Re-imaging urban coastal landscapes

Project description:

In the mangrove forest alone, 56 of 70 of the world’s mangrove species could be found in Singapore, the most numerous in Southeast Asia. However, the clearing of land for settlements has resulted in widespread deforestation, leaving less than 5% of the original habitats intact. Almost all of Singapore’s shorelines have been drastically modified to meet industrial, residential, water resource and recreational demands. These massive changes and fragmentation of the coastal areas disrupts aquatic ecosystem processes and decreases water quality. It is also apparent that many of eth natural coastal habitat face to the shrinking area, increasing fragmentation, and encroaching by urban expansions. This occurs in the context of climate change, which brings about mounting environmental pressures such as sea level rise, altered hydrological regimes, and sediment supply.

How can we effectively conserve the existing coastal habitats while meeting the increasing human development demands? Given the future development requirement and sea level rise, how could initial infrastructure planning be guided towards a sustainable coastal ecosystem and the diversity of wildlife? Beyond simply preserving the marine life, can landscape architects propose design prototypes that can infuse greater ecological functions and diversity into the urban coastal context? The research aims to answer these questions by devising new strategies and design applications of ecological principles towards ecological resiliency of the city.