I was similarly impressed by the gigantic underground systems in Montreal. Many people go for months during the winter time never going above ground, working, shopping and living all inside the interconnected underground shopping malls businesses etc.
Toronto's underground system is the largest one in the world. 1200 retail locations, 30km long, 4M sq feet of retail space. It's very nice, all marble or polished stone everywhere, brightly lit, good food courts. Many many food courts. Almost all of it privately maintained and owned by each of the 50+ connected downtown towers and buildings.
In the summer, no one goes above ground it's too hot and humid. In the Winter it's too cold. For a few glorious weeks in Spring and Fall however, all the downtown residents and office workers find it hospitable to occasionally pop outside of their towers to enjoy the outdoors.
It sounds nice and cool but the truth is it's just basically a mess of interconnected buildings and crappy malls that sometimes you can use to make a portion of your trip warmer. I mean, it's still good to have and everything, but it's not at all a city and people that live in that area go above ground routinely all through the winter.
Calgary too. There was an entire movie made that centers around a group of workers who make a bet for who can go the longest without ever going outdoors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waydowntown
Would love to understand some of the underlying design and social factors that go into making these types of concourses a success. We have a similar abet much smaller underground mall in Philadelphia running through3 major transit stops in the downtown area, connecting multiple buildings and plazas, yet the area remains disheveled and relatively unused and even sometimes dangerous.
That is cool. Would be great to have a "Common Service Tunnel" in all cities. Its insane how much roadway gets dug up each year. Of course I doubt they'd all be as clean as the one in the Singapore photo.
It's the advantage you get when your city's development occurs after centuries of experience of others, you can improve on the mistakes every other metropolis made. The same is true of sg's transit system, roads, etc.
I could see Singapore building an air conditioned dome over the whole city. Besides the nonfree press, etc, the relentless heat and humidity is the biggest negative of the city.
> Singapore building an air conditioned dome over the whole city
By the time they build it, it won't just be for aircon, but also to purify the air coming in from outside. It'll also be nice to do without the rain. Singapore with a dome is probably what the first moon bases will look like.
No kidding. I'm from the US south. I thought I knew humid until I visited Singapore. Walking off the airplane at 5:00 AM was like walking into a sauna, and it never got better.
I was talking to a shopkeeper, who apologized for "the bad weather". I said, yes, is it always this humid? She looked at me blankly. "Oh, this isn't humid; I meant the rain."
Same story for me. It was so hot, I basically lost my appetite and only got to try 1/2 of the foods I wanted to try there. I was constantly visiting the sugarcane drink and iced tea stalls though.
Lee Kuan Yew, founder of modern Singapore: "Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency."
I lived in the Farrer Park neighborhood a few years ago, and most of my neighbors seemed quite content with nice fans in their house, and would often not use their air conditioning. I guess everyone's different. I've got a buddy who grew up in Singapore and when he goes back to visit, the room he stays in has no air conditioning.
When I visited I tried to walk ONE subway stop outside in DECEMBER. I almost fainted halfway through and had to sit down and drink water. Almost ended up calling an Uber.
If you are not used to the heat and humidity (i.e. coming from a colder clime) then it is very easy to overheat and dehydrate yourself. Don't underestimate the amount of water you have to drink.
You will find that locals will have subtly learned the art of avoiding the worst of it - i.e. avoiding walking outdoors in the middle of the day, and also walking along the side of the street that is in more shade from buildings etc.
The key thing is walking slowly to minimize energy expenditure. The Malays, in particular, have this down to an art, while the average New Yorker or Scandinavian will spontaneously combust after walking two blocks.
Singapore is one of the few major populations on earth that is shielded from most natural disasters. It's also not near a fault line, so earthquakes, tropical storms, tsunamis are unlikely to affect it.
Major flooding can occur due to rains, however. The city has dealt with it in the past and seems to have that under control.
The other major disaster that hits Singapore frequently throughout every year is the "haze" crisis [0], which is actually man-made. It was particularly bad when I was there in 2013. But I mention this only as an aside since we're talking about natural disasters; it wouldn't affect the plans mentioned in this article.
That's awful, I'm sorry to see that. The haze problem was one of the main reasons I left Singapore. It's no way to live, no way to raise children. In 2013 I remember there was a street where a lot of birds died mid-flight from suffocation on the smoke, fell to the ground and littered the pavement.
It's just sad to see a problem like this, all caused by human activity. It could be stopped but not much is being done to do so.
Not really. Singapore is on the equator and surrounded by large landmasses (Malaya, Sumatra, Borneo, Java) on all sides, so it's never in the path of cyclones/typhoons and is shielded from tsunamis as well.
And yet there are also places where Singaporean spotlessness
gives way to dirt. Places like Geylang, a red light district
well off the tourist map, and Orchard Towers, with its
so-called "four floors of whores".
Actually, Geylang is hardly off the tourist map. It's quickly becoming more like the French Quarter in New Orleans--a rapidly gentrifying night spot with enough of the historical seedy element (in this case, many of the famous brothels with the hanging red lanterns that only a few years ago were far more numerous) to keep things authentic. Also a relatively affordable and increasingly popular place to live that's close to downtown.
FWIW, I know this because with all the new development it's a popular area for Airbnb rentals. Given it's reputation, I did some research as well as inquire with local family-in-law. As an outsider a very familiar picture emerges of a changing historic neighborhood. But opinions from Singaporeans might be far more mixed.
It's funny: over in the comments about a healthcare article they say that Singapore has it easier because it's smaller. And here we admire them for pulling things off despite being small.
I didnt read those comments, but large capital projects one would think is harder, since they collect less overall revenue. For example its hard to imagine singapore sending a person to mars, over say China or US
other things, especially people related, are much easier. its very close together, very homogeneous, etc.
Uhh, Singapore is very far from homogeneous. There are Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians, over a million expats from all countries and in all social classes and four official languages to cater to them all.
Haha this reminds me of when I lived and worked in Singapore and an Andersen consultant flew in from Kansas to "help us out". His first complaint was that there was nowhere to eat! That was so stupid I couldn't respond, since there is more culinary variety in Singapore than anywhere else I've ever been, but eventually I figured out that he wasn't able to eat anywhere besides a steakhouse, which establishments are common in Kansas. (Of course he could have found one if he had looked hard enough, although fair warning on the unpalatable Australian beef, but instead he got in some sort of sensitivity trouble and flew back home...)
> although fair warning on the unpalatable Australian beef
Is Australian beef unpalatable? It all depends on the cut and the grade, of course; but, buying good quality beef here in Australia, comparing it to beef I've tasted in restaurants in the US, it tastes just as good.
Maybe the stuff we export to Singapore isn't that good. Or maybe higher prices push people towards the lower quality stuff.
Really good beef is expensive in Singapore, and the locals don't have that much of a culture steak. So there's a bunch of bad restaurants for western expats, and some very high end ones.
> His first complaint was that there was nowhere to eat
Ha, that's funny. I was in Singapore for 3 months for an internship, and decided to start eating meat to maximize enjoyment at the awesome food courts in Singapore.
Eh? Australian beef is decent to excellent from my experiences there. Norwegian beef, on the other hand, tends to range from garbage to edible, unless you want to pay >$30 for enough meat for one person to cook at home. And that's if you're lucky and they have anything that has been properly aged.
Being small definitely has its pros and cons, but consider that Singapore is a City-State in the same size class as Chicago (by Area, and actually a bit bigger) and the same population class as say Colorado or Norway (5 millionish give or take) and only one tier of government, the National tier.
They definitely lack natural resources and their tax base is that of a small country, but they don't have the usual 2-3 tiers of administrative overhead, the government is closer to the authoritarian end and any large capital projects they do undertake are largely going to benefit everyone to some degree simply because of how tight the nation is. Also being a nation that is one city does wonders for focusing on the habitability of that one city, and there's no other cities to compete for tax dollars there.
As cool as this is, I think the space savings is a red herring. There's still plenty of undeveloped land in SG, and lots of low rise buildings. A combination of well placed subway stops, transitioning some low-rise apartments to high rise, avoiding excessive road/parking space and generally competent urban planning should be enough to accommodate Singapore's burgeoning population without the need for mole people. Its always cheaper and easier to build up and out than to dig down.
I'm not sure where you get that idea. There isn't plenty of undeveloped land unless you're talking about jurong or punggol, and it doesn't help if those places take 2 or so hours to commute to downtown from on the MRT. If you're talking about the small patches of parks and the historic heritage sites, I think they have their reasons for keeping those.
It doesn't? It's 53 min from Tuas Link at the extreme western tip of Singapore to Raffles Place by MRT, and you'd be hard pressed to find a place in Singapore where even a connecting bus would add more than 30 min to that.
Either way, I'd argue that you need some parks and forests, or your populace will go insane. 20 or so golf courses in such a small and dense island are ridiculous, though.
The most valuable space is the blank space on Singapore - the catchment areas are fabulous places to go hike and the island would be a nightmare without them.
The city itself has none of it. Hong Kong is large slabs of concrete, where the people lives, surrounded by large slabs of green hills, where no one lives.
Victoria Park, in the heart of Causeway Bay is the best example of it: it's just concrete with a few trees here and there, so depressing.
I would have thought Bond-type villains would be the only folks with the guts to even attempt projects like this, let alone actually complete them; really cool! Kudos to Singapore!
