Researchers at the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) – an urban research group at the Singapore-ETH Centre – are working with partner universities to break the vicious cycle of self-heating cities. As part of the large-scale project Cooling Singapore, they are developing a roadmap that will offer measures designed to cool the city down. Bachelor’s and Master’s students from the Institute of Landscape Architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich are involved.
Led by ETH Professor of Landscape Architecture Christophe Girot, the group of students are testing their ideas on a 24-kilometre-long green space known as the Rail Corridor, a disused railway line that stretches from Malaysia in the far north of the island down to the port in the south.
According to Girot, urban green spaces are “increasingly taking on key functions”. As such, landscape planning “will play a key role in giving cities a more liveable climate in the future”.
As part of a three-month seminar programme in Singapore, the ETH students have been divided into six project groups to develop various cooling scenarios. All six teams have come to similar conclusions: channel the wind to cool the city, regroup buildings and trees to allow the wind to blow unimpeded, and increase the amount of greenery.
FCL programme director Stephan Cairns is encouraging the students to continue to develop their proposals during the remainder of the seminar, both in Zurich and in Singapore. “In my experience, Singapore’s city planners take persuasive ideas very seriously, no matter where they come from.”
