One of the greenest city-states in the world is Singapore where nearly half of its land has been allocated to parks and gardens.
From a distance, the wild vertical gardens climbing up buildings and the miles of leafy corridors connecting major parks look effortless, like nature has been allowed to just do its thing.
Back in 1967, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had an idea to make Singapore a garden city. In 1992, the government formed an idea sustainability blueprint called the Singapore Green Plan (SGP). This is recently updated to the year 2030 and is called SGP 2030.
The SGP 2030 aims to develop the city with gardens while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and increasing public adoption of cleaner forms of energy, such as solar.
The ambitions are supported by a detailed plan where there are goals such as developing more than 300 acres of new parks and ensuring that every household is within a 10-minute walk of green space; tripling the number of cycling trails; developing a circular economy and requiring all new car registrations to be clean-energy vehicles.
The long-term plans of developing SGP 2030 include funding training programs for future jobs in sustainable building, solar technology and green finance.
