While living overseas in the early 2000s I kept up to date with issues in my Jamaican homeland by listening to the daily radio shows, in particular Wilmot ‘Mutty’ Perkins. It was while hearing his response to one of his many callers that I was introduced to Lee Kuan Yew’s autobiography about how he developed and instituted the policies that he used to build the Singapore that we know today. His description of the Singapore that he started with in the late 1960s sounds very similar to the Jamaica that I live in now; littering, noise nuisance, unregulated cookshops and produce sellers on sidewalks resulting in clutter and garbage, ‘pirate’ taxi drivers without insurance that undermined the bus service, stray animals in urban areas, squatting, disrespect for greenery and a generally scruffy-looking city.
Lee Kuan Yew decided to make Singapore a clean and green ‘tropical garden city’ when most other countries paid little attention to greening. The motivation was to enhance the aesthetics of the city to differentiate Singapore from other independent nations but also to enhance the water supply by capturing clean rainwater run-off in streams, rivers and canals that were dammed at the end.
He wrote about having to build high rises to relocate squatters and the very poor and his insistence that the architectural designs and landscaping be unique and interesting to capture the character of the locations. Young homeowners were also able to purchase these high-rise units through mandatory contributions to a government fund (like our NHT).
Lee’s greening plan began with prioritising streetscaping of the major vehicular routes through the city, especially those traversed by visiting dignitaries, as well as strategic tree planting. At lot of effort was put into selecting and developing the most suitable plant materials for the city environment. Persons were trained and recruited to staff the government agencies responsible for installing and maintaining the new green areas. I wonder what our recent visiting dignitaries thought about the entry into our capital city?
Singapore is now implementing it’s ‘Green Plan 2030’ under a revised ‘city in a garden’ vision. This new plan includes a concept termed ‘liveable density’ where there is high density development, but it is interspersed with a network of parks, recreation facilities and even a rainforest in the middle of the city.
Ponds, rivers and other water features are also used, which double as flood control features. Through a programme called Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises (LUSH), all new buildings are also ‘green’, incorporating features such as water recycling, energy conservation, vertical living walls and green roofs and must meet the requirements of a local environmental rating system called ‘Green Mark.’
All developments must replace any greenery lost at the ground level with greenery on upper floors and in certain areas, developers must create new landscaping areas that are 100 per cent of the development site area. There is also a focus on creating community spaces that encourage interaction between residents of different ages as well as equitable access to amenities.
Apart from the holistic Singapore model, there are examples from other parts of the world where private developers are given incentives to create and maintain green spaces as part of their development that are termed Privately Owned Public Space (POPS). This is a more fragmented approach but it can still be successful within an overall green development vision. Over the past few years, our neighbours in Barbados have been creating Public Urban Green Spaces (PUGS) by redeveloping car parks, gully banks and abandoned buildings in the city to create a green network that my landscape architect colleagues there call an ‘emerging emerald necklace.’
Back at home, the Jamaican government has recently increased the building density in the KMA and in 2018 the Building Act to govern the construction industry was passed. However, apart from allowing developers to gain more profits from creating more units on a lot, it is unclear how the natural environment and city residents will benefit from the developments. The authorities seem surprised that residents are not embracing the new development approach. Change is necessary in a growing city and moving to vertical developments is inevitable to accommodate a growing population on a finite land area. Previous high-rise developments in New Kingston, along the Kingston Waterfront and in resort areas used to include tree-lined streets and green spaces. The Sagicor Head Office in New Kingston even has what the late architect ‘Denny’ Repole intended as an outdoor sacred space along Grenada Avenue.
The opportune time to institute a green development policy would have been BEFORE allowing higher density developments throughout the wider KMA so that all the concepts highlighted above could be incorporated. Development orders and building regulations are the tools that are to be used to realise the vision. The approach taken locally would suggest that there is no real vision to create a sustainable city which is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It is already late, but the time to develop a Jamaican green development vision is NOW before it is too late. Does anyone remember the 1970 popular song by Joni Mitchell … They paved paradise and put up a parking lot!
Jenna Blackwood is a practising landscape architect, adjunct lecturer at the Caribbean School of Architecture, president of the Central American & Caribbean Association of Landscape Architects (APAC) and an advocate for Public Urban Green Space (PUGS).