When a person is feeling uneasy about Singapore being geared up for an expected 6.5 million total population, Professor Edward Glaeser says there is no need to worry regarding it.
He declares, ”Density is underrated and undervalued and the pleasures of density are in fact quite remarkable”.
”Living with 6.5 million people doesn’t mean you necessarily have less private living space. There is absolutely nothing unhealthy about having lots of tall skyscrapers and people walking around between them. Not only is it good urban policy, it is a good environmental policy as well”.
Prof Glaeser, a 41-year-old economist at the Harvard University has studied about what made the cities tick. In Singapore, he made a talk at the Civil Service College about the cities’ survival and success by continuously undergoing reinvention, which is deemed possible if there is an adequate number of “smart people” who proposes to make a creative buzz.
He added that cities need the right buzz in order to progress. “The things that people define as what makes a city buzz, a lot of them have to do with public spaces and restaurants and bars and cafes. But I don’t think it’s at the heart of what makes cities well-functioning and successful. It’s a mistake to think that the buzz is just the number of pages that you read in Time Out magazine”.
Singapore should continuously expose itself to numerous cutting- edge ideas and include a large pool of skilful workers.
A small nation like Singapore, with a population of four million people, he says, there is nothing to worry because its physical magnitude will declare it as unsuitable from the large league provided that it has adequate quality and various talent.
But above all, he claims that cities have to serve the needs of the people rather than to only exist for their self-interest.
Prioritising people means eliminating unnecessary regulations that make housing and business unaffordable. He states that the cities’ latest surge in housing prices is a result of reducing building regulations, instead of anything else.
Logically, when there is an adequate supply of houses, home prices will meet the building cost. In areas where there is scarce of land like in Singapore, height restrictions serve as moistener on the supply of homes.
Although housing demands reflects the city’s attractiveness, its ability to make sufficient affordable homes to cope with that demand is considered as “a sign of urban health”. He notes that in several areas in the US, “it feels as if every neighbour has gotten the right to say no to every project”. In suburban areas, it is about districting and minimum size of lots. In metropolises, it is all about the maximum heights.
It is not density that makes housing inexpensive, its sustainability, he says. He suggested that if all cities are planned based on present human dynamics instead of preconceived ideas of what they have to look like.
During his tour in Singapore, he said it is the hot, humid weather that keeps several people away from the streets.
“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”
”The density levels are remarkable…if you love the ability of cities to bring people together and experience a collective world, there’s a lot to admire there”.