Transformations of urban water-margins in South-east Asia

From 5^th to 28^th of January 2007 Prof. Han Meyer (Urban Design, Faculty of Architecture) was invited as a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore, in order to support a new research initiated by the ‘urban studies group” of this university concerning the development of urban water-margins in South-east Asian cities.
Urban development is booming in South-east Asia, especially in coastal zones and delta-areas. The water-margins alongside the coasts have become battle-fields for different interests: industrialization and port-development, infrastructure-development (highways, railroads),  urban redevelopment (urban waterfronts, parks) and environmental claims are competing with each other. Singapore itself can be considered as an example where this competition can be experienced in a concentrated form at a small scale.
The city-state Singapore is an unprecedented success-story of a combination of economic booming and social welfare. Singapore has surpassed Rotterdam as the biggest port of the world with a large scale concentration of petrochemical industry, while the city-centre has become the settlement of the financial headquarters of a large number of multinational companies. This economic development has been combined with an active policy in the field of public housing, public transport and public parks. Singapore presents itself as ‘the Tropical City of Excellence’ and is considered as an example and model for economic and urban development for the whole region of South-east Asia.
The influence of Holland on this development of Singapore during the second half of the 20^th century has been rather strong: Port-development and industrialization has been inspired by the Rotterdam-experience; the spatial concept for the total island has been inspired by the “Randstad – Groene Hart” – concept, and the reclamation of a large amount of new land (25% of the total surface of 700 m2) has been supported by Dutch dredgers and Delft civil engineers.
However, especially concerning water-management and water-margins the state is confronted with increasing problems which are exemplary for all south-east Asian coastal cities.
First, there is a strange paradox of not enough and too much water. Not enough, because the state has a shortage of drinking-water which is imported from Malaysia. The ambition of Singapore is to become self-supporting by damming creeks and rivers. In the same time the enormous amount of rain which fall ‘for free’ is transported immediately to the sea by  an enormous network of drainage-systems and concrete canals. One of the big questions of the next future is to transform this water-network from a removal-system towards a storage-system.
Second, the land-reclamation and urban redevelopment along the water-margins resulted into serious environmental damage. Vulnerable riffs disappeared completely. Moreover, there is an increasing demand for more attention to public values instead of the emphasis on large scale real estate developments.
The ‘urban studies’ research group of the National University of Singapore wants to address these questions in Singapore and several other cities as Seoul, Yokohama-Tokyo; later also in several Chinese cities. It is an exciting challenge to be invited in this research and to help them to discover which answers can be developed.
The first phase of the research will take 2,5 years and will result in a conference in 2009.
Perhaps something to combine with the DRC Water-conference in that year.