Urban planners bracing for the influx of ever more millions into finite territories should look to Singapore as a “model compact city,” architect Khoo Peng Beng says.
Khoo, lead curator of Singapore’s pavilion at the Venice architectural Biennale, opens his argument with some startling figures to demonstrate the compactness of the tiny city-state off the Malaysian Peninsula.
It is planning for a maximum population of 6.5 million in 20 years, which is 0.001 of the current world total of 6.5 billion.
Yet 1,000 times the land area of Singapore would occupy only 0.5 percent of the total world land mass, equivalent to about twice the size of Italy, Khoo said.
Maps at the exhibit shrink China and the US to the tiny spaces they would occupy if they had the same density as Singapore, which has a land area of just 710km2.
The exhibition titled “1,000 Singapores: A Model of a Compact City” stresses the advantages of compactness such as minimizing energy consumption, streamlining transportation and reducing the carbon footprint.
“Architecture, social systems, transport systems, waste management and so on are working hand in hand in a meta-project,” Khoo said, describing Singapore’s evolution as a “very slow process of self-invention, as an island, a country, a city.”
One of the world’s richest cities and widely acclaimed as among the most “liveable,” Singapore has avoided the congested feeling of places like Hong Kong and Tokyo until recent years.
Increasing numbers of immigrants and guest workers jostle for space with the locals, and tourism is surging thanks to two new massive casino resorts that opened a few months ago.
Car ownership has also spiked, even though Singapore is one of the costliest places in the world to own a vehicle.
And flash floods that wreaked havoc in June and last month raised questions over whether the nation was equipped to handle the side effects of rapid urbanization.
“There is a heroic quality in thinking about the environment in that architecture can save the world, save the people, save the country,” Khoo said.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
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