LIVEABLE& SUSTAINABLE CITIES A FRAMEWORK LIVEABLE& SUSTAINABLE CITIES A FRAMEWORK © 2014 Centre for Liveable Cities, Singapore and Civil Service College, Singapore. All rights reserved. CLC is a division of Centre for Liveable Cities Civil Service College, Singapore 45 Maxwell Road Institute of Governance and Policy #07-01 The URA Centre 31 North Buona Vista Road Singapore 069118 Singapore 275983 Website: www.clc.gov.sg Website: www.cscollege.gov.sg ISBN: 978-981-09-0557-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-981-09-0558-3 (ebk) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior permission from the Publisher. The opinions and views expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Liveable Cities or the Civil Service College. Every effort has been made to trace all sources and copyright holders of news articles, figures and information in this book before publication. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, CLC and CSC will ensure that full credit is given at the earliest opportunity. For feedback and comments, please email [email protected] or [email protected] Editorial Team Khoo Teng Chye (Editorial Adviser) Toh Boon Kwan l Premarani Somasundram l Vernie Oliveiro l Joanna Yong l Liza Lee Cover photo: Marina Barrage, Singapore. Photo courtesy of © Toonman | Dreamstime.com National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Liveable & sustainable cities : a framework. – Singapore : Civil Service College Singapore : Centre for Liveable Cities Singapore, [2014] pages cm ISBN : 978-981-09-0557-6 (paperback) 1. City planning – Environmental aspects – Singapore. 2. Sustainable urban development – Singapore. I. Civil Service College, Singapore, publisher. II. Centre for Liveable Cities, publisher HT169 307.1216095957 -- dc23 OCN879763919 Lanscape_Line bw.pdf 1 8/31/12 10:26 AM CONTENTS v Foreword LIU Thai Ker CHAPTER 1 The CLC Liveability Framework KHOO Teng Chye 2 Genesis of the CLC Liveability Framework 6 Components of the CLC Liveability Framework 8 The Liveable City Outcomes 19 Integrated Master Planning and Development 21 Implicit Principles of Integrated Master Planning and Development 30 Dynamic Urban Governance 31 Five Implicit Principles of Dynamic Urban Governance 41 Conclusion CHAPTER 2 Master Planning: Transforming Concepts to Reality Phyllis TEOH 48 The Challenge of Planning the City of Singapore 50 The Principles of Integrated Master Planning and Development 96 Conclusion CHAPTER 3 Urban Governance: Foresight and Pragmatism TOH Boon Kwan, Mark CHEN and Vernie OLIVEIRO 102 Introduction: Transformation of a City 105 Principles of Dynamic Urban Governance 118 Putting Urban Governance to Work 152 A Systems Approach to Urban Governance 160 Future Challenges to Urban Governance in Singapore CHAPTER 4 In Global Practice: The CLC Liveability Framework Pablo VAGGIONE and Elyssa LUDHER 176 Introduction 180 Physical Planning Principles for Integrated Master Planning 212 Governance Principles 244 Conclusion 251 Epilogue Peter HO 259 Abbreviations 261 About the Contributors 263 About the Centre for Liveable Cities 264 About the Civil Service College FOREWORD LIU Thai Ker Director, RSP Architects Planners & Engineers Pte. Ltd. Chairman, Advisory Board for the Centre for Liveable Cities The dramatic physical transformation of Singapore in the past five decades is increasingly attracting attention from the rest of the world, particularly from developing countries. Barely 50 years ago, 1.35 million, out of a population of 1.7 million, lived in squatter colonies. Within one generation, Singapore transformed itself into a modern metropolis, a city where there are no homeless people, no squatters, no poverty ghettos and no ethnic enclaves. In the midst of rapid urbanisation and development, we realised that the tacit knowledge of those who led Singapore’s planning and urban development had to be captured, in order to present a holistic and practitioner-centric view of our development journey. The Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) was thus formed in 2008, with a view to revisiting critical government policies, as well as the inputs from professional bodies, public organisations and civic groups that informed some of those policies, and documenting learning points that could serve as useful reference materials for future planners in Singapore and elsewhere in the world. At the same time, CLC recognises that there are valuable lessons to be learnt from the experiences of other cities across the world and, with this in mind, it has been making concerted efforts to build links with as many cities as possible. As the title suggests, “Liveable and Sustainable Cities: A Framework” is an attempt to share with the rest of the world four key pieces of Singapore’s urbanisation story. It begins with the genesis of the CLC Liveability Framework, which sets the parameters for the concept of “liveability” and “sustainability”. This is followed by a detailed examination of the two core pillars of the Framework: Integrated Master Planning and Development, and Rational Urban Governance. The book ends with a comparative study on a global scale, from New York to Ahmedabad to Tianjin, to illustrate the applicability of the CLC Liveability Framework to other cities. Admittedly, the physical, social and political conditions of each city are significantly different, but the underlying principles of creating a good and liveable city can be applied widely. The question is not so much the viability of principles, theories or guidelines, but the skill of applying these principles. In the preparation of this book, we were fortunate to be able to gain access to some of the key players who contributed to the planning and building of Singapore. Their candid insights on the transformation of Singapore lend this book a unique flavour and voice. I hope that you enjoy reading this book as much as I did and find the Singapore story a useful and helpful reference. CHAPTER 1 The CLC Liveability Framework Photo courtesy of AtelierDreiseitl Liveable and Sustainable Cities: A Framework The CLC Liveability Framework1 KHOO Teng Chye 01 Singapore’s City Area at dusk Despite its high density, Singapore remains liveable, with high rankings in international studies measuring quality of life. Photo courtesy of Erwin Soo GENESIS OF THE CLC LIVEABILITY FRAMEWORK Singapore is a densely populated metropolis, with more than 5 million inhabitants living on 710 km2 of land. In liveable city surveys over the past few years, including Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey of 2011, Singapore has been rated one of the few high-density cities that are able to achieve high liveability standards. Today, many of the cities considered to be highly liveable exist in large geographical spaces with low-rise developments, low population densities and low-polluting industries. Cities such as Sydney and Vancouver are often cited in this regard. Singapore, however, is one of the outliers, combining highly dense urban structures with high standards of living. 2 The CLC Liveability Framework 02 The CLC Liveability Matrix* The Matrix captures liveability against population density, where cities that exhibit both high density and high liveability are captured in the blue box. *Compiledn i 2012 by the Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) Singapore represents an approach to sustainable urban development where high-density living does not necessarily have to lead to a compromise on the quality of life. Yet, back in the 1960s, it would have been hard to imagine that Singapore—then a fledging nation troubled by high unemployment, urban slums, poor infrastructure, lack of sanitation, and an unskilled labour force—would make the leap from developing nation to thriving global city-state in the space of 40 years, let alone be considered one of the world’s liveable cities. It had a population then of about 1.7 million people, less than one- third of today’s 5.4 million. 3 Liveable and Sustainable Cities: A Framework How did Singapore achieve this balance of density and liveability? And what did Singapore learn in the process of achieving this balance? Many cities worldwide, especially those in the process of urbanising, have often posed these two questions to Singapore officials responsible for the city’s various urban systems. The Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) started to look for answers to these questions in 2010. CLC’s challenge has been to distil the large body of knowledge available—not just the codified knowledge from the formal institutions of urban development, but especially the tacit knowledge of those who led Singapore’s urban planning and governance over the decades. When Singapore’s pioneering leaders started to build the city, they did not have a particular framework in mind or a written set of principles and guidelines. CLC has captured their tacit knowledge through over a hundred in-depth interviews. We paid special attention to the roles of key actors, the enabling processes and innovative policies that we believed are crucial to understanding how Singapore’s key urban systems have developed and played their part in the country’s urbanisation journey. The first sets of urban systems that CLC studied were in the areas of water, transport, housing, the environment and industrial infrastructure. While these projects were on-going, we thought we could use an inductive approach to discern from the information we had gathered for these initial projects some general principles and desired outcomes that have guided Singapore’s urban planners over the years. The findings from this exercise culminated in the CLC Liveability Framework. One thing was clear—Singapore learnt a lot from other cities in its early development phase and still looks abroad for ideas. 4 The CLC Liveability Framework We learn what not to do by watching other cities and also what to do from watching good cities. There is nothing new that you can think of that has not been “ 2 tried by thousands of other cities.