What needs to be restored to (re)create a healthier urban landscape? | Simon Morrison
$35
2021 Conference Recording
Free for Members
Summary: Growing awareness of Southeast Asian ecosystem degradation, tropical climate change risks and environmental quality in dense cities has led to more public attention. At the same time specific health issues in Singapore, an ageing population with longer life expectancy, certain illnesses, generational social change and contemporary lifestyle patterns challenge longer term public health, urban living space and the quality-of-life outlook for the island nation. Health issues may have previously been treated independently as isolated illnesses.
More recent appreciation of environmental “interconnectedness”, ecological services and new fields of medical endeavour have broadened considerations of preventive, restorative, rehabilitative and palliative issues across the public health and social landscape.
From micro fields of genetics to bio-tech and pharmacology, macro social and urban data to environmental psychology there is a more holistic reconsideration of the environment’s relationship to our health. For city dwellers there is also a growing realisation of what may have been lost; connection to nature, biodiversity, awareness of food sources and nutrition and the value of outdoor environments. Could different urban landscapes restore these? Could cities planned, designed and managed in different ways potentially deliver many more health benefits to a wider array of people, and restore certain natural qualities to the city’s environment itself? Through a range of different urban scenarios; development plots, remnant forests, and “green infrastructure” and gardens of tropical cities, we highlight an array of important design characteristics informed by indigenous nature; scale, tropical micro-climate, equatorial biota and landscape diversity could lead to the restoration of healthier urban landscapes in Singapore, and across tropical Southeast Asian cities. How people interact with this urban landscape, physically, and in psychological and social ways is critical however. As designers we consider the human senses as a prime conduit by which individuals perceive, understand and make use of the urban landscape around them. Although most attention is given to sight, sound and smell could play more significant roles in restoring sensorial values of landscape. Touch and taste have essential value in human functions, and indeed survival, but is hardly ever seriously considered in public landscape. Using the different urban scenarios, we outline ways to utilise different sensory and cultural interactions in designing restorative green spaces for real health and well-being benefits.