From a tiny swamp-ridden island in a mangrove tributary delta to one of the most prosperous countries in the world in just over half a century: the city-state of Singapore has blossomed into one of the most magnificent urban agglomerations in human history! With careful planning and foresight, Singapore has transformed itself from a backwater port town into the best city on earth.
City of Superlatives
Singapore is one of the smallest countries on earth at only 710 square kilometers, and is the 3rd densest country in terms of population density. Despite its small size, the city state has achieved many metrics of success. One of the most liveable cities in Asia, it is consistently ranked one of the cleanest and safest cities on earth with some of the best standards of living in Asia. It’s also ranked one of the best cities for expats, and one of the best cities to live in general.
With a transparent and open economy, it’s consistently ranked the best place to do business by the World Bank and is known as a hub for innovation. Once considered a dull place for a stopover, the city has become the fourth most popular tourist capital.
Singapore’s Changi Airport has been rated by Skytrax as the best airport in the world for nearly a decade, and the country’s flagship Singapore Airlines is also ranked among the world’s best. The airport is home to the best airport hotel in the world! The latest addition to the airport, Jewel Changi Airport, features a giant glass dome filled with tropical plants and the world’s tallest indoor waterfall. Singapore’s sea port is one of the world’s busiest.
Singapore hosts a near endless list of superlatives and is home to the world’s largest aquarium, one of the world’s longest public cantilevers, the tallest observation wheel (until recently), the largest public housing complex, and the largest dome ever built.
Since opening in 2010, Singapore’s two casino (which are actually massive ‘integrated resorts’ with multiple hotels, malls, and entertainment venues) have outstripped Las Vegas in terms of gambling proceeds. The integrated resorts, Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World. are two of the most expensive buildings ever built.
A City in Nature
Singapore is one of the most sustainable cities in the world. Long known as the ‘garden city’, the government now calls itself a ‘city in nature’. It’s even been named the world’s healthiest country!
The tiny city takes sustainability seriously. Despite it’s high density, 10% of the total land area has been set aside for parks and nature, and it has one of the highest proportions of urban greenery per capita in the world. It is one of the cities with the highest greenery density, and the most trees. Singapore’s ample green spaces are well connected through an ever-expanding series of wildlife corridors, park connectors, and even a biodiversity bridge.
Singapore is leading the world in the construction of green buildings. Beyond token greenery, skygardens have contributed over 133 hectares of green spaces to the city! Iconic buildings like Parkroyal Collection Pickering are renowned as international benchmarks for urban greenery. Entire skyscrapers like Oasia Hotel Downtown and the Guinness World Record holder for the largest vertical garden have been coated in plants.
One of the highlights of Singapore’s urban greenery is the Gardens by the Bay, a high-tech garden of the future featuring massive greenhouses and 25-50 meter tall supertrees. The prolific greenery of the ‘city in nature’ has brought biodiversity back to the city. Rare species which were thought to be locally extinct such as the smooth-coated otter and the oriental pied hornbill have moved back into the verdant city centre and are now thriving!
The centre of the island is preserved as giant nature reserve known as the central catchment, which hosts one of the only remaining primary rainforests within an urban centre in the world. Large water reservoirs within this nature reserve provide animal habitats and hold the city’s drinking water supply.
As a small island nation without any significant freshwater reserves, Singapore has had to work hard to reduce water dependency on it’s neighbours. The topography of the island has been reshaped to collect stormwater into service reservoirs for drinking. The water supply is supplemented with high-tech water reclamation plants which turn sewerage back into drinking water. Even the sewer system is high-tech, with conventional sewers feeding into a deep sewer system up to 50 meters below ground, which funnels sewerage to centralised reclamation plants. Marina Bay, once a seawater bay at the centre of the Central Business District, was enclosed by the Marina Barrage and turned into a reservoir to capture even more rainwater for reuse. The country is also building desalinization plants, the latest of which is topped by a public park.
As a city state without a hinterland, Singapore has long depended on food imports to feed its population. In recent years, the country has turned it’s innovation efforts towards food security, building the world’s first commercial vertical farm and urban farms throughout the city.
Building the Best
The reputation of Singapore’s infrastructure as the best in the world is nearly unrefutable. The tiny island nation has literally expanded by 22% in a little more than five decades through impressive land reclamation efforts that have completely reshaped the island. Without any space for landfills, the country’s trash is incinerated and sent to Pulau Semekau, an offshore island where the waste ash is used to create new land. The incineration process is almost completely emissionless, and the process also generates power.
With limited land area, industrial expansion has been aided by massive underground artificial rock caverns. The country has also implemented one of the world’s first underground masterplans, to coordinate underground development. Land reclamation is being supplemented by offshore underwater structures, and even an underwater expressway. With the whole country roughly around sea level, the country has already begun to implement flood prevention methods in anticipation of global sea level rise.
80% of the population lives in public housing, of which 90% own their own home (Singapore has one of the world’s highest rates of home ownership). In a hyper-dense megacity where land is scarce, the Singapore government has created the finest public housing system on the planet to create affordable living spaces for its citizens. One of the finest examples is the Pinnacle @ Duxton, a series of interconnected towers comprising the seven tallest public housing buildings on earth at fifty stories each, all linked together by the two longest skygardens in the world.
Public transportation on the island is ranked among the best in the world. The efficient metro rail system is one of the cleanest, safest and most reliable. Combined with an extensive and efficient bus network, more than 60% of people use public transport to go to work. Private car usage is discouraged with cost prohibition through a hefty license fee and automatic toll system that redirects drivers away from congested areas.
The high tech city is reinventing itself as a ‘Smart Nation‘, with near full fiber penetration and some of the fastest internet speeds on the planet. A network of sensors and technologies is being used to put in place smart solutions to urban issues. Singapore is leading efforts to develop driverless cars, with public driverless vehicles already in service and plans for fully automated buses soon. Automated trucks are already carrying shipping containers between its ports!
The majority of Singapore’s energy production is via liquefied natural gas (LNG) generation, one of the cleanest fossil fuel energy sources. Despite this, the city is quickly adding renewable energy capacity to it’s smart grid, targeting 1.5 GWp of solar power by 2025 by putting panels on top of buildings and even by building the world’s largest floating solar panel farm.
The construction industry is pushing for energy efficient buildings, in line with plans to acheive the climate mitigation targets stipulated in the 2015 Paris climate accord. Buildings in the CBD are connected to one of the world’s largest district cooling systems, with common services tunnels linking all of the buildings. Urban development is carefully planned by the central planning authority, and the city state has become known for architectural design excellence.
Taking advantage of it’s small size and strategic location, Singapore has quickly built itself into one of the world’s best cities through careful planning and innovative approaches. In a little over 50 years, the tiny country has achieved impressive global success by any metric, and has created a new paradigm for sustainable urban development.
