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1988
THE
INTELLIGENT TROPICAL CITY
The Town
Planning concepts of the tropical world are all versions of the Town and
Country Planning Acts of northern countries introduced during the colonial
period, modified by the Modernist paradigm. The conflicts caused by intensive
and rapid development in the post-colonial period are exacerbated by the
lack of new conceptual frameworks or planning precedents for the Tropical
City.
As population expand and economies grow, there are exponential increases
in the use of energy to ameliorate the negative impacts of heat, noise
and dust. Tropicalised design of individual buildings can only go part
of the way to resolving what is basically a problem of urban planning,
environmental design and energy management.
Reducing the need to travel is a basic strategy in the planning of the
Tropical City. A strategy is also essential for energy optimisation, use
of sun, wind, rain, land use, optimisation of cultural patterns, and ecological
balance. This essay examines the parameters for the new paradigm for the
Tropical City.
In 1985, an important International Conference was held in Kuala Lumpur
organised by the Malaysian Institute of Architects (PAM) and the Aga Khan
Program for Islamic Studies at Harvard University and MIT.
At that conference, Julian Beinhart, summarising the mood of the seminar,
proposed a research programme on the form of cities in the tropics, the
South-East Asian City or the 'low-energy' city.
The West, he pointed out, has a tradition of designing city forms especially
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Corbusier's Une Ville
Contemporaine and Ebenezer Howard's Garden City are two examples and they
have been used selectively all over the world. Even today they influence
city design in all countries including those in the tropics.
There has been no model for the tropical city and Beinhart thus suggested
a research focus. The generative metaphor would be that of an 'urban garden'.
THE CONCEPT
OF THE INTELLIGENT TROPICAL CITY
The two published conceptual designs for Marina City (circa 1985) in Singapore
examine no new grounds. They are geometrical and stylistic studies of
urban form based on straight line projections of the growth and role of
the CBD. A vision of the nature and the function of Singapore city in
the 21st century was not projected nor did they address, at the fundamental
level, the advanced form of a city in the tropics. Intrinsic local factors
were not significantly expounded despite the freedom to do so on a virgin
site. The proposals therefore fail to impress or inspire on any broad
cultural, technological or economic issues of any significance. Some of
the issues not addressed are:
How to reduce the discomfort and loss of energy needed to move about in
the tropics. This is one basic issue which has tremendous implications
as to the form and composition of the city. Can Marina City be designed
as a dense living and working city to reduce travel and movement and which
is conducive for round-the-clock activities? Where distances can be covered
on foot and the environment is shady and well ventilated. Where work,
learning, social interaction and recreation can be optimised? Where vehicular
traffic is kept at the periphery and where the interior spaces between
buildings are shaded with covered open spaces having cool micro-climates
which serve as informal gathering places. Can new technologies be applied
tapping solar energy and be brought into spaces to cool and to ventilate
them? Can the roofs of large covered outdoor spaces be used to collect
rainwater and to provide energy to run the essential services of the city?
Perhaps reduce the humidity?
Can the city
use the sun and the rain as positive and poetic elements in design? Can
the city be considered as one complex eco-system and be designed as such?
These questions challenge the imagination and stimulate the opening up
of new conceptual windows and vistas towards Singapore's future. The disappointment
with the two proposals is that they both do not challenge our imaginations
at any level - least of all the average Singaporeans for whom it is ultimately
intended.
The Tropical City concept serves also a process of mental emancipation
from the conceptual biases which have governed the design of cities in
the tropics. All our planning models are from developed nations in the
Northern Hemisphere. Since the colonial period, there has been no basic
re-think. New conceptual and design tools have not been developed. This
can be seen in the planning of the city and housing estates. Today, most
housing estates are designed with the living areas of the apartments facing
out onto noisy roads instead of being turned around to front into quiet
and cool interior landscaped courtyards or parks.
Presently,
the interiors of housing estates by the public and the private sectors
are largely occupied by carparks instead. In Tropical planning, carparks
are better on the fringes adjacent to the roads and highways, screened
and shaded by dense planting allowing the interior to be uninterrupted
by vehicular traffic. This principle of planning can apply to the design
of the CBD too. Basic ideas such as this can only be implemented through
overall town planning with appropriately modified planning and building
regulations. So long as this is not the case, individual buildings cannot
fully and properly respond to the challenge of designing for the tropics
and air-condi-tioning is frequently the only way to avoid the noise, dust
and heat generated by roads and hard surface areas that surround buildings.
50 per cent
of energy used in Singapore is for air-conditioning. If roads and carparks
are planned on the perimeter and buildings arranged to front onto interior
green spaces, such buildings will not need to be as dependent on air-condi-tioning
as now but can be more loose-edged and exploit natural ventilation more.
The savings in energy due to this can be significant. The control of OTTV
in buildings is necessary as remedial action only. The illness lies in
the town planning concepts in inadvertently genera-ting an over dependence
on air-conditioning.
INTELLIGENT
CITY
While we ponder the Tropical City, we must also think about making it
more intelligent so that the city can retain its competitive edge in the
world economy.
The ambient information content has to be increased too. All cities came
about because of the need to transact ideas, goods and services. Therefore
the natural emphasis is on communications of ideas. Increasingly, the
transactions are speeded up through the use of telecommunications and
information technology. We can expect such networks to be further intensified
with additional features which will enable remote working, shopping and
even automated manufacturing. A certain degree of decentralisation of
the workplace will be possible and this will depend on provisions made
for the social and cultural aspects of work and recreation which a more
information-intensive system will need.
The demand for intensive human face-to-face interaction will correspondingly
increase as economies develop; people need to express themselves more.
Face to face communication has advantages over electronic communication
systems in that it is unpredictable and unplanned. Its importance lies
in the stimu-lation of ideas and initiatives. In research areas such as
in Silicon Valley and in MIT's "most intelligent triangle" in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, the restaurants and watering holes are the important
meeting places where researchers meet after work to exchange ideas. This
spatial pattern has important implications for the planning of cities
of the future where the location of social nodes should provide scope
for a wide range of human transactions which enhances the city as a multi-transac-tional,
information and ideas centre. Greater stress will be made on information
exchange in this late stage of the Industrial Revolution and Singapore
is fast swept along this route. The combination of Electronic Information
Systems and intensive human interface creates the challenge to consider
an enhanced role for the city. The city can be a campus wherein lifelong
learning is entirely feasible and desirable and the lines between work,
study and research can become closely inter-related. The new spatial implications
challenge architecture and urban planning.
Another aspect of the Intelligent Tropical City is its ability to transmit
and carry cultural cues. One of the most powerful but subtle means by
which culture is carried is through ambience.
The design of the social nodes should ensure that the ambience created
is conducive to the animation of social and cultural activities within
such nodes. Ambience is produced through a subtle and complex combination
of factors. These factors include the mix of activities, the scale of
activities, the quality of the activities, the appropriateness and the
density of use, the visual scale and textures of the place. To achieve
ambience would therefore require a much more sophisticated process of
planning and design and implementation than at present employed. More
user participation and dialogue with and design by different designers
and entrepreneur groups have to be allowed to create diversity, vitality
and participation.
Yet another aspect that contributes to the intelligence of an environment
is its ambient data level. It has been found in child psychology that
visual and formal complexity of the lived-in environment contributes to
the development of mathematical and spatial skills. Freedom of physical
movement, tumbling and touch contribute to the wholesome development of
an individual's confidence, physical co-ordination and conceptual capacities.
The environment must therefore be designed to be rich in texture, be variegated
and with space for stretching limbs and involving the senses.
To stimulate the mind and the senses, the ambient data level in terms
of activities and sensations should be high. Clean and sterile buildings
and spaces separated from nature and from human activity should be avoided
or ameliorated. This is the hidden agenda in environmental and architectural
design urgently requiring attention. Existing environments can and must
be enriched through modification.
DEFINING
THE AGENDA FOR THE CITY IN THE TROPICS
Cities in the tropics are still conceived as a passive vehicle for economic
development, transportation and housing and are not conceived as capable
of stimulating new products and new growth potentials. The Tropical City
concept is intended to stimulate new products. At best, the economy of
cities in the tropics are import -substituting and foreign production
bases only. This is the historic challenge for Singapore as the most developed
city in the tropical region. Developments in travel, telecommunications
and more recently, information technology, are new factors which are having
an impact on life in all cities. What new challenges do these new developments
pose for the conceptualisation of the tropical city and the development
of new business potentials?
The agenda involves the conceptualisation of the tropical city with built-in
information systems capable of releasing latent potentials. This is the
urban agenda urged by our age. Singapore is well placed to address this
agenda, perhaps better than most cities since many of the others are beset
with steamy congestion exacerbated by intense social conflicts, endemic
poverty and great disparity threatening to tear their social fabric apart.
What we do in Singapore would give us a role in the tropical world which
goes beyond rhetoric. When we develop our city as a tropical city, we
will derive concepts, technologies and products which initially we will
need for ourselves but which later can be replicated or exported.
Focus on the Intelligent Tropical City arose simultaneously from several
agendas which have converged in the last five years. The aspect of "intelligence"
came from developments in the IT field. Concepts such as Knowledge Technology,
Information Science, Teleworking, Interactive Television, Hyper-media,
Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems have spurred speculation, experimentation
and research into human interfaces, the family and implications on leisure,
learning, work and economic production.
The idea of an information city is of course not new. There has been research,
writing and speculation over the last 20 years and a considerable literature
exists to draw from. As Singapore embarks on high quality production,
high-tech industry and an extensive IT network, the issues are of particular
relevance.
The Intelligent Tropical City concept juxtaposes information technology
with econo-mics, culture and geography in urban settings. It seeks to
utilise positively the sun, rain, wind and vegetation to produce a conducive
and efficient living environment imaginatively. A new lifestyle is obviously
implied too. A poetic agenda naturally arises too to create forms and
expression which embody the unique and the intrinsic.
Since there are no precedents for the Tropical City concept, it is necessary
to start preparations early so that when it is time to build we will not
be unprepared and have to resort again to ready- made imported concepts
and ideas because we have none. Singapore will never be a first class
city if it cannot initiate basic and fundamental ideas on what it can
become.
Some of the agenda items are already being investigated.
THE HISTORIC
AGENDA
Building the great tropical city is a response to the potentials of our
time and the specifics of our place.
It is also a challenge to integrate ethics, societal values and cultural
proclivities through a clear collective vision that works. It fulfills
the promise of our place and time. It unties the intellectual umbilical
cords which education and professional career paths are tied to.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
AGENDA
1. Global environment
- clean energy
- ecological balance
- water pollution control
- air pollution control
2. North/South dialogue and the South/South dialogue - the expansion of
real opportunities beyond rhetoric.
3. Modern
Asian identity and Singapore's role in relation to other tropical cities
- technological transfers and conceptual relevance.
4. Asian
democracy and civic urban culture -dialogue and partici-pation through
a shared vision.
5. Focus
on new devel-opmental paradigms - integration of fragmented life, work
and learning.
6. Aid and
fair trade.
THE STRATEGIC
AGENDA
1. Compact planning -high intensity and multiple use.
2. Historic conservation - protection and enlargement of scope.
3. Nature conservation - inventory andaudit.
4. Transport modelling, planning and management.
5. Water-resource modelling,development and management.
6. Energy audit and modelling for development and management.
7. Floor and land space allocation - as a function of a national agenda
and vision.
8. Time budgeting and optimisation - world perspective-24-hour city.
9. Night time uses and work/leisure schedules and infrastructure support.
10. Family/learning and earning - family life cycle strategy.
11. Rural/urban relations - balanced developments.
12. Disaster planning.
13. Place attachment -psychology of place.
14. Participation process - consensus, debate, new ideas, conceptual review.
15. Open planning discourse - structure and accessibility.
16. Clean air policy.
17. Clean river policy.
18. Clean sea policy.
19. Topography conservation.
20. Co-ordinated plan-ning - a multi-agency approach - public and private
sector partnership.
21. Specific organisa-tional ideology vis-a-vis various produc- tion and
economic sectors.
22. Total environmental accounting - costs, benefits and disbenefits.
23. Price structuring.
URBAN
DESIGN AGENDA
1. Volumetric modeling.
2. Geometric modelling.
3. Vertical zoning.
4. Infill developments.
5. Connectivity -physical, visual and thematic - horizontal and vertical
linkages.
6. Synergistic mix of uses and social choreography.
7. Synergistic infrastructure.
8. Landscaping and building mix strategy.
9. Transport and mobility - choices and consequences.
10. Utilisation of sun, wind and water.
11. Urban cognition and identity - design strategies.
12. Incrementality in services and urban systems.
13. Noise, dust pollution controls.
14. Synergistic urban ecological systems -policies and proposals.
15. Micro-climate creation.
16. Bridging structures between buildings.
THE ARCHITECTURAL
AGENDA
1. Buildings as support frames for human activity and living nature -
architecture as support structure - architecture as landscape.
2. Rainwater collection and recycling as part of building design.
3. Refuse collection and recycling.
4. Vertical landscaping - provision and upkeep.
5. Evaporative cooling and energy conservation.
6. Treatment of sur-faces, volumes and enclosures in the tropical city
context.
7. Tropical aesthetics in high intensity urban context.
8. Open building systems - building component develop-ment for adaptability
and flexibility of use.
9. Incremental construc-tion - addition and adaptation.
10. Enchantment -environmental aesthetics (ambience).
11. Role of idiosyncratic expression.
12. Building typology and prototype reformation - type as social agreement.
13. Community and privacy - urban conviviality and seclusion.
14. Soft-edged building aesthetics.
15. High ambient data levels - texture, grain and activity information.
16. Counter-cyclical building strategies.
17. Automated households.
THE AESTHETIC
AGENDA
1. Umbrella aesthetics - the section as gene-rator rather than the enclosure.
2. Integrating nature in buildings - seasonal variations.
3. Aesthetics of shadow and shade rather than platonic volume and plane.
4. Limits of cultural and ethnic symbolism - consensus, trans-formation
and innovation.
5. Texture and scale co-related to activityand place.
6. Implied space and anticipatory psycho-logy in form, space and place.
7. Human scale in dense settings.
8. Cognition in high intensity areas.
9. Management of scale differences between intense developments and adjacent
natural and heritage scales.
10. Utilisation of sound, smell, texture, theme, colour and form in public
places.
11. Layering and matting of surfaces and spaces - interaction of groups
of buildings.
12. Profiles and silhouette against overcast skies.
13. Rhapsody in design and strategies for enchantment.
14. Epistemology and pedagogy of form as a fundamentally inclusive design
and artistic language system.
15. The city as a collec-tive work of art.
THE SOCIAL
AGENDA -A CIVIC CULTURE
1. Passive participation.
2. Active participation (structured)
3. Active participation (non-structured)
4. Active participation (non-anticipated)
5. Active participation (anticipated)
6. Active participation (by levels of participation)
7. A climate of public discourse - informa- tion culture - access and
consequence.
8. High information accessibility and open inquiry systems at different
levels of entry - information navigation.
9. Family locus in spatial arrangements - tri-nuclear house-holds.
10. Open autonomous research systems.
11. Open economic systems with open information access.
12. Interactive inquiry systems into social management mechanisms.
13. Teleworking and proximity factors.
THE INTERIOR
PLANNING AGENDA
1. Dwelling units for 2 family cycles -adaptability and seclusion.
2. The tri-nuclear house - emotional place attachment and enhancement
of family history and locality identification.
3. Component design and internal adaptability.
4. Verandah lifestyle.
5. Tropical Asian kitchen.
6. Humidity and storage.
7. Ventilation and task air/con.
8. Psycho-physiological concepts.
THE TECHNOLOGY
WINDOWS
Contracted R & D and investment commitments:
1. Evaporative cooling technology - applied to whole city and to each
building.
2. Energy modelling of whole city and each building.
3. Micro-climatic meas-urements and model-ling of whole districts.
4. Optimised cooling systems with sensing - intelligent hardware.
5. Water use and recycling.
6. Waste heat recovery in energy conservation.
7. Desalination through use of waste heat.
8. Vertical landscaping technology and plant type selection.
9. Urban farming - hy-ponics and hi-techanimal husbandry.
10. Personal urban transport - electric vehicles and smart carts.
11. Refuse processing and recycling.
12. Solar energy for cool-ing and ventilation.
13. Flash distillation.
14. District cooling.
15. Hyper-media for structured and non-structured communi-cation and information
access.
16. Auto-reactive building utilities and building skins.
17. Solar lighting for deep spaces.
18. Energy storage.
19. Building automation.
20. Public place instant information systems.
21. Low labour building and city maintenance systems.
22. Light weight soils and rooting materials.
23. Building components -open building system.
24. Solar clothes dryers.
25. Water retentive surface materials for evaporative cooling.
26. Rapid aerated pack-aged sewerage systems.
27. Photo-tropic glass applications.
28. Solar ventilation systems.
29. Heat absorption cooling systems.
30. Water repellent but breathing paints.
31. Urban pest control systems.
32. Remote control ventilation systems.
33. Automated control ventilation systems.
34. Automated households.
35. Photo voltaic building applications.
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