I read this letter in the forum pages today, commenting on a recent article (Pack them in, build them up – March 27 2009) in which a certain Professor Edward Glaeser extolled the benefits in Singapore having a 6.5 million population. I was similarly alarmed. With more crowded trains, buses, shopping centres (with Tampines starting to look like the new Orchard), with more and more land development transforming previously empty spaces into brand spanking new condos and office buildings, with more heritage areas being torn down, spiffed up, renamed and otherwise obliterated, I really wonder what Singapore would look like if it got even more crowded. He may be an academic but his arguments, while being sound academically, just make me balk.
His idea of a perfect candidate to boost our population rate?
My model of a skilled worker is that 42-year-old biotechnology worker who has a husband and two kids and is trying to live a decent life.
On how having a dense city would help the environment?
Crowding more people on less land is fundamentally good for the environment. Partly because people have lower transportation costs, live in smaller homes, and use less energy.
On our street life?
There’s a huge amount of pedestrian traffic but it’s indoors. It’s all in the air- conditioned malls, which is really where the street life is. That means connections between those malls are actually what city planning needs.
Read the article and tell me what you think? I just feel sad at the thought of a Singapore supplemented by an army of biotech workers, living in high-rise buildings that simply get higher and higher as if trying to make an escape, and preferring to walk in underground air-conditioned walkways. (Brings a whole new meaning to ‘rat race’?)
As it is I see the working crowd at Raffles City in the mornings and think ‘Dawn of the Dead’. TOC calls it, the Sardine City. Is it no wonder Ethan Hawke lamented in not having seen Singaporeans really living?
HALP.
