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EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
LIVEABLE CITIES : PUBLIC EXPECTATIONS AND EXPRESSIONS
Civil
rights movements in the 1950s and 60s started community actions
in housing and planning notably in the UK and US. For four decades,
many legislations have been passed to ensure public consultation
and participation but the end results remain dismal. The paper
examines some recent successful initiatives in the UK, China and
Singapore : urban regeneration, gentrification, development control,
gender profiling, high-rise living in particular, and self-governance,
role of civil society and the intellectuals in general.
Drawing
conclusions from an earlier research by the author on tenants’ participation
in urban housing renewal in the 1970s, the paper questions tokenism
in participation and appeals to governments and planners to recognise
and respect people’s expectations and expressions. To make cities
liveable, those who govern must be creative, responsive and able
to engage and dialogue with the communities. Old models and practices
must be re-examined for the new economy in an increasingly borderless
world. People on the other hand have to act responsibly in exercising
their rights to shape common destiny. Successful examples are plentiful
to illustrate why partnership prevails over paternalism in city
governance. Planners are also urged to think ‘fuzzy’, for this
could result in smart growth for the cities.
‘We need urbanisation, which is understood as a process determined
by the interaction between man and environment. More so, we need
to understand urbanism, which is a way of life,’ concludes the paper.
Tan Shee Tiong,
Oct 2001
1950s and 60s were decades
of civil rights movement in US and the UK. Public participation
in the UK planning process started in the 1970s. Early initiatives
focused on preparation of development plans, following recommendations
of the Skeffington Committee in 1969. Since the introduction of
statutory publicity requirements for planning applications in 1991,
and increased media coverage of planning issues, public awareness
and expectations of the process have been raised. 1997 Nolan Committee
suggested applicants, objectors and interested parties can make
representations to planning committees. A 1999 Royal Town Planning
Institute’s survey revealed that nearly half of the 120 local authorities
sampled allowed public representatives at their development control
committee meetings. Highest was 76% in the case of London boroughs.
 Last
year, a UK social policy research discovered a significant gap between
the rhetoric of community participation in area regeneration programmes
and what happens in practice. Many community participants felt
that existing mechanism for community involvement were inadequate,
and that insufficient time was allowed for consultation. Report
also recommended that central government should only fund regeneration
programmes that guarantee the provision of community involvement.
It suggested that community sector should share responsibility for
ensuring participation structures are ‘genuinely inclusive, representative
and democratically accountable’. It also found that a conventional
pyramidal power structure, elected or not, will not serve as an
effective lower tier of representation in most communities. The
key is to reflect diversity while preventing the dominance of self-appointed
‘professional volunteers’. As long as community involvement is
regarded as a cheap option it will remain vulnerable to extremism,
says the report.
 The
shortage of affordable housing in London for the past decade is
undermining its sustainable economic and social development. The
annual requirement of 218,000 homes can only be met by acquiring
existing vacant homes as well as new development. The Greater London
Authority’s housing commission report acknowledges the need to maintain
high density in central and inner London and to increase densities
in center London. It also offers innovative solutions such as bringing
forward non-operational sites for affordable housing. New powers
are given to councils to levy full council tax on empty property,
backed by greater use of compulsory purchase orders. One of the
key provision in last year government’s Urban White Paper was to
breathe new life into towns and cities by bringing previously developed
land and empty property back into use. The other is to provide
a new ‘sounding board on urban issues’ bringing together community,
academic, professional, private and business interests and an urban
sub-group of the Central-local Partnership, both of which will support
and advise the cabinet committee.
 Charles
Landry in his book “The Creative City : A Toolkit for Urban Innovators”
mentioned the city itself is a complex work of art – a malleable
artifact shaped by the compromises, power plays and aspirations
of its citizens. Its cultural heritage connects to our histories
and our collective memories. It anchors our sense of being and provides
us with a backbone to face the future. Culture should shape the
technicalities of urban planning, rather than being seen as a marginal
add-on. For cities to flourish, they need the creativity of today’s
citizens to push the boundaries of tradition, but without erasing
memory. Every city can have a niche and make something out of nothing
: Freiberg for eco-research, New Orleans for the blues and Singapore
for ‘city in the garden’.
 Landry
takes a dismissive attitude to the way most local authorities run
their planning functions, denouncing them as no more than land use
and development control departments. Planners are lumped in with
property developers and accountants as the worst offenders for ‘boxed-in’
thinking and inability to value what they cannot calculate.
Planning should be idealistic, innovative and optimistic. Aristotle
and Plato wrote of the perfect city. Thomas More wrote of the Utopian
town of Amaurote. In the last century, the Utopians had
a vision of new towns as self-sufficient coherent mechanism.
We have lost that idealism. Planners’ aim is not merely to provide
the useful service of reducing the inconvenience for developers
and other powerful companies and people, even though they create
wealth, employment and a bigger tax base. Planning should seek
to favour the greater good of society over the good of the few.
It must be complemented by courage, pragmatism, knowledge and skill.
 If
you want people to use their cars less, recycle their rubbish and
live in mixed communities, chairlady of London Planning Advisory
Committee said you have to engage with them. She believes ‘you
can be positively parochial as long as you are working within a
strategic framework. ‘Positive parochialism’ speaks up for the
local interest, but informed by a strategic overview of the interests
of London as a whole. She also advocates for a legislative framework
to encourage the drawing up of neighbourhood plans which would complement
mayor’s city wide strategic planning. Another ground breaking proposal
was drawn up by Plymouth City Council to check whether a local plans
policies discriminate against women, who are not a minority group.
The gender audit looks at issue such as women being the main users
of public transport.
 For
a country like UK that is steeped in heritage, it is interesting
to note that following a campaign led by prominent architect Richard
Rogers to relax existing built conservation guidelines to smooth
the way for good quality modern architecture, the government is
considering changes to the rules protecting listed buildings and
conservation areas. A key consideration is whether these consent
procedures can be speeded up and simplified without affecting decision
quality. The other is to examine whether the right balance is being
struck between protecting national treasures and allowing economic
development. Even the conservative Victorian Society echoed the
needs to constantly reviewing the balance between conservation and
new buildings.
 London Borough of Southwark has selected a developer
Southwark Land Regeneration (SLR) as partner to regenerate Elephant
and Castle at a estimated cost of £1.5 billion. Project director said out of
the 3 shortlisted developers, SLR was the most committed to the
key issue of community involvement. Council was also attracted
by the developer’s plan for a housing design competition rather
than using in-house staff. Tenants and project director will join
hands in selecting the architect. Older residents who feared that
the current shopping centre would go, would be involved in planning
its replacement. Sir Peter Hall spoke up and reminded that the
new retail development would have to continue to serve the needs
of local community who found the present down-market centre met
their specific needs.
A 306m tall tower has also been proposed for the London Borough
of Southwark. The would-be tallest building in Europe was designed
by Renzo Piano.  English
Heritage claimed it would severely detract from the Tower of London’s
setting and protected views of St. Pauls’ Cathedral from Parliament
Hill. Developer disagreed with the argument and challenged English
Heritage’s recent backing of two towers of 140m high in the Borough
of Chelsea which the latter said would provide a dramatic new focal
point that would enhance river views. Now English Heritage and the
government’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Form have
joint hands and issued a national Guidance on Tall Buildings and
these two projects would be the first to be considered. The guidance
states that tall buildings are only appropriate where they do not
damage or detract from open spaces and rivers, historic parks, important
panoramas and views or listed and other protected buildings. Good
designs could be rejected if these criterias were not met, said
English Heritage. This position is contrary to their earlier stand
about Norman Foster’s Swiss Re Tower in London in which the tower’s
design quality was cited as the main factor for backing the scheme
– despite fears about its impact on conservation areas.
 In
the 70s, residential towers in U.K. were rejected by residents and
many were demolished. However 30 years later UK published National
Sustainable Tower Blocks Initiative and declared that they can meet
housing need of single people, older people and couples without
children, for the next 20 years. It is now believed that where
tower blocks are properly managed, they can provide sustainable
accommodation on brownfield sites.
Italo Calvino’s book ‘Invisible Cities’ cited cities, like dreams,
are made of desires and fears. In the aftermath of the terrorist
attack on New York’s Manhattan, fears have overcome desires. But
for many cities in the developing world, they are never made of
desires. In the Calvino’s book, Marco Polo describes to Kublai
Khan a city made of two half-cities. One half is permanent but
the other temporary, and they uproot it, dismantle it and take it
off, transplanting it to the vacant lots of another city. The metaphor
of contrasting conjoined cities is manifest today in less developed
countries.
 In
1996 Habitat II conference in Istanbul, United Nations committed
itself to the ideals of equitable and sustainable settlements.
In June this year, they met in UN headquarters to review progress
towards this model over the past 5 years. South Africa, who has
7.5 million people living in informal settlements, put in strong
emphasis on involvement of the residents, and especially of women,
in the process of meeting basic housing needs. One woman delegate
said they have organized themselves into saving schemes and invited
their government to walk the same path with them. An Indian delegate
related the example of building a communal toilet block that would
forge a new relationship between a city council and its citizens.
Five areas of London have recently been confirmed as the pilot locations
for American-style Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) aimed at
attacking social and physical regeneration. The organization Circle
Initiative is supported by Westiminster City Council and London
Development Agency to adopt the US model which has been declared
a success in areas such as Times Square, Manhattan and Harlem.
It aims to collect funds from local businesses for a host of public
realm improvements. Recently,
a council-backed proposal for a housing scheme on a South Yorkshire
greenfield has been fiercely opposed by a resident’s group at a
public inquiry. The group says the council has not produced an
urban capacity study to justify the scheme, but has ‘cherry-picked’
the best sites. Proponents of the development claim that green
belt policy derived from Ebenezer Howard’s idea of garden cities
surrounded by open countryside which the residents could enjoy.
But its principal purpose now is to constrain urban sprawl. Most
green belt land is derelict and public has no rights of access.
They claim that no planning policy is sacrosanct and pragmatism
should prevail. The Green Party’s spokesman on planning also believes
that there are greenfield sites that have very little biological
diversity which he would happy to see built on.
 UN
Centre for Human Settlements recently argued that “What is controversial
is not urban planning per se, but its goal : whether it should be
directed chiefly at efficiency, reinforcing the current distribution
of wealth and power, or whether it should play a distributive role
to help create minimum standards of urban liveability”. Planners
need to reform their traditions and practices and invent new capabilities.
Planning cannot be linear; rather today’s diversity and uncertainty
mean that it will be a circular, even chaotic process, steered by
the interplay between numerous stakeholders. We may even have to
discover new expectations, such as what do we know of how children
experience cities or why the elderly hate the high-rise housing?
 In
my town planning thesis titled ‘Tenants participation in urban housing
renewal’, I have carried out comparative case studies of six British
projects in the 1970’s. They were Byker in Newcastle, Macclesfiled
in Manchester, Govan in Glasgow, Swinbrook in North Kengisngton,
Fairhazel in West Hamstead, and Adelaide Road in Camden. Using
MacNair’s typology of ‘process of co-ordination’. I developed a
matrix for assessing degree of participation by finding relations
between degrees of agreement and commitment. It was a dynamic model
with time lapse. The thesis set out to test the hypothesis that
more participation would give tenants more satisfaction with their
housing provisions. Interestingly, the thesis findings reveal several
unexpected phenomena :
- Degree of
participation can be measured.
 The
conventional belief that equates participation with satisfaction,
was not entirely true. It was found that high degree of participation
generally helps to increase the level of satisfaction over social
environment but not necessary over his physical environment.- High socio-economic
groupings were always capable for high degree participation.
Another pre-requisite for high degree participation was whether
advocacy is available to low socio-economic groupings.
-
 High
degree of participation was hard to achieve in a large scale renewal
where the time scale was also long.
- Security
of tenure was major factor contribution to high degree of participation
as well as high level of social satisfaction.
The study concluded
that, among other issues, an advocacy model thrives on and encourages
conflict. It is issue dependent and its life time is often the
duration of concern around one decision. Once the controversy is
resolved, involvement is dormant. On the other hand, the concept
of ‘capacity building’ creates the conditions for planning practice
to be more effective and responsive to citizens’ priorities. The
action is based on consensus rather than compromise. A model of
‘capacity building’ works through these stages:
- forming the
local organization
- generating
self-confidence and credibility
- legitimising
the organisation’s role in local affairs
- encouraging
viability and accumulating the capacity to work effectively, and
- continuing
involvement over time.
 Significant
change in British community involvement has been effected since
the growth of the concept of tenant participation in housing in
the 1960s and 1970s. The planning motto of the days was ‘citizen
control’. Many agencies such as Urban Aid Programme, National Community
Development Project, Urban Deprivation Unit were set up to tackle
unemployment, squatting and other urban resistance and warfare.
In many areas, the word participation were becoming suspect because
it had been associated with token gestures for winning public approval
for decisions which have already been made and which there was no
intention of altering. In planning, tokenism was particularly rampant.
 Prof.
Chua Beng Huat in his book ‘Communitarian Idealogy and Democracy
in Singapore’ noticed the beginning of the institutionalization
of the ‘right’ to be consulted, especially for interest groups.
The environmental impact study of the Nature Society has brought
to public attention the environmental costs – cutting down 40,000
mature trees which house a significant bio-diversity of insects
and birds – of the planned development of a golf course. The government’s
position that Singaporeans are entitled to golf courses for
 recreation
was countered by the Nature Society’s assertion that Singaporeans
were entitled to nature for the same purpose. Central to Singapore’s
subscribed ‘communitarianism’ is the idea that collective interests
are placed above individual ones. Logically, what constitute the
collective interests should be based on ‘consensus’. In recent
years Singapore government is responding to the voices from the
ground and moving towards greater consultation and participation
in the formation of national rof Chua. He however cautions
that the logic of pragmatism  as
an ideology mconsensus and national interest, observed Pay
well serve economic policies, but when applied to other areas of
social life, it may face overt objection from the population.
As demonstrated in my research on tenants’ participation in housing
renewal in U.K., housing ownership gave high sense of satisfaction.
Singapore’s extensive promotion of home ownership is an efficient
process in meeting expectations of the population and of incorporating
the population ideologically and socially into a commitment to a
society transformed by rapid industralisation. It is an important
step in the active proletarianisation of the population. The resale
policy and the upgrading programme further increase the opportunity
to make potential gain in real estate. It is ‘the expansion of
commitment to the prevalent social order by the development of personal
stakes in its survival’, says Agnew in his paper ‘Home ownership
and the capitalist order’. With further priorities and subsidies
given to the lowest income group, it is no wonder that public housing
policy in Singapore has gained so much respect both locally and
globally.Cherian George in the book ‘Singapore : The Air-conditioned
Nation’ likened Singapore being conditioned with air-conditioned
comfort and centralized control at the cost of individual autonomy
and the risk of unsustainability. Despite ministers’ repeated assurance
that ‘as long as Singaporean are arguing over policies, the limits
are very wide’, he opined that many Singaporeans are reluctant to
engage. Participation in public affairs is thus conceived of as
kind of national suggestion scheme or quality control circle, and
therefore needs to be managed within a set framework through proper
channels. This neglects a deeper purpose of citizen involvement.
George called for active participation in order to learn about the
diverse interests that inhabit their society, and about the need
for negotiation and compromise among them. ‘The automatic appeals
to government when groups disagree with other or when individual
encounter problems is a symptom of this malaise’, says George.
 Would
Asian countries head for a conflict with the West, as foreseen in
Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisation’? Singapore holds the view
that Asian’s sequence and pace of democratization has to be different
from the west. Soviet’s perestroika lags behind glasnot and Taiwan’s
economic recovery lags behind democratic party politics. China
adopted Deng Xiaopin’s market reform first, political reform later,
and is achieving stunning sustainable results in political stability
and economic growth. The Western-style democracy and the culture
of belittling holders of high public office may be alright for David
Letterman’s show. But when the Philippine and Taiwan medias emulate,
a culture of political bickering is entrenched and policies stalled.
 George
noted that Singapore government discovered the value of an energized
civil society in 1990s. The appeal went out that the banyan tree
of state would be pruned so that civil society could catch the light
and grow. Politicians called for a vibrant People Sector, Active
Citizenship etc. Besides voluntary welfare organizations, cultural
and green groups and professional institutes, several political
discussion groups were also set up. Some vocal members also became
nominated members of parliament. Some have achieved some success
in their various missions and are not totally dispirited. George
found that civil society normally meet the government half way –
somewhere in between where they started and their target. But what
is significant is that they have tried, and continue to try.
 In
the Singapore Management University’s public consultation exercise
held last year, Chairman Ho Kwong Pin’s remark was that the process
was more important than the result. The result was that many pleas
to retain the old National Library building, the Bras Basah Park
and Stamford Road were rejected despite deliberations for over a
year by various groups, such as the Singapore Heritage Society.
George’s advice was : Space exists in Singapore for citizens to
colonise and enlarge. Inertia in civil society can be overcome
by the introduction of sufficient energy.
 Yes,
it was the lack of energy in the case put forward by the groups
to conserve the old National Library. The architect’s community
was in disarray. The few who supported the conservation were singled
out and accused of raising objection to the building’s design merits
decades ago. The others who supported the conservation could not
rally the engineers to substantiate that the proposed road tunneling
could be diverted. There were also architects who claimed the building
had no architectural merits. On the other spectrum, historians,
sociologists, past librarians and general public held high the banner
of ‘collective memories’ as the main reason why the building should
not go. One architect put up a scaled model to illustrate how the
old library could be integrated with the new university, but alas,
in his proposal he sunk the Bras Basah Park and probably destroyed
more urban heritage than pulling down the library. Minister then
said enough was enough and last nail was driven on the fate of the
old library.
 George
concluded that in an Air-conditioned Nation, it was certainly more
tempting to just sit back and enjoy the comforts of life. But others
had this overidding impulse to get involved in things larger than
themselves.
Prof. Edward Said in his book ‘Representations of the Intellectual’
echoed that ‘intellectuals should be the ones to question patriotic
nationalism, corporate thinking, and a sense of class, racial or
gender privilege’.   Intellectuals
represent something to their audiences and in so doing represent
themselves to themselves. In Said’s view the principal intellectual
duty is the search for relative independence from such pressure.
The intellectual’s role as outsider is difficult. But to deliberately
not belong to these authorities is in many way not to be able to
effect direct change. Intellectual should be represented in such
a way as to influence with an ongoing and actual process. Although
its voice is lonely, but it has resonance only because it associates
itself freely with the reality of a movement the aspiration of a
people, the common pursuit of a share ideal. Said concluded :
“speaking the truth to power is no Panglossian idealism : it is
carefully weighing the alternative, picking the right one, and then
intelligently representing it where it can do the most good and
cause the right change.” “Small is the number of those who see
with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts”, said Albert
Einstein. Fewer still are those who enlarge vision for the rest
of us by inventing new ways to see.
 Mencius,
a Chinese philosopher born 2400 years ago, has said that he would
‘worry before the whole world worries, and celebrate after the whole
world celebrates’. He had the fire of adolescent angst and was
outright in speaking the truth. Confucius who was born 170 years
earlier than Mencius, approached issues differently. He had strong
principles but he patiently expounded them, and persuaded others
to think alike. His approach has been compared to an old Chinese
copper coin, round on the outside but square on the inside. Square
represents his principles, the round represents his diplomacy in
stating these unbending principles.
Singapore’s cabinet minister BG George Yeo said talent, capital
and knowledge are mobile. Government will have to compete for the
same resources. There is growing political pressure to devolve
power to provinces, to states, to cities – to the lowest level where
good government decides whether talent flow in or out. “you still
have powers of monopoly, you still have powers of legal violence
over your citizens, you can do nasty things to them… But eventually
the smart one say ‘why must I put up with this hassle?’” said  BG
Yeo to Asian Wall Street Journal. “If you have a culture that enables
you to absorb talented individuals and fill them into community,
and allow them to knock against each other in creative way, then
you succeed. If you can’t accommodate the tensions, then the diversity
is destructive. “If you have a bureaucratic system (in your company),
there is not going to be very much enterpreneurship or intrapreneurship…
you have to co-opt your employee so that he become part of the larger
family”. He also likened the culture that is required for co-operative
brainwork to that of an orchestra. If each member tries to play
like soloist, you won’t get good music. The group culture for classical
music is very different from that of rap.
Another minister Lim Swee Say said there were many opportunities
in the new economy. We must catch the wind on higher platform like
kites. But out there are many kites too. So, some of our old rules
may hamper our growth to new heights, like tree branches that catch
the kites. Yet we still need the string of emotional attachment
to the community to anchor us so that the kite is not blown away.
Cherian George noted people’s sense of empowerment does not
always produce better decisions, but it does deepen the sense of
being a stakeholder in a nation’s destiny. Government has its perceptions
and priorities, public have their expectations and expressions,
rights and responsibilities. This is the relation between the governing
and the governed.Singapore’s Concept Plan 2001 therefore aims to
make Singapore a thriving and vibrant world class city state not
just for business but for living and leisure as well. When minister
set out the guidelines in 1999, his emphasis was on infra structure
and environment improvement. Little did he envision that when
the final draft was prepared by the URA with 2/3 of focus groups
recommendations incorporated, it was also a people-oriented blue
print that stressed on issues such as recreation, heritage and identity.
Another member of parliament Davinder Singh viewed active
citizenship as a bargain. ‘It is premised on the simple principle
that there cannot be greater rights without greater responsibility’.
To engage in ‘constructive disagreement’, one must contribute to
the development of a system which can accommodate these rights.
‘Government must take account of the views of all Singaporeans not
only those who are vocal. It is bad governance to cater only to
those who want more, without regard for the anxieties and comfort
levels of those who do not’.
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong suggested setting up citizens’
ideas teams when he pledged in 1999 ‘to make people the centre piece
of government policy’. As early as 1997, he issued in parliament
his rallying call to ‘move beyond material progress, to a society
which places people at its very centre’. In Oct 1999, he said ‘we
now want to go beyond feedback on how policies affect the people,
to encouraging Singaporeans to submit constructive suggestions and
new ideas’. He acknowledged that a climate of greater openness
and an education system that encouraged creativity would lead to
a more questioning electorate. ‘Does it matter so long as it produces
a group of leaders who are honest, committed to Singapore and more
competent than the present leaders?’. Instead, what was vital was
to have a ‘well-informed, thinking, resourceful, innovative and
cohesive population with the resolve to keep Singapore going’ he
said.
The last century started with only 10% of the world’s population
living in cities, and it ended with 50% urban population. What
are then the best practices in governing the cities so that they
are liveable? Richard Gilbert in this book ‘Making Cities Work’
claims that the key is good governance and an essential element
of this is ‘inclusiveness’. Such inclusiveness has accounted for
successful working relationships between local authorities and communities,
with active participation by affected sectors in decision-making
on urban change and growth. On the other hand, ‘exclusiveness’
is not effective in achieving social, economic and environment management
goals. City of Curitiba in Brazil is now hailed a model city and
one of the most sustainable in the world. A fully integrated and
seamless bus system has persuaded nearly 30% of car users to switch
to bus commuting. Transport fuel consumption was cut by 25% and
the city has transformed from a highly polluted city to one with
lowest index in Brazil. Private bus operators obtain some concessions
but there is no direct subsidy. The success of Curitiba was a result
of a strong, committed city government and private participation.
American poet Gertrude Stein said of the city of Oakland
: “The trouble with Oakland, California is that there is no there,
there.” It is a case of lost city, a city that fades away in the
face of new vibrant entries such as Barcelona, Brussels and Fukuoka.
Robert Palmer, an art advisor to the European Commission, said cities
that are promoting an interaction between artistic creativity and
other policy domains such as education, urban planning and economic
development, are cities that have greater abilities to deal with
change and overcome problems. ‘Culture can help us to make decisions
with our hearts as well as our heads’. Singaporean artistic director
Alvin Tan says learning to accept difference is a sign of maturity.
There must be a paradigm shift from paternalism to partnership.
In Singapore Tourism Board’s Chinatown Revitalisation
scheme few years back, sociologists and urban planners were quick
to caution the effect of gentrification and suggested ways of re-injecting
life into a regenerated city centre. They said the past government
efforts in moving residents out of the city to new towns via incentives,
enforcement or zoning laws ignore a ready market of urbanites who
might like to work and live in inner city. One example is the perception
that living in city centre is unpopular because HDB resale prices
in the area are below norm. This could, as suggested by sociologist
Sharon Siddique, be reversed by adjusting the rule to allow singles
to purchase flats, and releasing more rental units for singles and
young couples. Recently, government has just relaxed the rules
governing public housing for singles. 
Last month, Hong Kong T V programme documented the plight of the
residents of Yongtin Village in Fujian Province, China when their
century old Hakka circular vernacular housing was gazetted to be
conserved for the visit by World Heritage agency for listing next
spring. Residents were proud that these unique form of housing
is now being recognised and soon would be placed on the world map.
In fact, many of them have already moved out of these houses some
6 years ago due to their dereliction. Many spent up to US$5,000
to build new houses around these old groups of housing. Chinese
authorities now realized that these new houses would destroy the
ambience of the preserved houses and ordered them to be demolished,
with a meagre compensation of US$20 per square metre which would
only be enough to build half of another new house. Historians,
and the TV media are now drumming up support for the residents and
hope the authorities would increase the compensation soon. In the
meantime, historians chided that authorities had no clue on what
to do with the conserved houses. They could not all be converted
to folk museums. And residents would not want to move back because
the inward looking lifestyle of the old Hakka communities, manifested
in the architecture, would no longer suit the modern Chinese.
  Another
historical village in China is Pingyao in Shanxi Province. For
3 years, local authority and the residents raised over US$2 million
to reconstruct streets and canals and participate voluntarily in
their construction and the demolition of illegal buildings. 4000
units of houses, shops and old city walls were preserved together
with over 100 old streets and alleys. Despite the village has been
listed as World Heritage, the city remains the poorest among the
counties. Tremendous efforts were spent on preservation, but very
little is done to bring new vibrancy to the village. In Zouzuang,
the Venice of China, preservation went hand in hand with urban regeneration
plan since 1980s. Vehicles were restricted for the old town and
new buildings were encouraged to be built only on the fringe. Houses,
canal, stone bridges were carefully restored. Today, it has been
transformed from one of poorest towns into a major tourist destination.
Residents pride its success in saying that ‘quality preservation
is a sublime form of development’.
 In
the zeal in re-building the city of Tianjin, one of largest harbour
cities in north east China, a 600-years old Guyi street nearly went
under the sledge hammer last year. In its hey day in 19th century,
there were 200 shops cramped onto the one-mile street. It was the
city’s main street or ‘Jalan Besar’in Malaysian’s term. When a
renowned writer Fong Jicai read about a notice to the residents
in Dec 1999 sent from a district resettlement office demanding residents
to move out in phases in a period of 3 months, he decided that something
had to be done to record the built heritage and photographs were
compiled and sent to Mayor of Tianjin. He also informed the media.
Motivated by what he later wrote in his book ‘Saving Old Street’,
the phrase ‘organic intellectuals’ used by Harvard professor Owen
Lee, he pursued his action in an organic, multi-proned fashion.
He continued to video tape the life and architecture on the street,
recording oral history from old residents and raised funds to collect
architectural relics such as stone carvings, with a few  friends.
At the same time, demolition work were progressing. He was fighting
with time. Buildings with plagues that read ‘Protected Heritage
Unit’ were being pulled down. Several articles crying for the preservation
of the street now appeared in major press. Writer Fong decided
to print postcards with pictures of the street and his own poems
lamenting the loss of history. A street rally was organized and
1300 postcards were signed in support of saving the street. Beijing
Central TV reporter read about the news from the Internet and visited
Tianjin. National TV reported the Tianjin residents’ plight on
prime time news in Feb 2000. By March, Tianjin city’s vice mayor
held a public forum among professionals, attended also by officers
from construction bureau and planning department. Fong was comforted
with the title of the Forum : ‘Protective Reconstruction for Guyi
Street’. He knew ‘protective reconstruction’ and ‘constructive
destruction’ were two opposing  approaches.
An architect was commissioned by the city to present his
preservation plans, as well as plans to reconstruct those that have
been demolished. There was consensus all round at the forum. Developers
and district government also supported the views of the professionals.
Residents of Tianjin learnt a lesson : only when the bureaucrats
and the people seeing eye to eye, there was hope to resurrect a
dying street.
Singapore’s
urbanist William Lim asserts that ‘it is an essential condition
of our existence that we must find ways to connect meaningfully
with the physical environment in an intensely personal way’. And
it is for this reason alone that ‘we must consciously elevate the
value of visual memories in our urban environment beyond the criteria
of commodification.
When owner of preserved Tong Chai Medical Hall in Singapore
decided to lease out the 150 years old Southern Chinese styled building
to a disco-night club named Lan Kwai Fong, there were public outcries.
Scene of Chinamen dispensing free medicine over the counter was
then shifted to cheongsum-clad China dolls serving XOs. Appropriateness
of adaptive re-use became a topic of debates. Government held the
view that conservation guidelines did not dictate use and  market
forces should take their course. Barely two years after the controversy,
market forces rule again. Disco shut its door and a Chinese fusion
restaurant is due to open soon. This time, not a voice of discontent
was raised. So visual memories aside, people do care about appropriateness
in adaptive re-use that would remind one of history or historical
connotation.
In its race towards the bidding for Olympic 2008, Beijing moved
relentless in the last few years in its construction effort to beautify
the city, not knowing a century-old courtyard house could be the
home of famous writer, Cao Xieqin, who wrote ‘The Dreams of the
Red Chamber’.  The
house was nearly bulldozed to make way for road widening. A high
level committee was quickly alerted by public to verify the finding
and confirmed it was his residence. The building was saved in time.
At about the same time, American Chinese architect I.M. Pei called
for the preservation of his ancestral home in Shanghai in an area
largely have been demolished. It was earlier this year, at a time
when Sino-American relationship was at a low point. Or perhaps
Chinese authority valued Cao more than Pei. Pei’s plea was ignored.
 Pudong
was actually ‘old’ Shanghai, now it is the ‘new’ Shanghai. A tallest
60-storey service apartments is being built. It involved the relocation
of 8,000 local families, but the new flats are reserved for overseas
buyers selling at US$1,200/m2 . On this fourth biggest
city on the planet, 2,000 high-rise buildings were constructed in
the last decade. One planner calls the development as time-lapse
photography. It is also a playground where international and local
architects compete to upstage one another through ever more dazzling
geometry. The finalists of a recent master plan competition that
stretches 20km on either bank of the Huangpu River were two American
and an Australian firm. No public participation was carried out,
nor any public exhibition on the proposals was held.
Pei has criticized the modern highrise towers that have sprung
up in Pudong. He cautioned China not to negate the essence of the
oldest civilization in its pursuit to build newest civilization
in the model city of Shanghai. He lamented that the hotchpotch
of modern architectural styles would not make the city more liveable
and its citizens more enlightened.
Over the Chinatown Revitalization scheme, Singapore Tourism
Board and Heritage Society agreed that heritage and tourism were
not diametrically opposed, that Chinatown need to be regenerated
to help businesses there, and that history could not be re-created.
STB promised would not turn Chinatown into a theme park. Minister
B G Yeo said the furore over the plan showed Singaporeans have ‘strong
emotional bonds to the land’. The minister said it was a good debate
despite the problems it had caused the Board. ‘If Singaporeans
had shown no interest in the way Chinatown was being redeveloped
then we should worry… that we are rootless citizens with no sense
of where they come from and who they are’.
Another debate surfaced in  China
when French architect Paul Andrew’s design for Beijing Grand Theatre
was recently selected. Similar furore can be recalled when architect
I.M. Pei put his glass pyramid in the Louvre Museum in Paris some
years back. The idea of building an opera house in Beijing was
first mooted in 1958. Construction finally commenced in April 2000,
after 42 years. The fact that an ultra-modern ‘jellyfish’ design
has been picked on a site opposite the historic Tianangmen says
something. The Chinese authority is opening up to global pluralistic
architectural language, in defiance to critics from the conservative
schools. Some said it drained China’s financial resources, citing
future maintenance as headache. Some criticized the proposal was
submitted to the central government without consultation with experts.
Some questioned the rationale of choosing a foreign architect.
Others said obsession with Western futuristic architecture reflects
a lack of confidence in Chinese culture and expertise. In July
2000, more than 100 architects and scholars sent a petition to central
government urging them to scrap the design. In the end, French
architect had to cut cost by 25% and incorporate local cultural
symbolism before the design was finally approved and work progressed.
China’s Ming Dynasty scholar Wen Zengheng outlined 3 criterias
for a liveable city : It must let its inhibitant forget that he
was getting old, let its visitor forget to return home, and its
tourist forget about tiredness. These words were uttered some 600
years ago. City was already seen as a gracious place that cared
for its residents as well as a vibrant place to attract visitors.
 In
1999, Singapore Government announced that it would spend S$16 million
to build a total of 6km length of promenade along Singapore River.
This was to replicate the success of Boat Quay and Clarke Quay in
other part of the river and is a continuing effort to make the river
vibrant since the massive clean-up of the waterbody in 1977. This
year, Tourism Board spear headed the Singapore River Experience
scheme to further improve the hardware and software along the river.
A local project management team and an Australian design consortium
were selected to execute the work. A systematic approach of public
participation was adopted. Advisory Panels on heritage, design,
business and events were set up. Representatives from professional
institutes, the universities, civil societies, business stake holders
were invited to sit in all atelier workshops with the design consortium
in all stages of design at about 6 weeks interval. These workshops
were preceded by consortium’s representation and ended with advisory
panels’ report on the workshop findings, followed by question and
answer session for all. In the four months that the process has
been going on, it was evident to see that the foreign design consortium
has learnt to grasp with better understanding of the local heritage,
culture, sentiment, recreation and business preferences.
 Suggestions
were promptly turned into new alternative designs because during
the workshops with the advisory panels, consortium members interact
intensively with panel members. Some follow ups were made after
the atelier workshops through e-mailing of information such as rare
historic river maps to the designers in Australia. Comparing with
earlier effort to engage citizens in the Chinatown Revitalization
scheme, Tourism Board has learnt that true participation is for
citizens to engage in the formulation of plans and the net has to
be cast wide. Chinatown plan consulted the local community centre
management, but not really the stakeholders. It consulted government
agencies such as URA, but not the professional institutes and civil
societies. It held public forum, but only too late when the plan
was already drawn up.
 Chairman
of S21 Facilitation Committee David Lim has said: ‘We may or may
not get what we hoped for, but we would have contributed to the
final outcome by sharing our thoughts. The rules of engagement
are based on mutual respect, and recognizing that all of us have
a share in the future. It is not a bad thing if under the spotlight
of unrelenting public scrutiny, bureaucrats too realize that they
can no longer churn out a non-committal reply and expect matters
to end there. If they should seek to defend any policy which they
feel is right for the country, they will have to do so more convincingly,
by engaging interlocutors on the specific points they raised’.
 Journalist
Chua Lee Hoong drew comparison from the observation of the new Speakers
Corner in Singapore : ‘Singaporean must be prepared to listen as
well. That means being prepared to be open to ideas different from
their own. The speakers have also to be prepared for reactions
from their listeners, however adverse. She lamented that many Singaporeans
have become so used to the business of life being no more than a
life of business, that many have no time to think.
In the new economy, even government has to undergo ‘creative destruction’,
and replace old practices and models with new ones, said Singapore
Deputy Prime Minister Dr Tony Tan last year. MIT Professor Lester
Thurow characterized new economy by a risk-taking business culture
which seeks to create wealth rather than merely preserve wealth.
It is an economy which values concepts, ideas and knowledge just
as much as and, in some cases, more than physical assets and financial
resources. It also boosts the development of the private sector
and encourages businesses to leave the conform zone. Disagreement
should no longer be seen as a conflict of ideas, but a contest which
helps advance an eventual consensus. Management guru Tom Steward
declared the death of ‘bossdom’ : ‘Gone are the days when you were
The Boss because you were The Best. In the same matrix as businesses,
politicians and urban planners need not know best. But they must
be super-listeners, super-coordinators and super-persuaders.
 While
Singapore is voted one of the most ‘wired’ cities in the world,
it also tops the world list of having the highest suicide rates
among the elderly. Teenagers seeking psychiatric helps also risen
by 3 ½ times between 1990 and 1998. In February
this year, Singapore was declared environmentally unsustainable
by the World Economic Forum in Davos with a very low ranking among
122 countries. The absence of environmental impact assessment,
lack of single ministry in environment management and protection
and insufficient recycling effort were cited as main reasons. Singapore
was also ranked the second most prolific producer of green house
gas, carbon dioxide. Earlier this month, Environment Minister announced
a series of measures, e.g. the ‘innovation for sustainable environment
fund’, to rectify these shortcomings. Such is the courage of a
responsible government.
 URA,
the planning and development control authority of Singapore, has
also recently relaxed the rule on balconies by not counting them
as gross floor area (GFA) if they do not exceed 10% of the total
GFA of the development. This reversal of the earlier control where
balconies were fully calculated as GFA, is warmly welcomed by the
public. Housing can now be better designed to respond to tropical
climate and sky gardens can now be introduced to highrise and super
highrise apartments. The refinement of the guideline also prevents
abuses on a guideline in the 1970s where balconies of any size would
not be calculated for GFA. This resulted in development such as
the Bedok Court where balconies became forecourt to an apartment
and occupied 40% of the total apartment area. The end result in
the context of urban design could not be said as satisfactory. 
Last year August, Minister for National Development Mah Bow
Tan nominated about 60 people to form two Focus Groups to help gather
public feedbacks for URA to prepare the new Concept Plan 2001 for
Singapore. One group was to study Land Allocation, and the other
on Identity vs Intensive Use of Land. Group members came from academics,
undergraduates, professionals, professional institutes, civil societies,
welfare and grassroot organizations, business corporations and small
businesses. The challenge put before them was to interview, research,
and discuss with different agencies and segments of society on how
the projected increase of population from 4 to 5.5 millions could
affect the quality of life and what should be done to cushion its
effects.
The group on land allocation formed sub-groups to study on housing,
transportation, industry and commerce, and green and blue spaces.
In the quest to juggle land uses, defence ministry and civil aviation
authorities were called in to enlighten members on government constraints.
There were long debates among members on the density mix on housing
as well as on competing uses between golf courses and nature reserves.
The group on identity proceeded to visit many heritage sites and
put forward a strong theoretical basis for preserving identity,
memories, character of places in the face of competing land use.
Before the groups drafted the final reports, a public forum was
held in early December last year. Over 400 public attended and
session lasted 3 hours. Many more views were expressed and recorded.
The groups then absorbed them, together with hundreds of views sent
through the Internet, collated and edited into two final reports
submitted to the Minister. In May, URA announce its draft Concept
Plan 2001 through an exhibition and forum. More feedbacks were
gathered. Final Plan was published in July this year.
Throughout the study period for the focus groups, URA provided logistics
and sent planners to sit in as resource persons. There were no
inhibitions among the members and the ideas were free-flowing.
There was no hidden agenda, and sensitive issues were debated vigorously,
and consensus were reached on all grounds in the final reports.
In a newspaper survey conducted this year when the draft Concept
Plan 2001 for Singapore was exhibited, 2/3 of respondents disagreed
that nature reserves should be sacrificed for housing development.
Same percentage of respondents also supported building of more high
rise apartments to accommodate projected population growth. URA
met the public expectations and incorporated these wishes in the
final plan. Associate Professor Belinda Yuen observed that ‘if
we sold the concept of high rise living as a lifestyle,’ probably
unique only to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Manhattan, ‘Singaporeans
would buy it’. One property agent said if they could get used to
living in 25-storey HDB blocks 20 years ago, it will be a matter
of time they can accustom to even higher rise. 
The Focus Group on ‘Identity vs Intensive Use of Land’ also proposed
a holistic approach to heritage conservation. The group suggested
that beyond monuments and architecture, we should preserve places
and icons with value of collective memories: a street corner, a
park, a road, a waterbody or an old tree. The final plan adopted
the proposal. Two months later, new laws were being drawn up to
preserve ‘heritage trees’ and ‘heritage roads’. This spirit of
public expressions has prompted the Vice Chancellor Shih Choon Fong
of the National University of Singapore to urge young Singaporeans
to become ‘bluefish in the turbulent ocean instead of a trout in
sheltered pond. '
Dentist Dr Chua Ee Kiam decided to record the legacy in Pulau Ubin
7 years ago. In his own special way, his published book is a photo-essay
on the rich eco-system of an island threatened by development. Artist
and ex-parliamentarian Ho Ka Leong has painted the idyllic Pulau
Ubin for the past 15 years. He wrote to the press and appealed passionately
to the government not to sanitise the island. These two persons
contributed no less than the green groups and vocal professionals
in successfully protecting the island in the new Concept Plan 2001
for Singapore.
Renowned Japanese architect Kurokawa is a member of the advisory
panel of Singapore's planned 'Biopolis' at Buona Vista. He suggested
that the idea of 'eco-media' should be experimented. He believes
planner should ensure the compactness between the city and the forest.
In a high tech environment, trees need not be felled. If we cannot
maintain the bio-diversity, the Biopolis cannot be sustainable.
MIT head of urban planning Professor William Mitchell believes the
new economy has reversed the trend of the past decades where land
uses were clearly zoned and separated. He noted the shophouses communities
in South East Asian countries were sustainable for  hundred
years because work, live and play were not separately zoned. He
saw this old pattern applicable in the planning of science hubs
today.
Singapore envisioned itself in the Concept Plan 2001 as a 'city
that is dynamic, distinctive and delightful'. The earlier 1991 Concept
Plan strived itself to be a 'Tropical City with Excellence'. We
cannot foresee where the Concept Plan 2011 will point us towards.
But perhaps we can draw inspiration from a manicured Japanese Garden.
Although it is man-made, you see no trace of the cuts by garden
shears, you don't see the invisible hands behind the landscape masterpiece
that blends so well with the universe. The future of urban planning
will probably 'see' more invisible hands from the citizens of the
city, playing a greater role than the government, thus creating
more diversities, vibrancies, and sustainability. 
Planners must innovate. Nicholson's 'Theory of Loose Parts' summarises
the preconditions for innovation : 'In any environment, both the
degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery,
are directly proportional to the number of kinds of variables in
it'. The planning profession has a duty to increase the numbers
and kinds of variables.
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo moved her office to the Agriculture
Department in July this year so as to fulfil her vision to create
one million jobs for farmers. Whether her schemes of opening up
200,000 hectares of new farmlands with an expenditure of 20 billion
pesos will mathematically add up to the creation of jobs is not
the topic of discussion here. However, her commitment and drive
to eradicate poverty, or at least to better the impoverished's livelihood,
have raised public expectation as well as support. In Philippines,
this show of political will for the common good is rare. In Singapore,
we take affordable housing, educational opportunities etc for granted,
yet they are as much a part of paternalistic government as the ban
on chewing gum or the injunction to make more, or less, babies.
 In
a globalised world, planners need to refresh our spatial imagination;
to create and sustain governance capacity; and to hold a moral attitude.
Singapore government realizes for decades now that basic quality
of life can only be met if one owns his own home, thus the HDB's
successful home-ownership scheme. Hernando de Soto in his book 'The
Mystery of Capital' mentioned that mass of population in the Third
World and former communist nations have not been integrated in a
universal and legal property system. He said capitalism is the only
way to have respect for the social contract and equal opportunity.
Once property is established as collateral for credit, it became
the renewal fuel of economic growth. Poor people built houses to
stay with own saving but they cannot sell because they do not have
legal titles. Properties in shanty towns cannot be used to obtain
credit. In the U.S. the commonest form of start-up capital is raised
when the entrepreneur mortgages the family home. De Soto argues
that the goal of property reform is to award property rights for
millions of assets to millions of people in a short time. Deprivation
lurk in dark corners but affluence strides about. And it is a dangerous
state of affairs.
 In
Oct 1999, President of Singapore said in parliament that more avenues
will be opened for citizens to take part in national affairs. This
will improve policies and give people a stake in their success.
'Singaporeans must be participants in building the Singapore they
want, and not merely be observers, passengers or critics'.
Sir Peter Hall mentioned cities such as New York, London and
Tokyo were places with a unique buzz and a special kind of energy.
In his book 'Cities in Civilisation', he mentioned how these cities
could disproportionately attract the organization that command and
control the new economy as well as the talented and the ambitious
and because of that, each of these cities remains a crucible of
creativity. He also described Singapore as extraordinary in that
it was able to rid of post-colonial poverty within one generation.
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong was not content with that complement,
and has repeatedly urged Singaporeans to think and act like 'renaissance
men', 'revolutionaries' and 'insurgents'.
Sociologist Dr Kwok Kian Woon noted the wheel has come full circle,
from the revolutionaries of the anti-colonial movement to the revolutionaries
of the new economy. Yet we are at a new crossroads, said Dr Kwok
ambivalently. Not only do we need to face the short-term boom-and-bust
cycles of the global economy, but we also wish in the longer term
to build a nation that we can truly call home. 
Dr Kwok suggested we stop thinking of Singapore as hubs, IT hub,
arts hub etc but in the alternative image of crucible. In the digital
age, the central location of hub as the centre of a wheel, is not
necessarily good. 'In cyber world, the centre is everywhere and
the periphery nowhere'. The image of crucible suggests experimentation
and risk-taking through severe testing of ideas and plans : Instead
of top-down management, people take responsibility and initiative
for dealing with unpredictable change. Hub model has served Singapore
well but its success has paradoxically obstructed us form releasing
the passionate and creative energy. A retired peranakan civil servant
echoed that Singapore culture is cuisine creation, not a salad.
In a culinary creation like Rojak, you mix the right ingredients
and you stir them with correct rhythm. When all is done, it is more
mouth tingling than western salad of loose lettuce and cucumber.
 Andrew
Oswald noted in his study 'Happiness and Economic Performance' that
the relevance of economic performance is that it may be a means
to an end. "That end is not consumption of beef burgers…. nor the
vanquishing of some high-level interest rates, but rather the enrichment
of mankind's feeling of well-being". Are we enjoying the fruit of
the internet revolution or our heart is failing and need this cardiac
net to constrain its enlargement? If we march the pace of Silicon
Valley, will we lead to Happy Valley? Alas, newspaper headline announces
that Silicon Valley has turned itself into suburban hell with nightmarish
traffic, horrendous housing costs and frequent electricity brownouts.
China in its criticism on the globalisation concept of the capitalist
west argued that it has become a confrontation with the socialist
or national democratic movements of some countries. It says the
world must embrace 'diversity within unity' and to allow different
cultures and social systems to operate within the borderless globalised
economy while maintaining uniqueness in areas such as political
and legal frameworks. Clash of civilizations would be inevitable
if these
differences are not recognised and respected.
Prime Minister of Belgium, the current President of the European
Union wrote an open letter to anti-globalisation protesters in Genoa
this year. He said the challenge we face today was not how to thwart
globalisation but how to give it an ethical foundation. This 'ethical
globalisation' is a triangle consisting free trade, knowledge and
democracy. He believes democracy and respect for human rights are
the only sustainable ways of avoiding violence and war, and of achieving
trade and prosperity. When 1.2 billion people in the world still
do not have access to medical care or decent education, countries
beyond the G-8 must form regional partnerships where the poorer
countries can speak on an equal footings. The North-South divide
is restricting the globalisation growth. He echoes economist James
Tobin's view that to find the right solution to immoral monetary
speculation that preyed on Mexico peso and Thai baht, we need to
create larger monetary zones. We need more globalisation in the
right direction, not less.
A strong government is necessary to ensure a level and democratic
playing field. When, however, government directly administers social
policies, it risks undermining the inherent capacity and responsibility
of citizens and communities to administer their own affairs.
 Civil
participation promotes a thinking and pro-active populace as groups
reason, debate and deliberate for collective goals. On the other
hand, if the Government co-opts all the thinkers, everything may
be lost if its thinkers falter. Still there might be a happy compromise
for Asian societies. If everyone has a go at the joystick, the plane
would be grounded. Well-governed markets with a smart state at the
air-control tower to ensure fair competition may see jumbo jets
taking off and landing safely all the time. Jossling of the joystick
was possibly the cause of the collapse of the twin towers in Manhattan.
 Social
transformation has a cyclic, almost seasonal quality to it. Just
as social chaos did not spring up overnight, reshaping our culture
will take time. Social order is reasserted through a process of
collective and individual reflection, dialogue and new partnership
between the ruler and the ruled. This information age is such a
cycle. It has disrupted community and family relationships, and
traditional rules for social orders have slipped away. We are experiencing
a dramatic devolution and realignment of power and authority in
every country, more open management models and greater access to
information and collaboration. The transformation will not be painless.
It will require a good deal of self-reflection and changing of mindsets,
and a lot of dialogue.
 K
Nair in his paper 'A Higher Standard of Leadership : Lessons from
the Life of Gandhi' has said that we earn and retain power through
service to others. We destroy that power when we seek to control
rather than serve. Power earned through service integrates, power
exercised through control isolates.
When leaders create opportunities for citizens to participate, they
model stewardship and responsibility. Self-governance is supported
when multiple centres of power exist in the community. The dispersal
of power, rather than its concentration, guarantees democratic decision.
Stewardship requires that we strengthen relationships with one another
through ongoing dialogues and information must be shared opening,
freely and accurately. In the US, an ethic of collaboration is developing
and interest groups are willing to work for the common good. Steven
Kelman of Harvard University calls it the emergence of a new 'public
spirit'. Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, held that each
of us is born with an innate drive for self-actualisation. The innate
drive is accompanied by a need to experience higher values such
as beauty, peace and justice. The aspiration to higher values and
self-actualisation mirrors and complements the values and beliefs
that
accompany our drive to be self-governing - to control our private
and collective selves. Self-governance and self-actualisation are
two halves of a complementary whole.
A renowned system theorist Kust Lewin observed that all around the
world our environment and our souls are asking for something to
be done. We know something has gone wrong. We are talking and listening
to one another more. We are developing new and more respectful partnership
between government and its people. We are beginning to see things
more holistically.
Most strategic planning include too many people from the service
system and too few people who are consumers or other key stakeholders.
Service system representatives develop expert plans for changing
the behaviours of others and as a result isolate themselves further
from the community. Communities include many groups that, because
of their interdependence and intimacy, possess the capacity to respond
rapidly to the needs of the citizens.
  Greek
philosopher Aristotle was a man of court as well as of learning.
He argued for the legitimacy of aristocracy and slavery. He was
correct by the standards of his day but not by ours. Most of Aristotle's
writing have survived and shaped Western civilization. On the other
hand the Buddha only preached. He wandered as a beggar to spread
his message of renunciation. He reduced his world view to 4 points:
- life is suffering
- suffering
arises from desire
- eliminate
desire and you eliminate suffering, and
- live a decent
life and meditate to help eliminate desire.
The
Buddha was not a fuzzy theorist in a mathematical sense, but he
had the 'shades-of-grey' idea. He carefully avoided the artificial
bivalence that arises from the negation term "not" in natural languages.
Hence his famous line: "The no-mind not-thinks no-thoughts about
no-things". The Buddha seems the first major thinker to reject the
black-white world of bivalence altogether, thus helped one see the
connected world more clearly and focus on the lot of man.
Truth as accuracy
brings us back to the mismatch problem of grey world with black-white
description. Einstein called it right : Logical proof differs from
empirical or "scientific" test. If you can prove a statement 100%
true, it does not describe the world. Ironic as it sounds, inaccuracy
is the central assumption of science. The goal of science is to
remove as much inaccuracy of description as possible.
Knowledge as rules goes back to Aristotle. Yes, we need rules. No,
we do not need a lot of rules for many tasks. We need fuzzy rules,
said Bart Kosko, an exponent of fuzzy logic. Fuzzy rules look like
patches. If you cross a triangle with a second triangle, you get
a 'patch'. Fuzzy systems let us guess a little better and that has
made all the difference for smart machines. We wrote down no fuzzy
equation for our fuzzy air-conditioner. The technical term is model-free
estimation or approximation.
In fuzzy system rules 'fire' all the time and in parallel and partially.
That is how associative memory works. The result is a fuzzy weighted
average, which adds up a lot of things and weigh each thing to some
degree. Then you go with the average or centre of mass. It is interesting
to note Kosko's observation that from a philosophical point of view,
fuzzy logic concept is attuned  to
the fundamental teachings of Zen Buddhism, which perhaps contributed
to the Japanese's success in many fuzzy technologies such as artificial
intelligence, biotechnology, and optical computing.
I try to draw comparison between fuzzy logic and city governance.
Are all parameters and paradigms in urban planning black or white?
No, planners have to manage many 'grey patches'. Many city concept
plans today cannot be drawn up like that for Milton Keynes in UK
in the 1970s, they are merely statements and strategies. Planners
as urban strategists can only try to locate the fuzzy weighted averages.
'Theory of Loose Parts' as mentioned earlier suggested we increase
the kind of variables to encourage innovations and discoveries.
Future decision makings would not be top-down, and would not be
bottom-up. But no, they would, and would be multi-directional as
well, like the way fuzzy rules fire. If planning  system
is fuzzy, perhaps we could create in future a city with 'smart growth'.
Jane Jacob attacked the American city planning and renewals
in the 1960s as fashionable 'decentrists' following Louis Mumford
and Ebenezer Howard's Garden City Movement. She offered systematic
evidence that cities as they have grown do work - overcrowding,
narrow streets and all.
Sir Hugh Wilson, who designed Cumbernault New Town in 1960s
said the U.K had built on paper perhaps the best planning system
in the world, and yet the visual results were dismal with but a
few exceptions. On the other hand, the architecture of the Third
Reich is seen as fascist architecture which Hitler declared 'the
spirit of our times is embodied here… in this eternal monument to
German rebirth, in this stone symbol of German greatness'. The reaction
to these ideologies of planning and architecture from 1940s to 1960s
culminated in Robert Goodman's book 'After the Planners', published
in 1972, which called for resistance to repressive planning and
architecture and argued his case for advocacy and pluralism in planning.
Pluralist opportunities were seen as a necessary condition for social
and economic equality.
 In
July this year, 174 countries agreed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
The agreement is a significant step forward in global efforts to
reduce emission of greenhouse gas widely considered one of the key
causes of climatic changes. Signatories of the agreement are now
committed to achieve a global reduction of 5% greenhouse gases emission
by 2010, compared with 1990 levels. The agreement proposed a market-base
mechanism called 'Emission Trading' which allows 39 countries to
trade the right
to pollute among themselves. A country might choose to buy emission
credits from another country that had its emission below its Kyoto
target. The other mechanism allows industrialized countries to earn
emission credits by investing in energy saying projects in other
countries.
What these mean is that demand for 'Kyoto-compliant' buildings will
increase. Real reductions in energy consumption will only be achieved
by more radical climate-responsive designs. Some say International
Style architecture will be phased out and we will see emergence
of climatic regionalism in architectural designs. Think globally
and act locally : the result would change the way we live in our
cities. Public expectation in urban design would change, and architectural
expression would respond to this aspiration.
Beijing mayor just announced that the proposed twin towers at Olympic
Village would be reduced in height from 500m to 300m after much
discussions in the light of terrorists' attack on World Trade Centre.
During the aftermath of the WTC collapse, skyscraper haters like
author James Howard Kunsler and urban theorist Nikos Salingaros
posted on the web that 'we are convinced that the age of skyscrapers
is at an end. It must now be considered an experimental typology
that has failed'.
William Pedersen of the New York architectural firm KPF defended
that 'in the 21st century, the tall building will be the world's
most important building type'. Urbanist Christopher Alexander viewed
high buildings as 'privatisation of the skyline… they have no genuine
advantages except in speculative gains for banks and owners in America'.
But today, six of the world tallest buildings in the world are outside
the U.S.
 Another
urbanist Jonathan Barnett says what will now kill the skyscraper
typology is a severe drop-off in demand. But Barnett's fear is not
due to terrorist attacks. He views office demand in compact cities
will drop as more people can work from home in IT age. But Pedersen
views tall buildings as only response to population growth and environmental
degradation: compact cities allow human contacts, people need to
socialize and spend more time in recreation and entertaining if
they choose to work from home.
As the world reeled in shock at the attack on New York and Pentagon,
images of cities seemed so much clearer. The optimism of late 1990s
has given way to melancholy. Some call it the end of the 'new economy
folly'. In its wake is a period when existing norms will have to
be re-examined. Anti-war anti-racism demonstrations have started
not in Palestine but Washington.  The
world is not just polarized between terrorists and the freedom fighters,
but will be like the Vietnam war years in 1960s, once again between
the haves and the have-nots. Concept of liveable cities will be
put to test and planners will have to respond to new public expectations
and expressions.
If Superman comic could predict the attack on WTC and the White
House, planners are certainly not supermen today. But if we continue
to practise planning by putting colours on the master plan and not
focusing on the fine grains of the  three-dimensional
city and its people as the 'fourth' dimension, the best we could
do would be like this photograph taken of the WTC ruin using remote
sensing technique : putting more orange colour on this once great
liveable compact city known as Manhattan. We need urbanisation,
which is understood as a process determined by the interaction between
man and environment. More so, we need to understand urbanism, which
is a way of life.
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