ENROUTE TO WILDERNESS : HOW WILD IS SINGAPORE?

Abstract

Urbanisation has made the concrete jungle denser, destroying natural nature’s biodiversity and the consequence of it is the phenomenon of human’s ever-increasing desire to visit the wilderness. Wilderness advocates have often claimed that experience in the wilderness can be therapeutic and “absorbing a kind of urban negative disvalue...and provide a ‘niche’ that meets deep seated psychosomatic needs.” (Rolston, ). Due to such reasons, many cities has attempted to re-integration of nature back into urban planning and architecture design, an example of such attempt can be found in Singapore, a highly urbanised nation with “Garden City” as its vision. However, the constant domination struggle between urbanisation and wilderness has caused the decline in biodiversity despite continuous investment in greening the city over the years. “Forest are there, Game is there, Streams and lakes are there, I did not hope to find anything resembling the great “wilderness areas” which we all dream about and talk about, and sometimes briefly set aside, in our National Forest and Parks. I speak rather of a certain quality [-wildness-] which should be, but not found in the ordinary landscape of producing forests and inhabited spaces.” (Leopold 1991, p. 226) Apart from the issue of declining biodiversity, Urbanisation has also created the social issue of people being presented with “ pure nature but rather something highly artificial” and has caused the lack of ‘wildness’ and ‘ human interaction while attempting to preserve biodiversity’. Nature has now conformed to social ideals (Rojek 1991, p. 25) with this social issue and ironic urbanisation struggle between man and nature leads to the question on: Is it possible to ever design a sustainable city with nature properly integrated? How can this be done and will Nature and Urbanisation ever be able to reach an equilibrium status? With the ever growing attempt of creating a union between man and nature, we have disrupted natural elements and it now posed problems for humans to solve. This paper aims to study the hits and misses of Singapore’s attempt to consider Nature integration with Urbanisation through social and sustainable systems spectrum. Together with case studies, such as Bishan Park, against bio-centric methods of sustainability, and seeing 2 how the society can live harmoniously with Nature, designs with the factor of ‘wildness’ can be brought back to create an ideal City in the Wilderness vision.