- Tropical Green Cities  2050 kb |
by Johnson, Craig | johnson.craig@gmail.com  |
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| Short Outline |
| The paper will present the findings of Craig Johnson's year-long fellowship documenting the relationship between modernization and urban greenery in Southeast Asian Cities. |
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| Abstract |
| Cities in Asia are going through a process of modernization based very much on modernist ideals advanced by the likes of Le Corbusier and other CIAM luminaries in the 1930's. Namely the decontextualization of the city from the existing environment, the use of new technology in an attempt to radically remedy the pitfalls of the existing urban fabric, and a forward looking perspective that seeks to erase physically the historical social/physical urban fabric on which the city was built. One way that these cities have packaged these processes of modernization is under the guise of the garden city. Like Le Corbusier and Ebenezer Howard, city leaders point to high density, unsanitary conditions, high amount of pollution and lack of open space as the prime motivation for greening the city. While these cities have undergone significant and tangible green modernization schemes, the processes of modernization in transportation, housing, and retail have virtually negated many of the positive benefits that these greenery schemes seek to promote. As cities in tropical Asia seek to incorporate more and more greenery, the importance of greenery for the daily lives of urban inhabitants is becoming increasingly irrelevant. While the topic of ''garden cities'' has been widely researched in the western context, little has been studied on the ''garden city movement'' in Asia. By doing case studies of specific cities in Asia that have marketed themselves as garden cities such as Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and Singapore, as well as green cities that have not become significantly modernized such as Hanoi and Saigon, Vietnam and Phonm Penh,Cambodia. This paper seeks to both understand and document the creation of tropical garden cities in the broader context of Asian modernization. |
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| Keywords |
| Garden City, Modernization, Singapore |
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| Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2008: Urban Growth without Sprawl |
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