WHAT makes a liveablecity? It must fulfil thehuman spirit, saidPrime Minister LeeHsien Loong in an April2014 interview withthe Centre for LiveableCities (CLC). “You want

to be able to live well – good homes, goodneighbourhoods, orderly and safe streets andenvironment. You must be able to work well –there must be jobs, opportunities, economicgrowth. You must be able to play well – whichmeans a green environment, and opportuni-ties for leisure, culture, the human spirit,” hetold CLC.

In just a few decades, Singapore has gonefrom a Third World nation to a city that doesindeed provide its citizens with the opportuni-ties to live, work and play well – that despite apopulation that has tripled since the 1970sand ongoing challenges of land and waterscarcity.

Plan behind the First World nation

“Our transformation to a liveable and sustain-able city has been brought about by twothings: good governance and an integrated ap-proach to planning,” says Khoo Teng Chye,CLC’s executive director. CLC was set up in2008 to document that transformation and ex-pand on the knowledge gained from the earlyyears of development.

The planning behind Singapore’s develop-ment has remained much the same over theyears. Today, the Urban Redevelopment Au-thority’s (URA) Master Plan, the statutoryland use plan meant to guide Singapore’s de-velopment over the next decade and a half,still follows the spirit of the first Concept Plancreated in 1971: it balances Singapore’s landuse needs between the social and the econom-ic, industry and the environment, housingand community, and it involves intensive col-laboration between many government agen-cies. “(The Master Plan) is an important strate-gic platform for the coordination of the workof our development agencies to ensure thatthe necessary infrastructure will be providedto adequately support existing and new devel-opments,” URA chief planner and deputy CEOLim Eng Hwee said in a June 2014 interview.He highlighted an increased number of greenspaces, the protection of conservation areasand the expansion of public spaces as somekey areas of the 2014 Master Plan, which canbe viewed on URA’s website.

Some of the agencies involved in develop-ing and implementing the Master Plan are ob-vious, such as the Land Transport Authority,which is currently collaborating with the pri-vate sector to develop a solution for lesseningtraffic congestion. Others might seem to haveless of a stake, yet their input is equally impor-tant: for example, the Singapore TourismBoard has since the mid-1980s worked close-ly with URA to develop ways of conserving eth-nic and cultural enclaves that can double upas tourist attractions. The conservation areasdesignated as identity nodes in the 2014 Mas-ter Plan include Jalan Kayu, Holland Villageand Serangoon Gardens.

Sustainability and quality of living

Today, sustainability and quality of living areamong the traits of Singapore, the “GardenCity”. It is an engineering ethos that dates allthe way back to the 1970s and 1980s, whencivil engineers working with the Housing andDevelopment Board (HDB) built passive sus-tainability features into their designs. HDBflats were built to face slightly away from thewest, so that units would not be exposed to

the worst of the afternoon heat; concrete over-hangs were added to shield windows from di-rect sunlight; and stairwells and corridorswere built to accommodate plenty of ventila-tion. Today, those simple principles havebeen recognised and formalised in initiativessuch as the Building and Construction Author-ity’s (BCA) Green Mark scheme, which assess-es and awards buildings for best practices inenvironmental design and performance. Ma-jor real estate developers such as City Develop-ments Ltd – a long-time advocate of sustaina-ble buildings and the first developer to benamed a Green Mark champion – have enthu-siastically supported Green Mark principles.

The Green Mark has also brought the rec-ognition of sustainability back full circle topublic housing: in 2007, Surbana Corpora-tion’s eco-precinct, Treelodge@Punggol, be-came the first public housing project to re-ceive the BCA Green Mark Platinum award.

Other multinationals have developed liter-ally alongside Singapore, answering the na-tion’s sustainability and liveability needs withnew technology through the years: one suchis Hitachi, which has operated in Singaporesince the 1960s, all through the decades of de-velopment and modernisation.

“We are proud to have walked throughthis journey with Singapore, witnessing thecountry’s growth from a modest state to theFirst World country it is today,” says KiyoakiIigaya, Hitachi’s chief executive for Asia.

The company has also suppliedstate-of-the-art technology and products toSingapore in areas such as building facilitiesservices and its management systems, cover-ing high-end industrial plants, offices to hous-ing.

Hitachi has also provided foundational sys-tems such as energy generation transmissionsystems, public transport systems, watertreatment and other social infrastructure sys-tems including a dissipation array systemthat protects business assets and operationsfrom the detrimental effects of lightningstrikes – a significant risk in Singapore, whichhas one of the highest rates of lightning activi-

ty in the world. Buildings here that use the dis-sipation array system include M1’s telecom-munication towers.

Beautiful relationship with water“Our water strategy goes beyond just lookingat water as a resource,” says CLC’s Mr Khoo.“Over the years, we also recognised that whileit is important to solve our water problem byputting in the right infrastructure, that infra-structure can be a blight on the urban environ-ment if we do not take care with its design.”Mr Khoo served as chief executive of the PUBfrom 2003 to 2011, and oversaw the drive tomake Singapore the regional research and de-velopment hub for water and wastewatertreatment technology. One of the solutionsthat pioneered on his watch was NEWater,the reclaimed water that was initially greetedwith suspicion and today – a decade after itslaunch in 2003 – meets 30 per cent of the na-tion’s water needs and is accounted as one ofthe four national taps.

Over the years, as Singapore invested inmultiple aspects of water management tomeet the population’s needs, an entire indus-try has sprung up around water: consultants,technology suppliers, manufacturers andsub-contractors are located here, and majorevents like the Singapore International WaterWeek bring in billions of dollars in business.Huge multinational corporations such as Hi-tachi are closely involved with Singapore’s wa-ter industry, developing and supplying watertreatment systems ranging from desalination– another of the four national taps – to sewagetreatment and even monitoring and controlsystems for water treatment plants.

Now, to bring a human touch to the waterindustry, the PUB aims to educate people thatwater is an urban and environmental asset.In 2006, the ABC Waters (Active, Beautiful,Clean Waters) Programme was launched toensure that Singapore’s waterways are an at-tractive part of the urban environment.

“We are trying to get the idea across thatwater can also be an urban and environmen-tal asset,” explains Mr Khoo. “We want peo-

ple to see that water is very much a part ofour lives and we all have a responsibility totry and keep the water that flows in ourhomes, workplaces and schools clean.”

Taking our expertise global

Today, Singapore exports its expertise in wa-ter management, tropics-specific sustainablebuilding design, urban planning and evenport operation to countries around the world.For example, BCA’s Green Mark has beenadopted in over 10 countries around theSouth-east Asian region and beyond, includ-ing China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand andIndonesia.

Another factor in the globalisation of Singa-pore’s experience has been the corporatisa-tion of key agencies and statutory boards thatwere involved in the great modernisationdrives of the early years. In 1997, for exam-ple, the Port of Singapore Authority was cor-poratised and replaced by PSA CorporationLtd, and today, it operates as PSA Internation-al – a top international port operator with ahuge network of ports located all along themajor global shipping routes.

Since then, PSA has expanded Singapore’sport with an eye to the long term, and withgood reason: the port still looms very large inSingapore’s economy. At the 2012 launch ofthe expansions to Pasir Panjang Terminal,Minister for Transport Lui Tuck Yew said: “To-day, our port remains a pillar of the domesticand regional economies, providing criticalconnectivity to global markets for the manu-facturing sectors, and bringing in a widerange of goods needed by the economy andpopulation.”

The great builders of the early years havegrown, too: in 2000, Jurong Town Corpora-tion, the driving force behind Singapore’s in-dustrial development in the 1960s and 1970s,was corporatised and restructured as JTC Cor-poration. And in 2003, HDB’s Building andDevelopment Division was corporatised andtwo years later rebranded as Surbana Corpo-ration, which specialises in sustainable urbansolutions especially in developing countries. Anumber of the civil engineers who began theircareers during those early decades stayed onduring the corporatisations, and today applytheir experience to the work of the privatecompanies.

“When we go to the Third World countrieswe can know immediately, intuitively, whatthe solution is and how to approach it,” saysJeffrey Ho, a senior consultant with SurbanaInternational Consultants. Mr Ho, who beganhis career as a civil engineer with HDB’s Build-ing and Development Division in the 1970s,recalls how he and his colleagues workedon-site, with limited resources and only themost basic technology – and, in the process,gained a profound understanding of whatworked and what didn’t work. “The modelswe used may be out-of-date now in Singa-pore, but we are still applying them in ouroverseas work today,” he adds.

As Singapore moves into the future, morethings are bound to change, but planners andbuilders are sure of one thing: the approachthat brought this nation out of the 1960s andinto the 21st century will handle the changeswell enough. “My view is that going forward,while we grapple with the problems of the fu-ture, as long as we adhere to the basic princi-ples of doing planning well and having theright policies in place, I think we can continueto be innovative,” adds CLC’s Mr Khoo.

This is the second of a three-part seriesbrought to you by Hitachi, in collaboration

with Singapore Institute of Building Ltd, andwith resource assistance from Centre forLiveable Cities Singapore. The final part,

Building a Nation: Tomorrow, will bepublished on Aug 12

ONE of today’s great landmarks in Singa-pore’s water strategy is none other than theMarina Barrage. The barrage’s history goesback more than two decades: as far back as1987, then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yewhad raised the possibility of some day dam-ming the river mouth to keep sea water outand fresh water in, turning the entire riverinto a huge reservoir for Singapore. His pre-diction proved visionary. In 2008, almost ex-actly 20 years later, the Marina Barragewas officially opened: the largest catchmentin Singapore, joining 16 other reservoirswhich together cover two-thirds of the is-land’s total land area.

What people may not realise, however,is that the Marina Barrage was deliberatelydesigned to serve multiple purposes. The ar-ea it dams off is a reservoir, one that pro-vides 10 per cent of the nation’s waterneeds, but the dam itself is also a flood-con-trol mechanism – it both allows the ventingof storm waters and protects the waterwaysfrom tidal influence. On top of that, the bar-rage is today a well-known recreational ar-

ea, and this, too, was deliberate.

“We did not want a public works facility

to just be very functional,” says former PUB

senior consultant Yap Kheng Guan, the

project director of the Marina Barrage devel-

opment. “We wanted it to be a place where

people can come and celebrate what we’ve

done for Singapore.”

The thinking behind the barrage wasabout getting the most out of a public worksproject, and it called for a multi-agency ap-proach. Other agencies such as the UrbanRedevelopment Authority and the NationalParks Board were brought in to help devel-op the aesthetics and architecture neededfor making an otherwise unremarkable fa-cility into a public space.

“The barrage shows the direction inwhich we’ve been taking our drainage pro-gramme. In the early days we were rushingfor time and going for very practical solu-tions. But even in the 1980s, when design-ing and upgrading the canals and rivers, wewere thinking of how to make them morethan just functional,” says Mr Yap of the evo-lution of Singapore’s water management.“These spaces are all so near to where peo-ple work and live and enjoy themselves ...we want to make these places more enjoya-ble and encourage people to keep the waterclean as it makes its way into the rivers andreservoirs.”

Good governance and an integrated approach to planning have enabled S’poreto become a First World Nation in just a few decades. MINT KANG reports

Benchmarks in quality: PSA has expanded its facilities, such as the Pasir PanjangTerminal (above), with an eye to the long term; in 2007, Surbana Corporation’seco-precinct, Treelodge@Punggol (below), became the first public housing project to receivethe BCA Green Mark Platinum award. PHOTOS: PSA, SURBANA INTERNATIONAL CONSULTANTS

A landmark in water management

Public space: The Marina Barrage wasdeliberately designed to serve multiplepurposes. PHOTO: PUB, THE NATIONAL WATER AGENCY

Innovative solutionsfor a variety of needs

The Business Times, Tuesday, August 5, 2014 BUILDING A NATION: TODAY 19