PORT - CITY : THE FRINGE INTERFACE BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE PORT

Abstract

With a current land mass of about 699 sq.km., Singapore faces immense challenges in meeting needs for land for its growing population. However, not all land can be developed – 40% of the land mass is set aside for water catchment’s areas while other areas are taken up for military and other infrastructural development. Furthermore, height restrictions are imposed on buildings in several towns due to their locations that fall within the flight paths from the Changi International Airport. The Urban Renewal Authority has identified the problem of an acute land scarcity in Singapore and had used land reclamation extensively as one of the strategies in order to grow more land to meet the increased need for land. Of all the infrastructural development, large extent of land reclamation has been attributed to the thriving seaport as it continues to takes up a huge portion of land mass in order to sustain the growing port economy.

Singapore has always been historically regarded as a port city, even before Raffles period. Due to its geographical location, and deep-water sea bed, it has been a good point of exchange between many different trading nations. Although GDP produced by the port itself only takes up 2%, the amount of supporting industries like storage, ship repair, infrastructure, transport and freight contribute substantially to the growth of Singapore.

Efficiency in port running resulted in the servant spaces to be pushed all the way to the fringe of the port. If the sea is the front of the port that receives the trading vessels, then the interface between the city and the port becomes the back lane, where all the services placed resulted in a disparate relationship between the port and city. When the city front meets the back of the port, the urban fabric becomes disjoint, resulting in great extent of linear left over spaces that are not utilized efficiently.

The thesis seeks to reactivate the linear fringe and reconcile the disparate relationship between the port and the city through the notion of a 3-dimensional city, where layering and stacking of the urban fabric allows for the creation a more compact and sustainable community, and new living typologies that might be created for living condition to begin.