. It has also developed an efficient public transport system and well-connected walkways to give city dwellers transport alternatives to driving.
  
  
• Relieve density with variety and add green boundaries – A high-density city need not be all about closely packed high-rise buildings. Singapore intersperses high-rise with low-rise buildings, creating a skyline with more character and reducing the sense of being in a crowded space.
  
  
• Activate spaces for greater safety – Having a sense of safety and security is an important quality-of-life factor. As Singapore became denser, designs of high-rise public housing estates were modified to improve the “visual access” to spaces so the community can collectively be the “eyes on the street,” helping to keep neighbourhoods safe.
  
  
• Promote innovative and non-conventional solutions – As a city gets more populated and built up, it starts facing constraints on land and resources, and has to often look at non-traditional solutions to get around the challenges. To ensure sufficient water, Singapore developed reclaimed water under the brand name NEWater-to drinking and industrial standards.
  
  
• Forge “3P” (people, public, private) partnerships – With land parcels in close proximity to one another, the effects of development in one area are likely to be felt quickly and acutely in neighbouring sites. The city government and all stakeholders need to work together to ensure they are not taking actions that would reduce the quality of life for others. URA launched the Singapore River ONE partnership to get the various stakeholders to feel a stronger ownership of Singapore River so that social and economic activity in the precinct would be developed in a coordinated and sustainable manner.

“For new cities that are forming and older cities that are redeveloping…the ten principles can be a starting point for city planners, developers and dwellers to trigger ideas about how they want their city to evolve and be shaped,” states the publication. “Creating a highly dense yet liveable city, while not always easy, is very possible.”

NOTE TO EDITORS AND REPORTERS: The 10 Principles for Liveable High Density Cities: Lessons from Singapore report is now available for download.

Seeing Cities as the Environmental Solution, Not The Problem

• http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/seeing_cities_as_the_environme.html

by Kaid Benfield

 
For a long time, America’s environmental community celebrated wilderness and the rural landscape while disdaining cities and towns.  Thoreau’s Walden Pond and John Muir’s Yosemite Valley were seen as the ideal, while cities were seen as sources of dirt and pollution, something to get away from.  If environmentalists were involved with cities at all, it was likely to be in efforts to oppose development, with the effect of making our built environment more spread out, and less urban.
We’ve come a long way since then, if still not far enough.  We were and remain right to uphold nature, wildlife and the rural landscape as places critical to celebrate and preserve.  But what we realize now, many of us anyway, is that cities and towns – the communities where for millennia people have aggregated in search of more efficient commerce and sharing of resources and social networks – are really the environmental solution, not the problem:  the best way to save wilderness is through strong, compact, beautiful communities that are more, not less, urban and do not encroach on places of significant natural value.  As my friend who works long and hard for a wildlife advocacy organization puts it, to save wildlife habitat we need people to stay in “people habitat.”
For our cities and towns to function as successful people habitat, they must be communities where people want to live, work and play.  We must make them great, but always within a decidedly urban, nonsprawling form.  As it turns out, compact living – in communities of streets, homes, shops, workplaces, schools and the like assembled at a walkable scale – not only helps to save the landscape; it also reduces pollution and consumption of resources.  We don’t drive as far or as often; we share infrastructure.  While recent authors such as Edward Glaeser and David Owen are sometimes excessive in extolling the virtues of urban density without giving attention to the other things that make cities attractive and successful, they are absolutely right that city living reduces energy consumption, carbon emissions and other environmental impacts.

A lot of my professional friends are committed urbanists as well as committed environmentalists.  We understand the environmental advantages of urban living so thoroughly that we take it for granted that other people do, too.  But we make that mistake at our – and the planet’s – peril.  The increased development and maintenance of strong, sustainable cities and towns will not happen without a concerted effort.
A lot is riding on the outcome:  83 percent of America’s population – some 259 million people – live in cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas.  Somewhat astoundingly (and as I have written previously), 37 of the world’s 100 largest economies are US metros.  New York, for example, ranks 13th, with a $1.8 trillion economy equivalent to that of Switzerland and the Netherlands combined; Los Angeles (18th) has an economy that is bigger than Turkey’s; Chicago’s (21st) is larger than Switzerland’s, Poland’s or Belgium’s.

With so much population and economic activity, it can be no wonder that our working and living patterns in cities and suburbs have enormous environmental consequences, both for community residents and for the planet.  And the implications are going to intensify:  over the next 25 years, America’s population will increase by 70 million people and 50 million households, the equivalent of adding France or Germany to the US.  With a combination of building new homes, workplaces, shops and schools and replacing those that will reach the end of their functional lives, fully half the built environment that we will have on the ground in 25 years does not now exist.
These circumstances provide not just a formidable challenge but also a tremendous opportunity to get things right.  Unfortunately, past practices have done a lot of damage, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, when America severely disinvested our inner cities and traditional towns while population, investment and tax base fled for (quite literally) greener pastures.  The result, as we now know all too well, has been desecration of the natural and rural landscape while leaving behind decaying infrastructure, polluted air and waterways, and distressed populations.

   
Older cities and towns with shrinking revenues did what they could, but critical issues such as waste, public transportation, street and sidewalk maintenance, parks, libraries, and neighborhood schools – issues where attention and investment could have made a difference – were back-burnered or neglected altogether.  Meanwhile, sprawl caused driving rates to grow three times faster than population, sending carbon and other emissions through the roof while requiring still more costly new infrastructure that was built while we neglected the old.

We cannot allow the future to mimic the recent past.  We need our inner cities and traditional communities to absorb as much of our anticipated growth as possible, to keep the impacts per increment of growth as low as possible.  And, to do that, we need cities to be brought back to life, with great neighborhoods and complete streets, with walkability and well-functioning public transit, with clean parks and rivers, with air that is safe to breathe and water that is safe to drink.

   
This, I believe, leads to some imperatives:  where cities have been disinvested, we must rebuild them; where populations have been neglected, we must provide them with opportunity; where suburbs have been allowed to sprawl nonsensically, we must retrofit them and make them better.  These are not just economic and social matters:  these are environmental issues, every bit as deserving of the environmental community’s attention as the preservation of nature.

This is the first in a series of posts that will introduce NRDC’s agenda for sustainable communities.
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Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his blog's home page. 

• Original article

About Kaid Benfield

Director, Sustainable Communities, NRDC; co-founder, LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system; co-founder, Smart Growth America coalition; author, Once There Were Greenfields (NRDC 1999), Solving Sprawl (Island Press 2001), Smart Growth In a Changing World (APA Planners Press 2007), Green Community (contributing author; APA Planners Press 2009); voted one of the "top urban thinkers" in 2009 poll on Planetizen.com and named one of "the most influential people in sustainable planning and development" in 2010 by the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. Attorney, recovering litigator, cyclist, blogger, dreamer. You may access my full blog at www.kaidbenfield.com.