Urban Studies and Planning | Open Access Articles

The Global Rise Of Megacities, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

By 2050, two out of three people on Earth will live in cities, many in megacities with over 10 million residents. Planning must be done today to manage inevitable infrastructural and social tensions

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Housing Policies In Singapore, Sock Yong Phang, Matthias Helble

Research Collection School Of Economics

Singapore has developed a unique housing system, with three-quarters of its housing stock built by the Housing & Development Board (HDB) and homeownership financed through Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings. As a result, the country’s homeownership rate of 90% is one of the highest among market economies. At different stages of its economic development, the Government of Singapore was faced with a different set of housing problems. An integrated land–housing supply and financing framework was established in the 1960s to solve the severe housing shortage. By the 1990s, the challenge was that of renewing aging estates and creating a market …

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Precolonial Institutions And Deforestation In Africa, S. Larcom, Terry Van Gevelt, A. Zabala

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

We find that local institutions inherited from the precolonial era continue to play an important role in natural resource governance in Africa. Using satellite image data, we find a significant and robust relationship between deforestation and precolonial succession rules of local leaders (local chiefs). In particular, we find that those precolonial areas where local leaders were appointed by ‘social standing’ have higher rates of deforestation compared to the base case of hereditary rule and where local leaders were appointed from above (by paramount chiefs). While the transmission mechanisms behind these results are complex, we suggest that areas where local leaders …

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Assessment Of Measured And Perceived Microclimates Within A Tropical Urban Forest, Winston T. L. Chow, Siti Nur ‘Assyakirin Binte Ali Akbar, Su Li Heng, Matthias Roth

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Urban greenery is a favoured approach applied towards reducing urban warmth and climate discomfort, but ascertaining its measured and perceived effectiveness in tropical climates is relatively understudied. To this end, we investigated microclimate differences within an urban park (the Singapore Botanic Gardens) to assess if variations in plot-scale land cover affect both objective (measured) and subjective (surveyed) microclimate data. Over two monsoonal seasons, we obtained data from four distinct sites—a tropical rainforest stand, a palm tree valley, a water-body feature, and the park visitors’ centre. Measured climate data (e.g. air temperature, vapour pressure, wind velocity and globe temperatures) were used …

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Building Participatory Organizations For Common Pool Resource Management: Water User Group Promotion In Indonesia, Jacob I. Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

States are increasingly striving to create participatory local organizations for joint management of common pool resources. What local conditions determine success of such state efforts? What effect do these efforts have? Drawing on controlled comparisons between three districts in Indonesia and an original survey of 92 water user groups, I demonstrate that local political contexts condition the effectiveness of participatory irrigation policies. When irrigation is politically salient, local politicians pressure bureaucrats to better engage with farmers. The data also show that training programs are not as effective at increasing water user organization activity as frequent contact between bureaucrats and farmers.

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Getting To The Heart Of Great Public Spaces, Su Fern Hoe, Jacqueline Liu, Tan Tarn How

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has flaggedthe start of car-free Sundays in the Civic District and Central BusinessDistrict this year.This move to make the area people-friendly is part of a $740 millionplan, announced in the 2015 Budget, to revitalise the Civic District andtransform it into "an integrated arts, culture and lifestyleprecinct". Highlights of the plan include the Jubilee Walk - an 8km trailthat wraps around landmarks from the National Museum to the Esplanade - and thenewly opened National Gallery Singapore

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We Built This City: Public Participation In Land Use Decisions In Singapore, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article considers the extent to which the legal framework for making land use decisions in Singapore allows for public participation. It examines the issue from two angles: the creation and preservation of the built environment, and the transient use of public space. The first angle is discussed primarily from a heritage law viewpoint, focusing on planning law, compulsory acquisition law, and the legal regime for creating national monuments. As for the second angle, the article looks at how the use of common spaces for assemblies and processions is regulated. The foregoing are examined in the context of Edward Soja’s …

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Cointegration Of Matched Home Purchases And Rental Price Indexes: Evidence From Singapore, Badi H. Baltagi, Jing Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper exploits the homogeneity feature of the Singapore private residential condominium market and constructs matched home purchase price and rental price series using the repeated sales method. These matched series allow us to conduct time series analysis to examine the long-term present value relationship in the housing market. Three key findings are obtained. First, we fail to establish a cointegrating relationship between the home purchase price and rental price based on nationally estimated indexes. Second, area-specific indexes demonstrate strong cross-correlations, invalidating the use of first generation panel unit root tests that ignore these cross-correlations. Third, Pesaran's CIPS test indicates …

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Energy For Development: The Concept, Holmes J., Terry Van Gevelt

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Worldwide, 1.3 billion people remain without access to electricity and 2.7 billion are still cooking on harmful and inefficient stoves1 . Many live in remote rural village communities, and until they have access to energy services, little progress can be made to develop and improve their lives2 . As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stated, “energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, increased social equity, and an environment that allows the planet to thrive”3 . Improving the lives of rural communities by developing smart villages is a concept analogous to the more familiar smart cities. The vision …

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People-Centric Approach Needed For Effective Urban Planning, Says Expert, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

SMU Behavioural Sciences Institute Director Professor David Chan delivered the keynote address at the third Urban Sustainability R&D Congress. Held at Suntec, the two-day event was attended by representatives from public agencies, research institutes and private sector organisations. During the keynote address, Prof Chan cited the upcoming Singapore-Kuala Lumpur (KL) High Speed Rail terminal and its implications from a larger transient commuter population in the Jurong area. He said that urban planners must take a people-centric approach and understand how the same built environment can impact different groups of people differently, or impact different people differently over time. Prof Chan …

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Prioritizing Urban Sustainability Solutions: Coordinated Approaches Must Incorporate Scale-Dependent Built Environment Induced Effects, Matei Georgescu, Winston T. L. Chow, Z. H. Wang, Anthony J. Brazel, Barbara Trapido-Lurie, M. Roth, Valeria Benson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Because of a projected surge of several billion urban inhabitants by mid-century, a rising urgency exists to advance local and strategically deployed measures intended to ameliorate negative consequences on urban climate (e.g., heat stress, poor air quality, energy/water availability). Here we highlight the importance of incorporating scale-dependent built environment induced solutions within the broader umbrella of urban sustainability outcomes, thereby accounting for fundamental physical principles. Contemporary and future design of settlements demands cooperative participation between planners, architects, and relevant stakeholders, with the urban and global climate community, which recognizes the complexity of the physical systems involved and is ideally fit …

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Home Prices And Inequality: Singapore Versus Other Global Superstar Cities, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The Global City concept originates from the work of sociologist Saskia Sassen, which dates back to the 1980s. In an age of globalisation, division of labour is international in scope and production activities are distributed across the world. A global city is a significant point where the internationally oriented financial and producer services that make the global economy run choose to agglomerate.

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Multiscale Modeling And Evaluation Of Urban Surface Energy Balance In The Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Stephen R. Shaffer, Winston T. L. Chow, Matei Georgescu, Peter Hyde, Darrel Jenerette, Alex Mahalov, M. Moustaoui, Benjamin Lyle Ruddell

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Physical mechanisms of incongruency between observations and Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model predictions are examined. Limitations of evaluation are constrained by (i) parameterizations of model physics, (ii) parameterizations of input data, (iii) model resolution, and (iv) flux observation resolution. Observations from a new 22.1-m flux tower situated within a residential neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona, are utilized to evaluate the ability of the urbanized WRF to resolve finescale surface energy balance (SEB) when using the urban classes derived from the 30-m-resolution National Land Cover Database. Modeled SEB response to a large seasonal variation of net radiation forcing was tested during …

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Crowdsourcing Bicycle Volumes: Exploring The Role Of Volunteered Geographic Information And Established Monitoring Methods, Greg P. Griffin, Junfeng Jiao

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The recent interest in performance measures and new bicycle infrastructure development has triggered rapid advancements in monitoring methods for active transportation, but comprehensive monitoring programs for the bicycle mode are far from ubiquitous. This study evaluates the use of GPS survey data and a new crowdsourced volume dataset that may offer promise to extend the reach of limited counting programs. The authors integrated count data from 5 separate trail locations in Austin, Texas, with a previous survey using the CycleTracks smartphone app, and a new data product derived from a larger-scale use of the Strava fitness app. New crowdsourced methods …

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Rural Electrification And Development In South Korea, Terry Van Gevelt

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In fifteen years, South Korea went from providing only 12% of rural households with electricity to providing 98% of rural households with electricity for lighting and productive uses. This paper provides an analysis of rural electrification and development in South Korea from 1965 to 1979 and finds that rural electrification contributed to a significant increase in rural household income levels and improved the quality of life in villages substantially. At the same time, rural electrification did not benefit the poorest quartile of rural households, increased economic and social inequality, led to a significant increase in household debt, and accelerated migration …

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Optimal City Hierarchy: A Dynamic Programming Approach To Central Place Theory, Wen-Tai Hsu, Thomas J. Holmes, Frank Morgan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Central place theory is a key building block of economic geography and an empirically plausible description of city systems. This paper provides a rationale for central place theory via a dynamic programming formulation of the social planner's problem of city hierarchy. We show that there must be one and only one immediate smaller city between two neighboring larger-sized cities in any optimal solution. If the fixed cost of setting up a city is a power function, then the immediate smaller city will be located in the middle, confirming the locational pattern suggested by Christaller. We also show that the solution …

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Urban Planning Process: Can Technology Enhance Participatory Communication?, Rojin Vishkaie, Richard Levy, Anthony Tang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Oftentimes, within the urban planning process, urban planners and GIS experts must work together using desktop Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Geographic Information System (GIS). However, participatory communication and visualization which are important in the urban planning process, are not a central focus in the design of current computer-aided planning technologies. This study tends to provide an understanding of technological challenges and complexities urban planners and GIS experts encounter while engaging in a participatory environment during the urban planning process. This study also explores the perceptions of urban planners and GIS experts about the potential impact and usefulness of interactive surfaces …

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The Fundamental Law Of Highway Congestion Revisited: Evidence From National Expressways In Japan, Wen-Tai Hsu, Hongliang Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The fundamental law of highway congestion states that when congested, the travel speed on an expanded expressway reverts to its previous level before the capacity expansion. In this paper, we propose a theory that generalizes this statement and finds that if there exists a coverage effect, that is, the effect of longer road length on traffic conditional on capacity, then the new equilibrium travel speed could be lower than its previous level. Given the fundamental law, the theory predicts that the elasticity of traffic to road capacity is at least 1. We estimate this elasticity for national expressways in Japan …

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Seasonal Dynamics Of A Suburban Energy Balance In Phoenix, Arizona, Winston T. L. Chow, Thomas J. Volo, Enrique R. Vivoni, G. Darrel Jenerette, Benjamin L. Ruddell

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Observations of local-scale urban surface energy balance (SEB), which include fluxes of net all-wave radiation (Q*), and eddy covariance measurements of sensible (QH) and latent heat (QE) were collected in an arid Phoenix, AZ suburb from January to December 2012. We studied diurnal variations in SEB partitioning over four distinct seasons: winter, equinoxes, and summer; the latter period is further subdivided into (1) months prior to and (2) months occurring during the North American Monsoon. Largest flux densities were observed in summer, with most available energy partitioned into QH. Much less energy is partitioned into QE, but this term is …

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Community-Based Management Of Tricholoma Matsutake: A Case Study Of South Korean Mountain Villages, Terry Van Gevelt

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Tricholoma matsutake (S. Ito and S. Imai) Singer commercialisation provides significant economic benefits to rural communities, mainly in China, Japan and South Korea. Recently, a growing body of research has questioned the impact of commercialization on harvesting behavior and the supply of matsutake. One key question arising from this literature is whether or not community-based management (CBM) has a positive impact on matsutake supply. I surveyed nine mountain villages in Gangwon and North Gyeongsang provinces in South Korea. Four villages were found to have begun CBM of matsutake in the mid-1980s to early-1990s. All four villages continued to engage in …

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Singapore's Housing Policies: 1960-2013, Sock Yong Phang, Kyunghwan Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

The focus of this case study is on the important role of real estate and housing policies in Singapore’s economic development. In the sphere of housing policy, Singapore is known for its high homeownership rates, the very significant role played by the government in housing supply and housing finance, and the wealth that has been created and distributed in the process.

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Sustainability And Profitability, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

The best way to encourage sustainable business practices is to think of it as a brand enhancer ...

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Comparative Analysis Of Three Planning Support Software (Pss) Programs And Current Applications Of Planning Support System In China, Jiao J Li Y

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In this paper we first compare planning support system (PSS) with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS), then summarize the typical achievements about PSS in recent 20 years. We also make a critical judgment about the three main PSS software in Western Countries, namely: What if？, CommuntyViz and INDEX. The comprehensive reviews about PSS will contribute the deeper understanding on PSS and promote its wider applications in China.

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Converting Houses Into Churches: The Mobility, Fission, And Sacred Networks Of Evangelical House Churches In Sri Lanka, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this paper I examine the processes and politics associated with the formation of evangelical house churches in Sri Lanka. In doing so, I show how the sacred space of the house church is constructed through the development of sacred networks, which emerge when a group of Christians assemble for prayer and worship. Sacred networks grant the house church an important degree of mobility, but they also encourage church fission. Whilst the house church enables evangelical groups to grow in hostile environments like that of Sri Lanka, it is often a superficial form of growth that is unsustainable in the …

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Collaborative Urban Logistics – Synchronizing The Last Mile, Robert De Souza, Mark Goh, Hoong Chuin Lau, Wee-Siong Ng, Puay-Siew Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The synchronized last mile logistics concept seeks to address, through coordinated collaboration, several challenges that hinderreliability, cost efficiency, effective resource planning, scheduling and utilization; and increasingly, sustainability objectives.Subsequently, the meeting of service level and contractual commitments are competitively impacted with any loss of efficiency.These challenges, against a backdrop of Singapore, can essentially be addressed in selected industry sectors through a betterunderstanding of logistics structures; innovative supply chain designs and coordination of services, operations and processescoupled with concerted policies and supply chain strategies.

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Optimal City Hierarchy: A Dynamic Programming Approach To Central Place Theory, Wen-Tai Hsu, Thomas J. Holmes, Frank Morgan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Central place theory is a key building block of economic geography and an empirically plausible description of city systems. This paper provides a rationale for central place theory via a dynamic programming formulation of the social planner's problem of city hierarchy. We show that there must be one and only one immediate smaller city between two neighboring larger-sized cities in any optimal solution. If the fixed cost of setting up a city is a power function, then the immediate smaller city will be located in the middle, confirming the locational pattern suggested by Christaller [4] . We also show that …

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Post 2015 -- What Comes After The Millennium Development Goals, Michael Switow

Social Space

In June 2013, a High Level Panel appointed by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on UN member states to adopt a sustainable development agenda that will “Leave No One Behind.” Michael Switow shares civil society’s analysis of this report, taking a look at what it got right, what was wrong and where it missed out altogether.

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A Historical Review And Assessment Of Urban Heat Island Research In Singapore, Matthias Roth, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This historical review of 20 studies since the 1960s examines the influence of urban development on the thermal environment in Singapore, a fast growing tropical island city-state. Past observations are critically assessed with regard to experimental controls and station metadata. Given the availability of historical climate and developmental data spanning almost 50 years, changes in urban heat island (UHI) intensity and spatial coverage can be traced temporally. Rapid urban expansion in Singapore is clearly reflected in spatially and temporally changing air and surface temperature patterns. The nocturnal canopy-layer UHI intensity – measured as the difference between the commercial urban core …

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A Feasibility Study Of Crowdsourcing And Google Street View To Determine Sidewalk Accessibility, Kotaro Hara, Victoria Le, Jon Froehlich

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We explore the feasibility of using crowd workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk to identify and rank sidewalk accessibility issues from a manually curated database of 100 Google Street View images. We examine the effect of three different interactive labeling interfaces (Point, Rectangle, and Outline) on task accuracy and duration. We close the paper by discussing limitations and opportunities for future work.

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Central Place Theory And City Size Distribution, Wen-Tai Hsu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a theory of city size distribution via a hierarchy approach rather than the popular random growth process. It does so by formalizing central place theory using an equilibrium entry model and specifying the conditions under which city size distribution follows a power law. Central place theory describes the way in which a hierarchical city system with diﬀerent layers of cities serving diﬀerently sized market areas is formed from a uniformly populated space. The force driving the city size diﬀerences in this model is the heterogeneity in economies of scale across goods. The city size distribution under a …

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Full-Text Articles in Urban Studies and Planning

The Global Rise Of Megacities, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Housing Policies In Singapore, Sock Yong Phang, Matthias Helble

Research Collection School Of Economics

Precolonial Institutions And Deforestation In Africa, S. Larcom, Terry Van Gevelt, A. Zabala

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Assessment Of Measured And Perceived Microclimates Within A Tropical Urban Forest, Winston T. L. Chow, Siti Nur ‘Assyakirin Binte Ali Akbar, Su Li Heng, Matthias Roth

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Building Participatory Organizations For Common Pool Resource Management: Water User Group Promotion In Indonesia, Jacob I. Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Getting To The Heart Of Great Public Spaces, Su Fern Hoe, Jacqueline Liu, Tan Tarn How

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We Built This City: Public Participation In Land Use Decisions In Singapore, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Cointegration Of Matched Home Purchases And Rental Price Indexes: Evidence From Singapore, Badi H. Baltagi, Jing Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

Energy For Development: The Concept, Holmes J., Terry Van Gevelt

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

People-Centric Approach Needed For Effective Urban Planning, Says Expert, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Prioritizing Urban Sustainability Solutions: Coordinated Approaches Must Incorporate Scale-Dependent Built Environment Induced Effects, Matei Georgescu, Winston T. L. Chow, Z. H. Wang, Anthony J. Brazel, Barbara Trapido-Lurie, M. Roth, Valeria Benson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Home Prices And Inequality: Singapore Versus Other Global Superstar Cities, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Multiscale Modeling And Evaluation Of Urban Surface Energy Balance In The Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Stephen R. Shaffer, Winston T. L. Chow, Matei Georgescu, Peter Hyde, Darrel Jenerette, Alex Mahalov, M. Moustaoui, Benjamin Lyle Ruddell

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Crowdsourcing Bicycle Volumes: Exploring The Role Of Volunteered Geographic Information And Established Monitoring Methods, Greg P. Griffin, Junfeng Jiao

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Rural Electrification And Development In South Korea, Terry Van Gevelt

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Optimal City Hierarchy: A Dynamic Programming Approach To Central Place Theory, Wen-Tai Hsu, Thomas J. Holmes, Frank Morgan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Urban Planning Process: Can Technology Enhance Participatory Communication?, Rojin Vishkaie, Richard Levy, Anthony Tang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Fundamental Law Of Highway Congestion Revisited: Evidence From National Expressways In Japan, Wen-Tai Hsu, Hongliang Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Seasonal Dynamics Of A Suburban Energy Balance In Phoenix, Arizona, Winston T. L. Chow, Thomas J. Volo, Enrique R. Vivoni, G. Darrel Jenerette, Benjamin L. Ruddell

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Community-Based Management Of Tricholoma Matsutake: A Case Study Of South Korean Mountain Villages, Terry Van Gevelt

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Singapore's Housing Policies: 1960-2013, Sock Yong Phang, Kyunghwan Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

Sustainability And Profitability, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Comparative Analysis Of Three Planning Support Software (Pss) Programs And Current Applications Of Planning Support System In China, Jiao J Li Y

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Converting Houses Into Churches: The Mobility, Fission, And Sacred Networks Of Evangelical House Churches In Sri Lanka, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Collaborative Urban Logistics – Synchronizing The Last Mile, Robert De Souza, Mark Goh, Hoong Chuin Lau, Wee-Siong Ng, Puay-Siew Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Optimal City Hierarchy: A Dynamic Programming Approach To Central Place Theory, Wen-Tai Hsu, Thomas J. Holmes, Frank Morgan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Post 2015 -- What Comes After The Millennium Development Goals, Michael Switow

Social Space

A Historical Review And Assessment Of Urban Heat Island Research In Singapore, Matthias Roth, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A Feasibility Study Of Crowdsourcing And Google Street View To Determine Sidewalk Accessibility, Kotaro Hara, Victoria Le, Jon Froehlich

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Central Place Theory And City Size Distribution, Wen-Tai Hsu

Research Collection School Of Economics