Abstract
Beside Singapore’s recent glamorous rise in notable architecture and urban design, centres of activity, event curation and other urban enterprises, the rise of the ‘green-blue’ planning and implementation since the early 1990s is perhaps its most truly distinctive and notable achievement in comparative terms with elsewhere in the world. By all accounts and certainly those discussed here, it has been and is truly remarkable, making Singapore a world leader. Much of this and further success can be attributed to the particular nurturing of Singaporean habits of mind, or what can be referred to as ’Kiasu’ (“afraid of losing” and “afraid of being static and needing to move on”) with large doses of pragmatism, incremental effectiveness, doggedness and collective independence of opinion. Lurking behind is also a strong belief in the perfectibility of cities and that well-laid plans can be successfully carried out along with the technology needed to support them. While often leading to clean-cut and relatively narrow norms and ways of life, overall betterment has ensued for many if not most. Leadership, political will, visionary insight, clarity and directness in co-ordination among public and private agencies has come to the fore, with little wasted energy and outcomes. In the future, both internal and external challenges will undoubtedly emerge. Further buy-in by the public to Singapore as a truly ‘city in nature’ will require attention and public conversation. The result, however, also seems likely to be one of a kind, or if the rest of the world is shrewder in its choices, the first among many of its kind.
Chapter PDF
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rowe, P.G., Hee, L. (2019). Ways Forward. In: A City in Blue and Green. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9597-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9597-0_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-9596-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-9597-0
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)