Abstract
Singapore's remarkable evolution into a garden city can be attributed to years of unwavering commitment and continuous efforts to embrace greenery. Initially, the focus was on providing ample shade and accessible green spaces for its residents. Over time, the government, in collaboration with the community, has nurtured and expanded these greening initiatives, embracing biophilic designs, restoring habitats and creating interconnected park networks.
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Notes
- 1.
Public Works Department (1975).
- 2.
Benedict and McMahon (2001) posit seven principles for green infrastructure efforts:
Principle 1: Sharing similar strategies pertaining to planning and protecting interconnected green space systems.
Principle 2: Demarcate in advance and conserve crucial ecological sites and linkages as restoration is more costly than protecting the prevailing landscapes.
Principle 3: Linkages of public-private sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are important in preserving critical wildlife biodiversity, services, and ecological processes.
Principle 4: Systems of green infrastructure must link the wilderness, rural, suburban, and urban surroundings, while incorporating these green space functions and components across numerous jurisdictions at varying degrees.
Principle 5: Fundamentally land-use planning practices and theories and sound science, green infrastructure overlaps with other fields such as conservation biology, geographic analysis, information systems, landscape ecology, regional and urban planning.
Principle 6: An annual budget as form of public investment by the federal and state agencies dedicated to providing resources for green infrastructure planning and management activities.
Principle 7: Require involvement of various stakeholders or organisation in establishing strategic alliances to enable green infrastructure efforts to bear fruition.
- 3.
Pertaining to connectivity amidst green infrastructure systems, Marshall (2004) describes connectivity as the sum of routes or links from and to a specific destination, and permeability as capacity of these connections to ferry vehicles or persons. Connections form corridors that link one to another, by open spaces, pedestrian ways and streets that are positioned fragmentedly across the city.
- 4.
The Padang has become a vantage point to visitors as well as a historical site that occupies a special place for its local people. Sports and recreational activities such as line dancing, cricket, hockey, football and rugby are hosted on the Padang. Tan (2022).
- 5.
- 6.
Laurent et al (2021).
- 7.
See Lee (2000).
- 8.
See Connolly and Muzaini (2021).
- 9.
- 10.
Ng and Chou (2018).
- 11.
Creighton Connolly and Hamzah Muzaini also noted that as islands were redesignated to serve the developing nation’s metabolic and economic needs, the islands’ Indigenous communities have been displaced, and the islands’ ecologies severely impacted. Connolly and Muzaini (2021).
- 12.
- 13.
See The Straits Times (1972, March 24).
- 14.
As part of Singapore Together, this FamilyTrees drive encourages Singaporeans and families to take accountability of their sustainable future.
- 15.
Davies et al. (2006).
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Liow Li Sa, M., Choon-Yin, S. (2023). Natural Heritage. In: Sustainable Urban Development in Singapore. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5451-3_6
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