The Impeccable Taste of Lovely Singapore

In this whole big world of urban design there is everywhere else - and there is Singapore. I recently returned from Southeast Asia through an East-West Center fellowship - and fell in love with this excellent design outpost of nearly five million people on the southern tip of Malaysia.

Singapore is a small tropical country that raised itself from an under-developed colony under Great Britain to a global financial center in the span of my lifetime. Politically, it's a one-party state run - fortunately - by a government and urban planners with very good architectural taste. The waterfront skyline below testifies to the idea that good design can help create a great economy.



One of the most striking new features in Singapore is the Marina Bay Sands resort shown in two photos below. That's a ship on top of three hotel towers. I didn't get up there, but people say it's a walker's paradise of high-rise greenery. (The goal citywide is nearly 200 acres of high-rise landscaping by 2030).




View from a different part of the city:


I aim to study more about what global architectural firms designed what in this beautiful city. But here, for example, is the Singapore Supreme Court building.


And the National Library:


I shot this from a bus seat while stopped at a traffic light. I don't know if it's an office building or a residential high-rise. But the design is pure delight.


It was like this everywhere for five days. The airport was magnificent. Lush green landscaping adorned the parkway leading into the city. The streets were impeccably clean. I've long said that living amidst the magnificent scenery of Alaska, both in Kodiak and Juneau during the 1980s, ruined me for everywhere else. Lovely Singpore has done the same.