“Asian Review 020” ― Singapore part 6
A “City-State” run by unified national mind
We have introduced concepts of urban planning such as the compact city, TOD and so on. Singapore has been struggling with traffic congestion in the central urban areas since the 1970s. The high cost to own a car through Certificate of Entitlement (COE) reduces the number of vehicles owned. Other measures such as the setting of regulated areas called Area License Schemes (ALS) and the establishment of regulatory areas called Road Pricing Schemes (RPS) has been introduced to reduce the number of vehicles. Especially since 1998, Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) has been introduced to ensure an accurate, fair and efficient billing system.
Meanwhile, in this island country, water resource is said to be the heart. Singapore depends mostly on purchases from Malaysia, but for the future, research and development to reuse sewage by recycling and purification called “New Water” is progressing. Based on such background, the technology of infrastructure facilities has been considerably accumulated.
In China, there is a development zone called “Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco City” along the east coast of the Binhai New District of Tianjin. This new town with a size of 30 square kilometers has its own environmental guidelines set up. In this zone, wind power, pipeline garbage collection system, and etc. are introduced. As for these advanced infrastructure facilities, a Singaporean enterprise not only plans and designs, but also invests, constructs, and operates those systems. Suzhou also has “Sino- Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park”, where companies in Singapore are deeply involved.
In these ways, Singaporeans are developing business in the huge market in China. Behind these situation, we can see the infrastructure export strategy of “national tobacco” which became a unified public and private corporation in Singapore. There is one more factor of their success which I suppose. Most Singaporean companies are operated by the “Chinese”. Isn’t this a merit as they can communicate with the Chinese local authority in the Mandarin language?
