MASTERPLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE : WHAT ARE THEIR ROLES IN ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT AND MOVEMENT IN SINGAPORE?

Abstract

Transportation is a large part of our everyday life. In the United States of America, the average time spent driving to work is about 24.3 minutes a day. This means that Americans now spend more than 100 hours a year commuting to work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. That is more than the average two weeks of vacation time (80 hours) taken by many of Americans during a year. In the UK, transportation accounts for 34% of total energy consumption. Thus a reduction in carbon emission from the transportation sector will greatly affect the overall carbon footprint. However, traffic volumes and energy consumption from transport in Singapore is still rising, and the potential contributions from masterplanning and architecture to reduce this is still largely underplayed. With this in mind, many institutions have developed green standards for the design and planning of transport and movement for new building developments. BREEAM for example has been developed in the UK to determine the sustainability of both buildings, and the community itself. This paper begins by assessing the sustainability of Tampines New Town, using green rating tools as a reference, then analyses the various methods to increase transport sustainability, and its applicability to the context of Singapore. It studies different transportation behaviours of Singaporeans, especially for ‘Live, Work, Play’, and forms relationships between the behaviours and the available methods. It recognizes that the car in Singapore is more of a luxury and lifestyle good, rather than a necessity, and how that mentality is carried into choice mode of travel. The conclusion reached is that Singapore has been effectively responding to the efficiency requirements, but a sustainable transport system is also about making the experience of travel pleasant. The main idea is that architects should be designing the space based on pedestrian travel, and not the car, as it is done in the past. The two main ways to do this would be to separate the traffic into zones, and to enhance the environment for the pedestrian zone.