Yuen, Belinda. “Urban Transformation: Spaces in the Sky.” Presentation at the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) 2nd International Conference “Territorial Encounters,” ETH Zurich, 10 September 2012, TIB AV-Portal, 19:13, https://doi.org/10.5446/35226. CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CH.
Belinda Yuen, a town planner and expert in mass housing, presents an account of Singapore’s public housing, the evolution of concepts and strategies for high-rise urban planning, and the diverse common spaces that have been designed for a higher quality of life. More than eighty percent of Singapore’s residents live in public housing, which has gradually replaced slums in the last five decades. The 1960s saw the provision of the largest number of housing in the shortest possible time at the lowest costs. From the 1970s onwards, attention was directed to comprehensive planning, quality of living environment, identity, and recently to sustainability and green spaces. Yuen advocates for further research on Green space in high-rises in terms of health, children, and elderly people. Finally, Yuen argues that it is essential to understand that green spaces are no residual space, but integral parts of any city’s planning.
The aim of the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) Conference “Territorial Encounters” was to bring together experts in territorial conceptions, focusing on urban environments, urban landscapes, and urban ecologies, with a heavy emphasis on the relations of neighbors and neighborhoods. (Source: TIB AV-Portal)
Courtesy of the former Göttingen-based Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film (IWF, closed 2010), a large selection of environmental documentaries and educational films is available for on-site viewing at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. The IWF’s broad and diverse collection of scientific films is now searchable within the TIB (German National Library of Science and Technology) AV-Portal. The Rachel Carson Center’s Environment & Society Portal has made a selection of environmentally relevant films from the IWF with Creative Commons licenses discoverable within its environmental film profiles collection.