That island in the sun

Singapore used to style itself as the "garden city", but these days everyone is trying to be just that. Last I heard, Singapore wants to turn that all around, and be a city in a garden. Now that's pretty neat.

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My sister's been working for gardens by the bay, a new "concept park" in Singapore, and she's told me a bunch of neat stuff lately. Now, I ain't the biggest fan of this country, but they have actually done quite a few neat things.

They built a very under-publicised water solution which won a big international award, and from what people tell me (the descriptions online aren't great), is indeed a very well designed and effective project. From what I hear, returns water to the ocean cleaner than the water that flows from the ocean in. The green roof on their main building emulates the other high profile green roof in Singapore.

Gardens by the bay looks like a really neat project too: whilst they are building gardens with climates very different from Singapore's tropical weather (mediterranean woodland and cloud forest), the developers are carefully keeping track of every input and output to make sure they make the best use of resources, and carefully designing buildings to carry out functions passively and use minimum external energy.

While the pictured green roof is not as effective as one could be (roofs can grow food and sprout trees and bushes that are much more effective at soaking up carbon than grass. this roof looks like it's pretty high maintenance too), you must admit, it's kind of a sexy building.

High end developments are really not my style, but it's nice to see the whole "green" movement being invested in and held up as something to aspire to, especially in a country I strongly associate with materialism and luxury. And while we might not want a green roof like the one pictured on every building, the first step to getting awesome green roofs on every building is getting people to want them.