27.0 City Parks - Hong Kong and Singapore

Sound city master plans always have great public spaces as a means to provide outdoor living and community meeting spaces as well as areas for recreation and sometimes a "green" relief from the dense built up environment. In places like Italy, the piazza is the standard urban public space that serves most of these purposes, but rarely is it a space of green landscape.

Of course New York has Central Park, an oasis among the forest of high rises and one of the genuine drivers of people's desire to own property along Central Park one of the most valuable addresses of real estate in the world.

In Asia the two competing cities of Hong Kong and Singapore also have their major parks. Hong Kong's Victoria Park built in the 1950's on reclaimed land which used to be a typhoon shelter for boats. Singapore's Gardens by the Bay newly opened in 2012 is also built on reclaimed land around Marina Bay. So how do these parks compare?

 

Victoria Park, Hong Kong

Gardens by the Bay, Singapore

26.0 Jakarta Flooding and Traffic Jam - Related Solutions?

The major infrastructure problems of Jakarta of flooding and traffic jam, is it possible that there exists a solution that could at least partially solve both issues?  In recent times, major flooding happens at least once every 5 years due to a number of reasons of which distruption of the main water ways is one of them.   While traffic jam as we all know is a daily occurance.  So certainly the 2 big probelms of Jakarta are of top priority and are important enough to consider a long term solution that may take 10 years or so to execute but would be a real light at the end of the tunnel with additonal positive impacts.

THESIS

Widen and deepen the full length of the Ciliwung river from Bogor to the Java Sea, clean up the water, make it an attractive feature that becomes a prime living location that patially solves the flooding issue and is then used for Public Mass Transit in the form of River Boats. 




Singapore River Condos and Waterfront amenities
 

25.0 Jakarta Mass Transit, Development Planning and Economics

The subject of Mass Transit always comes up in any conversation about cities with cronic traffic jams such as Jakarta.  The conversation always seems to go something like this, "the solution is a Mass Transit System..." and the replies are always something like, "Its too expensive the government canot afford it so it will never happen"  and the converstation usually stops there just as in real life this has been going on for years. 

Typical Jakarta Traffic Jam

According to recent news reports in the Jakarta Globe, the project still appears to be unsustainable.  The question is has the issue in cases like Jakarta been actually addressed in the correct comprehensive manner?  Lets look at the key factors in Mass Transit or take a step back and look at the issue of tranportation in a metropolis like Jakarta. 

What is the main objective?  To transport people from home to work and to other places of interest or necessity with comfort, efficiency and economy for everyone.  The simple fact is individual auto transport for each individual is not a sustainable solution both from and environmental and now an economic perspective with the price of oil, but also with the cost of space for roads and the resultant waste of time due to traffic jams.