PANARCHY, PATCH DYNAMICS & PUNGGOL : A DISTURBANCE SYSTEMS APPROACH TO RESIDENTIAL LAND USE PLANNING AND ITS RELATION WITH BIODIVERSITY IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

In the context of Singapore, scarcity of land poses a challenge for a rapidly expanding population. Despite planned solutions to meet societal demands, the physical constraints of land resources in Singapore is so dire that every square foot of available land will be prudently developed to facilitate economic growth. This management of land space entails mass urbanization island wide, void of land area delegated as the rural countryside and the natural environment. As a counter to a future dystopic built environment, planning initiatives have been proposed to sync the built environment with the natural environment in a bid to protect the planet’s dwindling resources.

This dissertation proposes to study ecology’s disturbance systems that produce an alternative land use planning that calibrates the divide between economic progress and ecological preservation.

This dissertation will begin by defining urbanization and highlighting its resulting trade-off between ecology and economy, which is the crux of the conflicting interests between the built environment and the natural environment. Furthermore, it will explain how housing planning is the fundamental step in redefining the approach to designing the future built environment.

Understanding the urban ecosystem’s mechanism of disturbance theory equilibrium of panarchy, one will propose an alternative method to achieving sustainability in the aspect of town planning through spatial patch dynamics and how it facilitates spatial heterogeneity and encourages various flexible dynamic permutations between economic and ecologic activities.

The case study of the residential town of Punggol in Singapore is studied, as it is the latest housing precinct marketed with ecological features. It is heralded as Singapore’s solution to balancing and preserving biodiversity in the face of economic progression despite the severe limitation of buildable space. Furthermore its preceding history as an agricultural area makes Punggol a suitable study for mapping an alternative approach to urban planning that balances economic progress and ecological preservation.

From gathered data, the dissertation attempts to connect the disturbance theories of urban ecosystems to spatial planning through patch dynamics, in an attempt to promote the preservation of biodiversity, acting as a guide to improve the current urban planning approaches.