Professor Gerhard Schmitt is the man Singapore has charged with making it one of the most modern, sustainable cities on the planet.
The pioneer architect heads the Singapore Future Cities Laboratory, a tie-up between NUS and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, or ETH, in Zurich, which also incorporates the Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability.
The partnership is one of the National Research Foundation’s key projects and the entire operation is now sited in the organisation’s state-of-the-art building, the Campus for Research, Excellence And Technology Enterprise, or Create.
The project demonstrates just how important future sustainability is for the Government. And its researchers are not just looking at Singapore. This is a global venture with specific interest in South-East Asia.
Prof Schmitt explained: “Here in Singapore we are trying to develop sustainable future cities, to look at existing cities and try to make them more sustainable.
“We have to look at the development of the global population, which is moving very fast towards the cities. We also have to plan new cities which currently don’t exist.”
Since launching the project in September 2010, the Swiss academic has rarely travelled back to ETH. Instead, he lectures his European students from Singapore every Monday evening via a high-speed satellite link. It means he can keep his own carbon footprint to a minimum by not flying to and from Europe.
Poverty and the solar ice cap
But the scientist is keen to stress that the work he and his team from ETH are doing in Singapore is of global importance.
At present, more than 50 per cent of the world population lives in cities. A hundred years ago it was less than 5 per cent.
Cities are responsible for 75 per cent of the global emissions of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, one of the biggest concerns for the Future Cities Lab staff. Urban planners like Prof Schmitt need to demonstrate how such an unsustainable system can be transformed into a sustainable one.
The Future Cities Lab, and its partners at ETH, is persisting with the basic principles of sustainability - the foundation stone for everything they do.
The problems are wide-ranging and weighty. Renewable, clean energy and its development is a massive issue for planners. Another major topic is water and how we clean it. What do we do with the sewerage from new settlements? And what do we do if we have too much water, should the polar ice cap melts?
Dealing with poverty and driving up the standard of living is also a major concern for the Future Cities Lab. It is believed that almost a billion people worldwide live in slums and in developing countries; only half the world’s homes have clean, drinking water piped in.
“How to deal with the issue of poverty is pivotal for the future of urban development. If a seventh of the world population is poor, then that poses a huge challenge for the rest of us,” said Prof Schmitt.
The vice-president of planning and logistics at the ETH and his team are also examining migration trends, from social and economic migration all the way to refugee and mass migration, to gauge the impact such changes have on infrastructure.
All told, it’s a complex web of issues and problems being stored up for future generations if action isn’t taken now - which is why the NRF is so determined to invest in search of solutions.
How Singapore can go green?
The pioneering lab at NUS is like a think-tank that deals with the sustainable development of urban systems or cities, regardless of where they are on Earth.
In fact, the first sustainable project to be planned in the lab is for a new town in Ethiopia. The groundwork has already been laid and the NUS group is at the point of building houses.
There, they are trying to create urban systems which transform a rural society into a sustainable urban one.
Speaking to Today at his lab at NUS, Prof Schmitt said: “Think of the city as a system, as an organism. That organism has a certain metabolism, and in the past this meant a very high input in terms of energy, food, goods, and a lot of output or garbage produced at the end of it. And there was no recycling anywhere within the human habitat.
“This has to change into the direction of renewable inputs. Lots of renewable materials and recycling within the city and producing very little in terms of output - waste and pollution emission.
“Although our work is planned in the lab it’s not just all theory. It’s actually having a tangible effect.”
Of course, Singapore is facing all the same challenges and Prof Schmitt - who was born in Mainz, Germany and who studied architecture in Munich and California - believes the Republic will benefit from the fact that such a ground-breaking research centre is based here. The lessons learnt from projects like the Ethiopian one will be tangibly felt even a world away in Singapore, the professor told Today.
He said: “A lot of what we do is look at Singapore. In Singapore we are looking at buildings, because we know there is a lot of potential to improve the energy efficiency of the buildings here. If you do that you will have less output in terms of heat, because all the energy you use to cool the buildings in the end is released as heat into the environment.
“So, if you make the buildings more efficient and sustainable, then you reduce the heat output from the buildings - and that means the temperature in Singapore becomes more comfortable and you need less air-conditioning.
“We need to combine that with new modes of transportation in Singapore - for example, more public transportation, more electric vehicles and bikes. But you have to produce the electricity somehow, and buildings can become part of that and produce electricity. By doing this we can make Singapore much more livable.”
This transition to future “livability”, said the former Harvard guest professor, is already in process on our shores. “Singapore has made very good decisions in terms of a sustainable future and has put these things into action.”
For example, said Prof Schmitt, “recycling is starting very strongly here now and if you compare Singapore with other Asian cities and the report of green cities, you can see Singapore coming out on top. It’s a priority for Singapore not just to be a global city but to also be a green city”.
He added: “There a lots of recycling opportunities here and you see more and more linking different parts of the island through bicycle paths, the park connectors. What has to be done is integrate green transportation - electric bikes and so on - to everyday traffic.
“That is a big effort, and people think it’s not possible, but Singapore is advancing very fast.”
