STREETS
heavy with vehicles honking their horns and spewing deadly carbon
monoxide from their tailpipes in an early-morning rush hour, scores of
people rushing toward their destinations in various directions, shanties
mushrooming amid towering skyscrapers outlining the urban skyline.
These are among the common scenes in today’s cities.
But
fast-paced urbanization has resulted in severe income inequality and
poor living conditions not only for the poor people but the rich, as
well. As a result, many cities are desperately struggling to balance
economic growth while uplifting the quality of life of their citizens.
Fortunately, city
innovations are now making possible solutions to these problems. A
study-tour by the East-West Center’s 2012 Spring Jefferson fellows
revealed some of the ways by which cities across Asia are fighting the
sins of urbanization.
Inefficient mass-transport systems
AS
an offshoot of rapid citification, many cities get snarled in huge
traffic jams, especially at peak hours. This is exactly what happened in
Guangzhou, China, where the traffic became so bad that by 2003, city
authorities had to start planning. Their solution was a Bus Rapid
Transit (BRT) system.
Guangzhou’s BRT system has since been touted as the best, if not one of the best, in the world, since its completion in 2010. It
turned the city’s once-packed highways into a model of peace and calm,
where motorists could safely and easily ply the streets while passengers
walk about not fearing that an incoming vehicle would run them over.
Karl
Fjellstrom, the regional director for East and Southeast Asia of the
Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), said the BRT
system was the best solution and the cheapest.
“BRT
is 10 to 20 times cheaper than Metro. The Guangzhou BRT costs about $5
million per kilometer. It’s much faster to plan and design and implement
a BRT compared to a Metro. So these are a couple of very basic factors
why cities are interested in BRT,” Fjellstrom told the Jefferson
fellows.
Guangzhou’s
BRT system has 31 routes and each station could have more than 27,000
passengers during peak hours. It is linked and easily accessible to and
from the Guangzhou metropolis, malls, pedestrian lanes, the greenways
and the public bicycle system, where people could rent bikes to go to
and from places within the city. Apart from designated bike lanes,
riders can also pass through the greenways that Guangzhou has built all
over the city.
“The
BRT really works well with all modes. It’s good for buses in traffic,
it’s very convenient for passengers to get to the station and only a 35-
to 40-second wait. So it’s really for pedestrians, buses, traffic; it’s
a good solution,” Fjellstrom said.
There
is also now a Bike Rapid Transit (BIRT) system being developed in South
Korea. At the Korea Transport Institute (Koti), engineers and other
experts have proposed a temperature-controlled and elevated bicycle
highway.
The Koti
said that with the BIRT, cyclists can use their bikes any time of the
day and in any kind of season. Usually, weather conditions and other
barriers, like the lack of exclusive bike lanes in cities, prevent
people from using bicycles more often. This is unfortunate, the Koti
said, because bikes present not just another means of transport but a
“viable green-transportation alternative.”
The
envisioned enclosed bike highway will have video-monitoring systems
that can be used to track accidents and other emergency situations; it
also has other features that would address terrain gradients,
emergency-evacuation routes, links to other BIRTs and bicycle safety.
The only debate at this point is the cost, which is still being
determined as of this writing.
“It
is faster than traditional bicycles, faster than public transit at peak
time, and allows medium- and long-distance movements using minor energy
consumption,” the Koti said. “The planned Yeouido monorail transit
system can be replaced by a [BIRT] linking high-speed bicycle lanes
along the Han River park district.”
Traffic
APART
from making mass-transport systems easily accessible and efficient,
managing transportation congestion can also be done by managing the
demand for vehicles. And the best way is to increase their cost. This is
one of the reasons there are very few cars in Singapore, which is one
of the most expensive places—if not the most expensive place—to own a
car.
According to
Singapore’s Center for Liveable Cities, owning a car is not as simple as
going to a showroom and buying one. Before you buy a car, you first
have to own the right to buy one. This is done monthly through a tender
where aspiring car owners would spend around S$50,000 or around P1.7
million to become a car owner. This is on top of the cost of the car
itself and an over 200-percent tax on the car to be bought.
The
Center’s Deputy Executive Director Hsing Yao Cheng said that after
buying the vehicle, car owners continue to pay more to be able to enter
the Central Business District (CBD) during certain times of the day.
These are called “congestion charges,” which have been around since
1975. Today, these congestion costs are around S$0.5 to S$5 (P17 to
P170), depending on the time of day.
“The
price of the tender depends on the demand. So right now, we are on an
upward [track], everybody is feeling good and a lot of people want to
own a car. We are on a very high level now, at S$50,000 or more. During
the recession it [went down to] S$5,000 [P170,000] and as low as S$50
[P1,700],” he said.
Another
solution that some countries, including South Korea, Indonesia,
Mongolia, Brazil and Sweden, are already considering, is the Automated
Container Transport (Autocon) system which was recently developed by the
Koti.
The Autocon
system seeks to improve the way container terminals work and how they
transport container vans through various parts of the city. If adopted,
this would put trucks off city roads and ensure the efficient delivery
of goods and services through city centers and beyond.
The
Koti also explained that Autocon has five major characteristics. It is a
conveyor system-type transport system with a loop-shaped structure that
saves energy; uses a linear-induction motor (LIM) that reduces the
weight of the system and makes it carbon dioxide emission-free; uses
solar power and has an automated high-stack container building.
Experts
at the Koti said the Autocon system can extend as long as 150
kilometers and done underground or at street level, depending on the
needs of the city. The cost is still being determined.
Shantytowns
CONGESTION
in many cities is not only seen in traffic jams and insufficient
mass-transport systems; it is all the more evident in the growth of
slums. The lack of housing facilities and spaces to build them makes
shanty homes the easiest way to have a roof over one’s head in crowded
cities.
Fortunately
in Singapore, the days of their “shantytowns” are over since the
government provided every citizen the means to own a home. The houses
produced in Singapore’s mass-housing program are comparable to posh
condominium units in some exclusive places in certain cities.
One
of Singapore’s mass-housing projects is the Pinnacle at Duxton. It is
the first 50-story public-housing project in the city-state and has
1,848 apartments situated in seven towering blocks. It also has an
exclusive sky bridge that has a running track, open gym, playground, and
pocket gardens where residents can relax and enjoy a view of the
Singapore skyline.
Residents
are able to afford the houses through their Central Provident Fund,
which comes from their salaries. The rates to buy the units are very low
and with the provident fund paying for each unit, Singaporeans
oftentimes do not need to spend a single cent to live in a home that is
spacious and convenient.
But
these mass-housing units are targeted for couples starting a family.
Each family is required to keep the unit for a period of five years
after which it can be sold so the family could buy another property with
a higher value. Retrenched or unemployed residents are granted
deferment for dues for a period of six months.
Prof.
Stephen Cairns, scientific coordinator at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology Zurich, said that while Singapore’s high-rise mass-housing
development was impressive, it would not be applicable in many other
cities worldwide.
“In
many parts of the world [this] model simply cannot work because
Singapore is its own state,” Cairns said. “The idea of city-state is
very, very important for Singapore. They can do things here that you
simply cannot do in many, many other parts of the world.”
Cairns
said there are other housing models that would suit the needs of other
countries. This includes an incremental housing proposal that his team
is preparing for some developing countries.
He
said the housing projects would not only deal with the structure of the
homes but also take into consideration the growth and size of the
family, its income and the size of its house.
The
project would use these points to build the housing projects. The
structure would not only take into consideration the housing
requirements of families but also their sources of livelihood, such as
small stores or workshops.
The
main structure and facilities like plumbing are envisioned to be funded
by the government; the rest of the spaces, including the house, would
be paid for by the families who will own these spaces.
“It’s
not a model of a slum but we try to learn from the logic of a slum,”
Cairns said. “This is a theoretical kind of project but we are building a
prototype in Batam [Indonesia].”
Water shortage
ONE
of the ways cities can conserve water is through recycling. This is
already being done in Singapore and in Songdo, South Korea. Water is
recycled for use in recreation facilities and in watering plants.
Wastewater
could be recycled by purification methods through microfiltration,
reverse osmosis and ultraviolet technologies. These remove impurities
that are usually found in sewage water.
But
in Singapore, water recycling has gone so far as to be bottled and
drunk by people. To Singaporeans, this bottled water is called NEWater,
which is produced by the Public Utilities Board (PUB).
NEWater
has boosted efforts to conserve water in Singapore. The city-state has
been known as a water importer but recent efforts, which include
expanding rainwater-catchment areas and NEWater, have made Singapore
self-sufficient in water resources.
Singaporeans
consider water issues a matter of “national security” so everyone does
his/her part to help, either by using only what is needed or not
throwing waste in water-catchment facilities. These water-catchment
facilities include canals found in various places in the country.
Tons of garbage
WITH
cities having more people in it, the amount of waste also increases.
One of the ways waste management is being done in Songdo, known as South
Korea’s smart city, is to connect the garbage chutes of homes straight
to the waste-management facility.
The
secret? Miles and miles of huge underground pipes. This “centralized
pneumatic waste-collection system” collects both wet and dry waste and
eliminates the need for garbage trucks and the need for manual
segregation in waste facilities. Hospital waste, however, follows a
different process since this is considered hazardous waste.
The
power used to run the waste-management facility is natural gas which is
part of the city-wide co-generation facility that also provides clean
power and hot water to the whole of Songdo.
Decisive city planning
SINGAPORE’S
master planner Liu Thai Ker said that while good intentions in city
planning are good, they are not good enough. He said that ultimately,
the key to sustainability in cities is foresight.
Ker
said that planning for longer periods assures higher success rates than
any short- or medium-term plans. Long-term plans, Ker said, involve
planning for the next 50 years, at the very least; the shorter the
timeframe, the more inaccurate the plans would be, he said.
One
of the mistakes made by cities, he said, is complementing city planning
with the tenure of governments; City planning must be firm but needs to
go beyond government tenures, he said.
“Good
intentions are not good enough,” Ker said. “[A city planner must think]
I am not going to build a city, I’m going to build an environment.”
Indeed,
if innovations are combined with outstanding political will, they have
the power to slowly make traffic, inefficient mass-transport systems,
shantytowns, water shortage and voluminous city waste a thing of the
past.
In Photo:
The Guangzhou BRT system is one of the world’s finest examples of an
efficient mass-transport system and One of the incremental housing
models prepared by Cairns’s team. (Photos courtesy of the Institute for
Transportation and Development Policy)
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