SPOTLIGHT / MASTER PLAN STRATEGIES
Writers: Dawn Lim and Serene Tng
With growing urban complexities, shifting demographics and evolving lifestyle needs, planners not only have to balance competing land uses and cater spaces for all ages, they have to build in greater responsiveness and resilience in anticipating and managing uncertainties.
Forward and careful planning remains the cornerstone in charting the future. And priorities are the same: to maintain a liveable environment, cater for economic growth, optimise resources and adapt to climate change.
Unveiled on 27 March 2019, the Draft Master Plan 2019 has 5 focus areas:
In tackling emerging challenges and changing needs, the issues of liveability, flexibility and sustainability will become more critical.
Liveability encompasses many aspects from socio-economic and environmental factors to accessibility of public spaces, infrastructure, spread and scale of amenities and ease and availability of public transport. Professor Thomas Schroepfer from the Singapore University of Technology and Design sees neighbourhoods evolving to offer even more plurality of amenities that can cater for more live-work-play-learn-make uses3. People want the convenience of employment, recreation, transport and facilities within easy reach and this is possible with high-density compact developments.
The pilot Enterprise District at Punggol North showing the co-location of the Singapore Institute of Technology campus with JTC Corporation's mixed-used business park. © JTC Corporation
Liveability is also about the social sustainability of the city. It is about spaces that thrive, where people want to be. It enables people of all ages and abilities to live independent and meaningful lives, thus further fostering inclusivity. Designing for the widest possible needs of people will become more important in creating age-friendly and diversity-friendly environments.
Part of liveability will also see a closer integration of nature with the built environment. This is essential not just for building up sustainable towns but also for residents where nature can have a positive impact on their physical and mental well-being.
Q&A with Siew Man Kok, founding director of MKPL Architects, on the future of living environments
How can we manage various housing densities?
Man Kok: To tackle various densities, more variations of design solutions are important. It is about creating distinctively different living environments, different sense of place, and different choices of living. These would contribute to richer and more varied environments, distinctive places, neighbourhoods, and over time, identities.
What is inclusive design?
Man Kok: When I started designing a nursing home, I realised that I did not understand the needs of the frail and elderly. Inclusive design means you must have the empathy to design to the widest possible needs of the people. In the recent Symposium for Future Habitation, social scientists and doctors provided further insights into other aspects of the needs of people and its impact on planning and design. It convinced me that in order to plan and design our living environment to be inclusive (not just physical but socially as well), we need to include them in the design discussions too.
How does living in the tropics make us special and how can we leverage it?
Man Kok: In our quest to eradicate minor inconveniences, we tend to insulate ourselves from the very pleasures of living in the tropics. Designers can consider integrating tropical moments of delight into everyday encounters — never mind the fine spray of the rain. I believe anyone who has experienced the beauty of a tropical storm will see our living environment in a more sanguine way.
3. Joseph Jones, Living Large, Skyline issue 3.
As we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 20184 called out to policy-makers and business leaders across industries “to formulate a comprehensive workforce strategy ready to meet the challenges…of accelerating change and innovation.” The report projected that technological breakthroughs will rapidly change job profiles, and “global labour markets are likely to undergo major transformations.” To improve workplace culture, a transformative global market will need transformative spaces that are well-designed.
In next-gen workplaces, working will be fundamentally integrated with learning, experimenting, communicating and living. The 2018 Design Forecast report5 published by Gensler Research Institute, anticipates that people will become the centre and driving force of resilient workplaces and cities. It means that “workplaces will develop a synergistic relationship with their local communities… providing amenities or creating local partnerships that can benefit not just their workforce but the community too.”
Whether it is in building up economic gateways, regional hubs, or experimental zones, the key is flexibility – creating spaces that are adaptive and responsive to changing business needs.
Q&A with Siah Puay Lin, deputy director of architecture, Surbana Jurong, on the future of work environments.
What excites you about the creation of more integrated growth hubs?
Puay Lin: I am excited by how these new possibilities will shape developments and our urban environment. For example, there could be possibilities for more mixed-use land use that blends commercial, residential, institutional and recreational spaces into industrial developments or sites. This will change the character of industrial areas as we know them today.
Vertical mixed-use buildings within our already high-rise high-density industrial developments could be further explored. The key to this is ensuring compatibility in the mix, and designing environments that promote health, safety, accessibility, environmental and business sustainability, and inclusiveness.
Clustering and co-location are not new. What has changed in terms of the needs of business and innovation clusters?
Puay Lin: The increasingly extensive use of mechanisation, Artificial Intelligence and digitisation of the work space has resulted in changes to the planning and design of buildings, and its supporting infrastructure and utilities.
The workforce has evolved into predominantly professionals and skilled technicians, and it is necessary to continue to attract talent and hone skills. Collaboration across various sectors of business and supply chain management strategies will result in new forms of shared amenities and services. To address this, flexibility for conversion of use to respond to business needs will help optimise land use.
How can we design work spaces to be adaptable and future-proofed?
Puay Lin: Traditionally, we try to future-proof by making building spaces flexible for future needs, albeit with additional cost, by providing structural loadings, large spans, built-in spare risers, knock out panels for future use, demountable walls and slabs.
With increased demands for speed and ease in converting spaces for new uses, we can explore treating certain components in buildings as “production units” or “pods”, where each unit comes complete with all the required services, equipment and fittings, akin to the PPVC (Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction) used for residential developments.
Integrated and prefinished “pods” are already in existence for laboratories and they are especially useful for pandemic situations. Perhaps, similar examples could be used – for instance, “integrated modular packages” for small clean rooms, data centres/computer server setups, transformer switch rooms, etc., treating these as components or units. The benefit to such an approach is that it will be more efficient in terms of time and cost, and allows flexibility in terms of building design.
4. World Economic Forum, Centre for the New Economy and Society, Insight Report. 2018. The Future of Jobs Report.
5. Gensler Research Institute, Gensler Design Forecast. 2018. Shaping the Future of Cities.
Rapid urbanisation comes at a cost. When cities expand, they face the squeeze of generating enough land and resources, while simultaneously keeping resource-use low to keep the city sustainable. The World Economic Forum (WEF), in its 2018 report, Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Water6, called out to cities to solve the world’s biggest environmental challenges by harnessing technology. “[W]e are now seeing a convergence of the digital, physical and biological realms,” it rallied, “If we get it right, it could create a sustainability revolution.”
An ever-expanding need for resources to fuel urbanisation is ultimately unsustainable. Cities that want to develop sustainably are becoming more aware of their resource consumption (what they consume and how much they consume) and innovating to reduce their consumption and recycle more of their waste. Taking this one level up, a new circular economy ideology is starting to gain acceptance. Breaking away from the ‘make-use-dispose’ linear economy model, the new model seeks to minimise new resource inputs into the city by sustaining and preserving existing resources and maximising their reuse.
The Tuas Nexus.
Q&A with Dr. Winston Chow, assistant professor (Department of Geography), National University of Singapore, on water and climate change.
Has Singapore been successful in responding to climate change7?
Winston: Singapore’s present climate change adaptation has been successful in staving off the worst impacts we have seen elsewhere. Yet, it is increasingly clear that adaptation by itself has a limit in reducing Singapore’s vulnerability to climate change, especially with sea level rise. Mitigation of Green House Gas emissions is needed, in keeping with the Paris pledges, in Singapore and elsewhere.
How do we ensure that Singapore never runs out of water?
Winston: While the Republic can adapt to drought by ramping up Newater and desalination production, these technological approaches are economically and environmentally costly. A more prudent and immediate drought adaptation approach is to reduce water use through changing consumption behaviour.
How can we make climate adaptation measures relevant to people?
Winston: It depends on the people we are trying to reach out to. The key to effectively communicating the relevance of climate adaptation is to understand the values of your audience or stakeholders and find out how the impacts of climate change affect those said values on an everyday basis.
6. World Economic Forum, Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth Series. 2018. Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Water.
7. Responses to questions 1. and 2. are from The Straits Times, “How vulnerable is Singapore to climate change?”, 6 September 2018.
East Coast Integrated Depot. © LTA
1. Use land creatively
Over the years, creative use of land and spaces from going underground to co-locating uses has helped to ensure there is sufficient land to meet Singapore’s growing needs. An example is the East Coast Integrated Depot, located on the site of the former Bedok Water Reclamation Plant. It is a bus and train depot in Changi that will be built by 2024. It is the first in the world to integrate 3 MRT depots in 1 single site. With a bus depot located adjacent to the depot complex, 44 ha of land or about 66 football fields, can be freed up and used for other purposes.
2. Manage resources effectively
Efforts continue to focus on ensuring a diversified and sustainable water supply, moving towards cleaner and less energy use and minimising waste. Innovative solutions are also pursued to reuse “waste” by leveraging on synergies between treatment processes. The Tuas Nexus, where the Integrated Waste Management Facility is cleverly co-located with the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant, so that by-products from one process can be reused by another. Such process synergies allow the Tuas Nexus to achieve energy self-sufficiency and land optimisation.
3. Adapt to the impact of climate change
By the year 2100, Singapore’s temperature is projected to rise by 1.4°C to 4.6°C and sea levels could rise by up to 1 metre8. Efforts are focused on enhancing thermal comfort by strengthening wind corridors, adopting cooling measures, protecting Singapore’s coastline through sea walls, reclaiming land at least 4 metres above sea level and mitigating flood risks. A long-term measure put in place to better protect Orchard Road against floods is the creation of the Stamford Diversion Canal (SDC) and the Stamford Detention Tank (SDT). Completed in 2018, the SDC diverts stormwater from Holland Road and Napier Road areas into the Singapore River while the SDT (located under the Singapore Botanic Gardens) temporarily stores stormwater from the drains in Holland Road during a heavy rainfall. A secondary impact on climate change to Singapore is the effects it could have on food supply. By 2030, the aim is to strengthen Singapore’s food security by producing 30 percent of the food supply locally through high-tech farms that use technology to increase yield and optimise land and other resources.
See more information on the Draft Master Plan 2019 and upcoming talks and tours. The Draft Master Plan 2019 exhibition is now on at The URA Centre Level 1 Atrium, from 27 March to 24 May 2019.
8. From baseline period of 1980 to 2009.