- Eco-city planning: pure hype or achievable concept   256 kb by    Yuen, Belinda | belyuen8@gmail.com    Short Outline This paper will interrogate the key strategies, results, lessons learned and replicability of Singapore’s eco-city planning. The analytical lens is on illuminating the strengths and weaknesses of eco-city planning – what has worked, what may work and what may fail elsewhere. Abstract Against the speed of urban expansion and the global push for sustainability, making existing cities and new urban development more ecologically based and livable has become an urgent priority in an expanding number of countries around the world.[1] A similar growth trajectory is emerging across Asia, from China to India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam even though the challenge is to mainstream sustainability in development plans and policies. This paper seeks to investigate the case city of Singapore. In particular, it examines the planning and development of the Punggol eco- town through documentary research and onsite observation. Among Asian countries, Singapore seems to have assiduously promoted ecological modernization, which seeks to promote economic growth with environmental improvement. In recent years, Singapore has boosted its quest for sustainable development by developing the Punggol eco-town (2011) as a prototype for its future public housing development. While the notion of ecological planning is not new in international urban planning literature, it is being applied to all actors of the urban community including households and businesses, and promoted as a way to grow Singapore more efficiently (to develop with less resources and waste), cleanly (to develop without polluting the environment), and green (to develop while preserving greenery, waterways and natural heritage). The approach is to introduce effective planning and design concepts to make it conducive for residents to adopt eco-lifestyles, exploit urban solutions to achieve stretched environmental targets, and engage, educate and enable people to be an integral part of the ‘go green’ efforts. This urban planning paradigm shift can have far reaching effect at several levels. At the local level, public housing, at least in the Singapore context, is where the majority (80%) of Singaporeans live. At the regional and international levels, Singapore’s urban planning and development has been increasingly regarded as an inspiring model for many developing countries. At the same time, Singapore is exporting this urban knowledge and is building eco-city in the region (e.g. Tianjin in China) while emphasizing that Singapore acts as a ‘living laboratory’ aimed at incubating and displaying new ‘smart’ environmental technologies and sustainable development urban solutions. This paper will interrogate the key strategies, results, lessons learned and replicability of Singapore’s eco-city planning. The analytical lens is on illuminating the strengths and weaknesses of eco-city planning – what has worked, what may work and what may fail elsewhere. [1] S Joss (2012) (ed) Tomorrow’s City Today: Eco-city Indicators, Standards and Frameworks, Bellagio Conference Report; T C Wong and B Yuen (2011) (ed) Eco-city Planning: Policies, Practice and Design, Springer; H Suzuki, A Dastur, S Moffatt, N Yabuki, H Maruyama (2010) Eco2Cities: Ecological Cities as Economic Cities, The World Bank. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper