A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF SUSTAINABLE ASSESSMENT TOOLS IN SINGAPORE 'S

Abstract

Sustainable appraisals that architects and designers are involved in are mostly restricted to the architectural object (buildings) and its operations. This dissertation is interested in the sustainability of larger and broader territories, with a focus on urban physical infrastructures in Singapore. It arises from the recognition of the importance of, albeit underdeveloped, stages of methodology for sustainability assessment of urban physical infrastructure. Sustainability approaches now require more integrated processes across disciplines. Hence, it probes the efficacy of sustainability assessment tools in merging multi-disciplinary factors across the different stages of planning, designing, building and monitoring large scale infrastructure projects. The first part deals with the vast body of literature on challenges in assessing sustainable development and in infrastructure. To better understand the development infrastructure assessment tools in Singapore, the Green Mark for infrastructure (GMI) and its assessment of Marina Barrage is used as a case study. The GMI is then compared with other existing and emerging infrastructure assessment tools in UK, USA and Australia. Existing infrastructure sustainability assessment tools largely focused on environmental and economic impacts, and, are slowly including more social aspects due to the national significance of infrastructure and cities being increasingly urbanised and compact. In Singapore, due to its land constraints, limited resources, unique social and economic setting, the urban systems have to be developed using as limited space as possible. The compactness of Singapore creates opportunities to be harnessed in terms of integration of infrastructure in the urban fabric.