Article by Yixin Han
They say, "Spend a day in a country, and you could write a book about it; spend a month, and you might write an essay; spend a year, and you find there’s nothing left to say." But these months of exchange at Nanyang Technological University and exploring Singapore
have left me with a lot to reflect on. Not only about Singapore’s blend of cultures and traditions, the friendly vendors at the hawker centres, the competitive university atmosphere and the neat look of plants and silk trees dotting the sidewalks – but about the city and its people.
I think our notion today of ‘futuristic’ has more or less shifted, focusing less on technological marvels and more on reconnecting with nature and bringing it back into our urban environments. When I first arrived in Singapore and gazed out of the taxi window, I could immediately feel that greening here is not merely a luxury but a necessity. It was unmistakeably everywhere – lining the streets, decorating facades and evening spanning across bridges.
Figure: Greenery at NTU Campus
It is no surprise that Singapore is one of the world’s greenest cities, thanks to 6 decades of dedicated greening efforts. The list of initiatives is almost too extensive to sum up, including transforming canals into naturalized rivers, restoring coastal mangroves, introducing therapeutic gardens and nature play areas, and establishing allotment gardens for community urban farming. A very interesting initiative I found as part of the Singapore Green Plan 2030, is that the city has been aiming to restore its core natural ecosystems (within the Nature Reserves) through complementary habitats that surround the nature reserves, acting as buffer zones to shield ecosystems from the pressures of urbanization, and are collectively known as Nature Park Networks. Complementing this, Nature Corridors establish critical ecological connections between biodiversity-rich areas, such as nature reserves and nature parks, while Park Connectors serve as linear green corridors that link major parks across the entire island (see figure ...). To top it off, the Nature Ways are the green elements along routes planted with specific trees and shrubs that replicate the natural structure of forests (see figure...).
This model identifies the surface structures (e.g. roads, forests, buildings) between core (source) habitats and assigns a numerical value to each one. A lower value indicates a surface structure that is conducive
for an animal. The movement pathway is then plotted out by selecting a route comprising pixels of the lowest value.
I have experienced this commitment to environmental consciousness firsthand during my course on Conservation Biology and Biodiversity. During this course, we have been taught by professor Shawn Lum, who is a prominent Singaporean conservationist, ecologist, and
environmental advocate. As the president of the Nature Society Singapore, he has been widely recognized for his work in conservation and environmental sustainability. But it was mainly his lessons that were unforgettable. From the very first class, professor Lum skipped the traditional classroom setting, and instead involved us in fieldwork, taking us to the MacRitchie Reservoir and Bukit Timah Reservoir, guided us through the coral reefs at low tide and taught us how to survey tropical tree species on Sentosa Island. For our last field trip, we even spent a whole day weeding the invasive Zanzibar Yam at Windsor Nature Park. He is truly a one-of-a-kind teacher, since he had remembered all the names, schools and home countries of each one of the (exchange) students. He also held weekly 'conservation coffees,' where we could meet with him to discuss conservation topics. His classes were always full of surprises; Once he even climbed a tree in the forest on Sentosa Island while we were on a field trip.
But of course, Singapore is more than just its urban greenery and efforts toward conservation. Perhaps more than any other city, it strives to integrate technology and innovation into every aspect of daily life. I’ve experienced this even before I entered Singapore — there were no lines at the immigration checkpoints, thanks to a system that processes foreign passports in just 30 seconds and resident passports in 15. The city's streets are also equipped with sensor loops to monitor real-time traffic, while computer controlled traffic lights constantly adjust to optimize the traffic flow. In case of a fire alarm, emergency vehicles are automatically given a green light, making sure they reach the scene without delay. “It’s a coherent city of information, its architecture planned from the ground up. And they expect that whole highways of data will flow into and through their city. Yet they also seem to expect that this won't affect them. And that baffles us, and perhaps it baffles the Singaporeans that it does,” as American-Canadian writer William Gibson puts it.
Even after being here for a few months, I never fully understood the city - it felt as if its history and cultural heritage had been erased, with only a few pockets of culture—like Haji Lane, Chinatown, and Little India— serving as reminders of its multicultural heritage and complex history. Maybe this urge to innovate and continuously morph into the next state is
what has given Singapore a certain sense of placelessness. In his essay ‘Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis - 30 Years of Tabula Rasa’, architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas describes Singapore’s town planning as “a mere sum of presences – formless, like a batik pattern. It emerges surprisingly, seemingly from nowhere, and can be cancelled and erased equally abruptly. The city is an imperfect collage: all foreground and no background.”
It is as if the city and people want to move on, forgetting about their past, replacing it with a strict grid of monotonous blocks that define most of its architecture. It’s hard to miss that the apartment blocks have not been assigned names; they are identified by numbers, and even the accompanying bus stops are named after these numbers. As I ride the bus from the NTU
campus to the nearest MRT station, we pass block 937, then block 832, with more and more numbers piling up behind each building. And sitting in the overly full MRT while holding on to the handrails, I see row after row of gallery flats with their black windows creating an eerie sense of emptiness – making you wonder whether there are people living inside, or if they were built for no one at all.
Even in the weekends, much of the city centre carries a quietness reminiscent of a North American suburb, with only people in suits and fancy dresses walking around. It lacks the vibrant energy of a bustling metropolis, with no life between the buildings. All this makes me wonder if after all Singapore’s meticulous urban planning has been made for people, for life - where are the people? Singapore seems to have it all – cutting-edge urban planning, technological advancements, smart-city initiatives integrating high-tech with eco-conscious design – but maybe a city that has erases all traces of the past, that has the look and feel of a very large corporation, that has a certain white-shirted constraint about it and where creativity seems to be in short supply, sadly keep people isolated from each other inside their high-rise HBDs and condos, living their separated lives.
As Wiliam Gibson describes in his essay ‘Disneyland with Death Penalty’: “Singapore's airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL world. There was no dirt whatsoever; no muss, no furred fractal edge to things. Outside, the organic, florid as ever in the tropics, had been gardened into brilliant green, and all-too perfect examples of itself. Only the clouds were feathered with chaos.” I can attest to this— even the plants appear to follow strict rules, looking, much like the people, strikingly similar to NPCs in a video game.
Figure: Street in downtown Singapore
However, I realize that it is often only when you see a city from above that you feel you truly understand it, that you get a sense of it. As our plane descended into Singapore, I looked out the window, watching the city lights trace out the western coastline, almost like bioluminescent algae glowing along the shore. It remains an alluring city, a pristine, orderly, and decongested corner of the world nestled at the tip of Malaysia. Of course, as a landscape architecture student, I could not resist visiting the Gardens by the Bay multiple times, and spend my afternoons dwelling in Bishan Park and Jurong Lake Gardens. What I found was always surprising, with technological integration and extensive management combined with a focus on micro-climate, public installations and interactive spaces.
And now that my exchange has almost come to an end, Singapore has unquestionably become a place that will always carry a sense of home. The friends I made over the whole world, the long queues at the bus stops, the taste of Hokkien Mee and Kaya Toast, and all the lights and colours during Deepavali and Mid-Autumn Festival, I will take them back to the Netherlands.
References
Gibson, W. (1993, April 1). Disneyland with the Death Penalty. Wired.
Koolhaas, R., & Mau, B. (1995). Singapore Songlines: A Potemkin Metropolis . . . or Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa. Singapore Songlines.
Nature corridors and nature ways. (n.d.).
NParks. https://beta.nparks.gov.sg/visit/when-visiting-parks/about-parks-nature-reserves pcns/nature-corridors-ways
Nature areas and nature park networks. (n.d.).
NParks. https://beta.nparks.gov.sg/visit/when-visiting-parks/about-parks-nature-reserves pcns/nature-park-networks-areas
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