- Urban Innovator
This City Aims to Be the World's Greenest
As Singapore expands, a novel approach preserves green space.
Singapore calls itself the Garden City, and it’s making good on that promise.
Singapore's meteoric economic rise launched a landscape of towering architecture in the compact city-state, but as the metropolis continues to grow, urban planners are weaving nature throughout—and even into its heights. New developments must include plant life, in the form of green roofs, cascading vertical gardens, and verdant walls.
The push to go green extends to construction as well—green building has been mandatory since 2008.
Much of that vision to keep Singapore both sustainable and livable stems from Cheong Koon Hean, the first woman to lead Singapore’s urban development agency. The veteran architect and urban planner is credited with reshaping the skyline through landmark projects such as
