MEM Dissertation LAP

MORPHOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF URBAN ENVIRONMENT Case Study: A Singapore New Town
BY FAYSAL KABIR SHUVO
This book is based on the dissertation submitted for the partial fulfillment of the requirements for Masters of Science in Environmental Management at National University of Singapore
Dedication
This book is fully dedicated to my loving wife Farzana Afrin Tani
Faysal Kabir Shuvo Singapore 22/06/2010
Morphological and Physiological Analysis for Measuring Urban Environmental Performance: A Case Study of Bukit Panjang New Town
Acknowledgement
In the beginning, all praises belong to almighty Allah, the most kindhearted and the most merciful to man and his actions, which provides me the opportunity to complete this study successfully.
I wish to express my most sincere and profound gratitude to my dissertation supervisor Dr. Perry Yang, former Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, NUS, for his constant supervision and encouragement, valuable advice and comments which had been very much conducive in carrying out this research. I also feel his affectionate but disciplined guidance has allowed me to reach my destination. My heartiest gratefulness should be for two famous Professor Emeritus of Urban Design, ETH Zurich, Franz Oswald and Peter Baccini as well as Senior lecturer, Mark Michaeli for their wholehearted cooperation in getting familiar with various terms of Netzstadt.
My deep gratitude also goes to Dr. Simon Yanuar Putra for his dedicated and benevolent cooperation in making me familiar with ArcGIS and sometimes with sharing knowledge of difficult design terms, I am really grateful to him. In same connection I am also owe to Gunawan Tanuwidjaja, MEM graduate, Dr. Asim Kumar Debanath, Dr. Steve Cardinal Jusuf, for their helps in various technical issues.
I recall the supports with warm appreciation and great regards, which were extended by the various personnel of Singapore Land Authority, Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore Power, and Building Construction Authority by providing me useful data for carrying out the research.
Finally, we are grateful and humbly acknowledge that this work could not have been completed without the moral support of our families.
Preface
The term sustainability is given enormous momentum over the past few decades for ensuring a vigorous living condition for the future generation which mostly has been concentrated on the economic freedom and social equity while leaving the environment issues apart; another important issue of sustainability. This environment is being jeopardized with the pace of constant increasing rate of urbanization, giving birth to the multiple environmental issues ranged from local like urban heat island to global as global climate change or global warming. Policymakers, city planners and designers therefore have recent given their deep attention to sustainable urbanization or urban form which starts with individual buildings and deals up to city scale. For planning and subsequent designing of a sustainable urban form require a finer scale environmental performance analysis of what already built. Urban environment depends on the shape and organization of spaces (morphology) on one side as well as on the physical resource management and flow (physical process) within the built environment on the other hand which are mainly anthropogenic modifications of the arrangements and orientations of the environment. So a set of indicators are needed for an effective analysis of existing environment to guide planning and designing of a potential urban area. Modern geographic information technologies like GIS, remote sensing with diverse statistical tools like MS Excel, SPSS, SAS, STATA have made it easy to a large extent to reach a multiple objected decision making regarding urban environment. In this study, an environmental performance analysis has been performed based on multiple morphological and physiological indicators for Bukit Panjang, a new town of Singapore. Though Singapore government is much vigilant in urban planning in terms of ecological and green coverage perspectives, how the morphological properties like building density (plot ratio), subdivision of land parcels, urban grain sizes and level of accessibility of land parcel are correlated with the physiological process like material intensity and electricity use is still unexplored. In this research an effort is made to make up the previous study gap; better to say that the author hopes at least that the study approach will pave a nice way further research in urban environmental performance analysis towards sustainable urban form.
II
Morphological and Physiological Analysis for Measuring Urban Environmental Performance: A Case Study of Bukit Panjang New Town The contents of this book are organized into eight chapters. The first chapter includes mainly the background and purposes of the research based on which the base thesis was done. The second chapter has summarized the literatures relevant to the research issues like sustainability of built environment and the performance indicators of urban built environment based on the morphological and physiological characteristics. The methodology of the whole research is described in the chapter three, followed by a short description of the study area in the chapter four. Chapter five includes the concept of urban environment, the morphological and physiological indicators pertinent to analyze the performance of urban environment. Chapter six described the GIS based analysis of the indicators developed at the earlier chapter; the correlation analysis among the indicators is also described in this chapter. Chapter seven incorporates the proposed recommendation following the analysis result and chapter seven is followed by the concluding chapter eight.
III
Table of Contents
Title
Page No.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT PREFACE TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF MAPS ACRONYMS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Motivation of the Study 1.3 Objectives of the study 1.4 Scopes of the Study 1.5 Research Questions and Hypothesis 1.6 Limitations
I II IV VI VI VI VII
1-1 1-2 1-3 1-3 1-4 1-5
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Emergence of the issue of Sustainability 2.2 Sustainable Urban Form 2.3 Environmental Performance of the Built Environment 2.4 Sustainability Indicators of Urban form 2.4.1 Working with the morphological indicators 2.4.2 Working with the physiological indicators 2.5 Multi scale assessment of environmental performance and GIS 2.6 Knowledge Gap 2-1 2-2 2-3 2-4 2-4 2-11 2-15 2-18
IV
Morphological and Physiological Analysis for Measuring Urban Environmental Performance: A Case Study of Bukit Panjang New Town CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK 3.1 Selection of the Study Area 3.2 Collection of Necessary Maps 3.3 Literature Survey 3.4 Identification and Principles of the Indicators 3.5 Collection and Compilation of the data and information 3.6 Calculation of the Indicators 3.7 Analysis and Visualization of the results 3.8 Proposal and Recommendations 3-1 3-1 3-1 3-2 3-3 3-3 3-6 3-6
CHAPTER 4: STUDY AREA 4.1 History and Location 4.2 Profile of the Study Area 4-1 4-1
CHAPTER 5: PROPOSED INDICATORS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BUKIT PANJANG 5.1 Urban Environmental Performance 5.2 Morphological Indicators 5.3 Physiological Indicators 5-1 5-2 5-9
CHAPTER 6: ANALYSIS OF INDICATORS AND FINDINGS 6.1 Morphological Indicators 6.2 Physiological Indicators 6.3 Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression Analysis 6.4 Discussion 6-5 6-16 6-21 6-25
CHAPTER 7: RECOMMENDING PROPOSAL CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION REFERENCES
7-1 8-1 Ref-1
List of Tables
Title Table 5.1: Material Stock in Bukit Panjang from 1993-2005 Table 5.2: Average Household area of various building typologies in Singapore Table 5.3: Average Electricity Consumption for all households of the same house type Table 5.4: SLA defined building types Table 5.5: Calculated Electricity Use Intensity for Built Structures in Bukit Panjang Table 6.1: Existing Characteristics of the Building typologies in Bukit Panjang Table 6.2: Status of the Built Environment Data in Bukit Panjang Table 6.3: Pearson Correlation Coefficients for two sets of Indicators 5-15 6-1 6-2 6-23 5-13 5-13 Page No. 5-11 5-13
List of Figures
Title Figure 3.1: Methodological Framework Figure 6.1: Share of Built and Non-built area Page No. 3-7 6-1
List of Maps
Title Map 4.1: Singapore Map Map 4.2: Map of Study Area (Bukit Panjang) Map 6.1: Building Density of Bukit Panjang New Town Page No. 4-3 4-3 6-3
VI
Morphological and Physiological Analysis for Measuring Urban Environmental Performance: A Case Study of Bukit Panjang New Town Map 6.2: Building Status in Bukit Panjang New Town Map 6.3: Topography of Plot Ratio in Bukit Panjang Map 6.4: Plot Ratio Density in Bukit Panjang Map 6.5: Subdivisions of Land Parcels in Bukit Panjang Map 6.6: Degree of Subdivision in Bukit Panjang Map 6.7: Granular Index of Built Environment in Bukit Panjang Map 6.8: Density Map for Level of Accessibility Map 6.9: Topographical Representation for Level of Accessibility Map 6.10: Density of Still (kg) in Bukit Panjang Buildings Map 6.11: Density of Cement (kg) in Bukit Panjang Buildings Map 6.12: Density of Coarse Aggregate (kg) in Bukit Panjang Buildings Map 6.13: Density of Fine Aggregate (kg) in Bukit Panjang Buildings Map 6.14: Electricity Use Intensity (kWh/m2) of Bukit Panjang 6-4 6-6 6-7 6-9 6-10 6-12 6-14 6-15 6-17 6-18 6-19 6-20 6-22
Acronyms
GIS IT IUCN WCED EPA GHG CIAT USA
Geographic Information System Information Technology International Union for Conservation of Nature World Commission on Environment and Development Environmental Protection Agency Green House Gas Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists United States of America
VII
Morphological and Physiological Analysis for Measuring Urban Environmental Performance: A Case Study of Bukit Panjang New Town ULM EU LT NUS SLA URA BCA HDB MND MRT LRT SP GDP Urban Landscape Model European Union Lighting and Thermal National University of Singapore Singapore Land Authority Urban Redevelopment Authority Building Construction Authority Housing Development Board Ministry of National Development Mass Rapid Transit Light Rail Transit Singapore Power Gross Domestic Product
VIII
Chapter 1
Introduction and Background
1.1 Introduction
When we note the term Sustainable Development or Sustainability, most of the experts try to link between economics and environment. However, urban areas are key objects for sustainable planning in terms of physical development of a country or region. Urban system is centered in urban areas that are morphologically modified by the men and in terms of ecosystem services, urban areas are primarily sites of consumption, use and generating wastes, which are termed as urban metabolism (outcome of physiological processes). Urban areas are the major elements of the modern landscapes, and as such are impacted by and are sources of significant ecological changes and landscapes fragmentation (Perry, 2007). The urbanization process converts the vegetated landscapes into fragmented building covers made of asphalt and concrete. These changes in nature of landscapes (anthropogenic modification of urban morphology) have primarily affected solar reflectivity, evaporative efficiency, and roughness of surface therefore
anthropogenic energy flows have come to an important role (i.e. electricity) through it. Energy is necessarily required for various activities in urban ecosystem and it comes from various sources. Energy has very vital implications in various activities (physiology of city) in urban areas which in turn determine the urban morphology or vice versa.
Not only does the consumption of non-renewable resources deplete the worlds finite material and energy stocks upon which economic and social development depend, but the use of both renewable and non-renewable resources cause environmental degradation during transportation, storage, processing and disposal (Guy et.al, 2001). The demands for high energy consumption in modern industrialized cities are usually filled through electricity and combustion of oil, gases and coal which ultimately produce another kind of waste energy flow named heat. This phenomenon is popularly known as Urban Heat
Introduction
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Island (UHI). UHI is largely dependent on the urban form that determines the physiological processes like energy flow and material flow etc within the urban environment. Therefore needless to say that to understand the sustainability of any urban environment there are an acute need to analyze the morphological and physiological characteristics of the urban system.
1.2 Motivation of this Study
The motivation behind this work is to put emphasis on the significance of scientific knowledge in evidence-based policy-making for sustainable development. The book contents come within the scopes of the built environment and energy and material consumption (flow) which is incorporated into the GIS as the principle interface for data input, storage, retrieval, and manipulation. With the help of advanced IT capacity, further various geo-process functions of queries, mapping, modeling, visualization and spatial analysis have been carried out which is highly useful for the environmental decision making space. The famous book of Oswald and Baccini (2003) named NetzstadtGerman word which means the The Network of City has motivated a lot to carry out the research. In fact, few indicators, terms and processes used in this thesis are mostly replicated from the book.
It is known that the provision of electricity (physiological character) in cities is one of the main drivers for sustainability, which helps to trade off the availability of natural ventilation and natural light. Steemer (2003) notes that the energy and environmental implications of buildings are much more significant than that for transport; however, transport issues receive greater political attention as there is a stronger connection of local pollution to cars; and because cars are associated with other issues, such as accidents and social impacts. Given the effects of urban form on electricity consumption, it is highly advisable to look at the particular unit of urban environment as a whole. However, the majority of past studies mainly focused on individual buildings which not only limit the progress towards sustainability, but also have the opposite effect on the building itself and adjacent environments as well.
Introduction
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This work is the authors dissertation to fulfill the requirement of Masters of Science in Environmental Management and aimed at formulating a correlation between urban form and anthropogenic physical flows, specifically the issues of electricity consumption to investigate their mutual influence over each other at the neighborhood blocks with the ultimate aim to help the urban policy-makers and practitioners.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
Every research is ascertained to achieve few objectives. This study has also a set of objectives to be achieved, they are to - assess the selected morphological indicators for the study area - identify very simple physiological behavior of the area - see the correlation between two sets of indicators, and - draw conclusion based on the two sets analysis for future urban planning of Singapore.
1.4 Scopes of the Study
While sustainability is a prevailing issue in every kind of development, let alone the urban development which is supposed to be the base of all other type of developments e.g. infrastructures, industries, land development etc; therefore, sustainable urban development requires transdisciplinary actions. Various disciplines like architecture, engineering, natural science involved in this analysis could be able to address the specific problems emerged from urban planning tasks. The long term objectives of these multi-criteria analyses of urban environment may accomplish various aspects of whole urban system e.g. to develop urban form or whole of the territories, the allowable metabolism for the global and regional conditions, integration of other disciplines like social sciences, economics, politics, anthropology as well as understanding of the whole urban system processes like norms, institutions and technical infrastructures. When evaluating environmental performance based on multi criteria analysis, electricity consumption as energy flow has been considered. Though in small scale, the inclusion of energy in
Introduction
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assessing environmental performance will bring a good result for energy efficiency for various uses in urban areas for sustaining urban form.
1.5 Research Questions and Hypothesis
In the research following research questions are to be address:
1. On what components and elements the quality of an urban system depends and how they are described, analyzed and visualized?
2. What tools are available to analyze urban environment? and
3. How the sustainable urban planning and design is governed by the morphological and physiological analysis of an urban environment.
To address the above questions and from literature review some hypothesis were needed to be tested. The testable hypotheses are as follows:
1. The urban environment depends on both its morphology e.g. arrangement of the environmental fields and physiology e.g. the management, flow and consumption of the resources.
2. Urban system is merely seen as a hierarchical arrangement rather than network of nodes where high density of population and flow of energy and goods are marked.
3. Urban system has three distinct elements namely nodes, connecting network between nodes and a visible or empirical boarder.
4. Consumption of electricity varied from households to households is the principal source of energy flows through urban system and material flow due to
Introduction
1-4
infrastructure and building constructions are considered the main material flow through the urban environment for metabolism.
Apart from the above generalized hypotheses, hypotheses are made for analyzing various indicators based on those depicted mainly in Netzstadt1 in subsequent chapters.
1.6 Limitations
Multifold limitations have been faced during carrying out the research, data collection and data analysis. Firstly, an urban scale research is very time and resource consuming which restricted the author to go in depth to analyze scenario. Use of GIS tools, the most sophisticated software packages is costly therefore had to manage the GIS operation and analysis in combined computer lab. Limitations also have been faced in the collected data from the only land information provider agency (SLA) in Singapore; mismatches of shape files in various layers were found which further impeded fine analysis. Again various spatial data is not available to any single agency. For example building heights, landuse data were not available to Singapore Land Authority (SLA) for which needed to contact with Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). Mismatches were found also in their data i.e. in SLA data it is shown no building in some lots where as in URA data a particular plot ratio is assigned for the buildings. To overcome with these type difficulties needed extensive fieldworks, which are again self-supported, after all within such a short time such an analysis with huge data volume is really much tedious.
Oswald, F., & Baccini, P., in association with Michaeli, M. (2003) Netzstadt Designing the Urban. Switzerland: Birkhauser.
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Chapter 2
Literature Review
The principal components of this research are built on the sustainability of urban environment and tools (morphological and physiological here in this research) for analyzing urban environment to ensure sustainable urban planning and design. Therefore, during literatures reviews from various resources, concentration is given put on the relevant topics of sustainability, spatial and physical characteristics of city and built environment, application of GIS in analysis etc.
2.1 Emergence of the issue of Sustainability The Stockholm Environmental Conference of the United Nations (1972) was the first major meeting of the international community to express grave concern over the deteriorating environment (Hamm & Muttagi, 1998 p.1). At this conference 113 nations pledged to begin cleaning up the environment and most importantly to begin the process of tackling environmental issues on a global scale.
The combined term sustainable development was coined in the World Conservation Strategy of the IUCN in 1980 (Huber, 1995), but it never gained paradigmatic appeal before its use and interpretation in the WCED report. Since then, in addition to its political impact, the term rapidly became a new research paradigm in a wide range of disciplines, from the social sciences to biology (Becker, 1997).
The etymological roots of sustainability as a derivation from the Latin verb sustenere (= uphold) (Redclift, 1994). This etymology is also reflected in the debate among Spanishspeaking scientists; that is, whether sostenibilidad (from sostener) or sustentabilidad (from sustentar) is the more accurate translation (Becker, 1997). The first term is closer to the passive connotation of being upheld, while the latter reflects more the active aspect of to uphold.
Literature Review
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These considerations of terminology indicate that there is a strong normative component in the concept of sustainable development. This value-driven normative aspect makes sustainable development attractive for policymakers because it permits a direct translation of political objectives into a broadly agreed overall concept (Becker, 1997). Sustainability has come from a global political process that has tried to bring together, simultaneously, the most powerful needs of the current decade: the need for economic development to overcome poverty, the need for environmental protection upon which we all ultimately depend, and the need for social equity to enable local communities to express their values in solving these issues. Thus when the issue of sustainability is referred, it will be the simple idea that means the simultaneous achievement of social, economic and environmental sustainability. However, in my study the prime focus is on the environmental sustainability and its consequences.
2.2 Sustainable Urban form The emergence of sustainable development as a popular concept has received the enormous discussions about the form of cities (Jabareen, 2004). The urban form directly affects habitat, ecosystems, endangered species, and water quality through land consumption, habitat fragmentation, and replacement of natural cover with impervious surfaces or surface sealing (EPA, 2001). Urban form also induces or reduces the length of automobile travel, helps choosing mode of travel which ultimately affects the urban environment. In searching sustainable urban form we should try to answer- to what extent and in what ways does urban form contribute to sustainability? Ideally sustainable urban form is the orientation and arrangement of building clusters, their densities and layout, road infrastructures and other physical infrastructures that would ensure: - Environmental sustainability - Social sustainability - Economic sustainability
Literature Review
2-2
While sustainable development is to be ensured, the contemporary urban planners and policy makers are on brain storming debates to find out the sustainable urban form so that above mentioned three sustainability indicators can be ensured in various scales namely regional, city, neighborhood and individual building level. In this regard, traditional urban planners or designers attention has been more diverted to resource optimizing and efficient city or town planning. The outcome from this debate, particularly in Europe, the USA and Australia was a strong advocacy of the compact city model. Essentially this is a high-density, mixed-use city, with clear (i.e. non-sprawling) boundaries (Jenks et al., 1996; Williams et al., 2000). Jabareen (2006) identified seven concepts for designing Sustainable Urban Form; they are i) Compactness, ii) Sustainable Transport, iii) Density, iv) Mixed Land Uses, v) Diversity, vi) Passive Solar Design and vii) Greening. 2.3 Environmental Performance of the Built Environment The popularization of Sustainable Development has contributed to the promotion of the urban compactness idea by enhancing the ecological and environmental justification behind it (Yosef, 2006). It is believed that compact city is prescribed for its environmental advantages. Less road networks, connected mixed used buildings with planned parks, green areas and other landscaping provide sufficient greenery that has good environmental effect on the surface sealed land cover i.e. buildings, courtyards, parking areas and streets. It is found that compact cities have an adverse environmental implication like the generation of heat if the sufficient greenery and other environmental indicators are not properly maintained. Landscape plays an important psychological role in the urban areas and help to reduce the effect of urban heat island, filters pollution, accommodates diverse wild life. Plants can absorb noise and pollution. Urban landscape absorbs rain, reducing the discharge of urban rainfall and storm water. As discussed earlier, compact city reduces the amount of travel which in turn helps to generate more waste energy like CO2 and any other GHG. But energy implication for buildings and other impervious surfaced structures are still unknown for compact cities.
Literature Review
2-3
2.4 Sustainability Indicators of Urban form The resource uses and environmental impacts of household consumptions are identified as key aspects of sustainable development. Holden et als (2003) study also supports the hypothesis that there is a connection between the characteristics of land uses and household consumption of energy. Adolphe (2001) again found the conclusive evidence of the influences of urban configuration on outdoor climatic conditions, on the energy balance of buildings, and on diffusion of pollutants. The analysis of key indicators is important for making decision about sustainable use and management of environmental resources especially when environment is a dynamic concept. Indicators for the economic and social development have already been developed and rigorously adopted. But sustainable tools for assessing environmental development have been not yet discovered. For assessing environmental performance we need to look for various environmental indicators. Environmental indicators vary from scales to scales as we want to assess. Typically air, water and land are considered the main component of an environment therefore sustainability indicators are mainly based on the maintaining the quality of these three components. On the other hand, indicators related to the arrangement of land and its modification by people are considered as morphological indicators and the consumption, process and management of air, water and other resources are related to physiological indicators. In addition, when the issues of sustainable urban form arise, some relatively new indicators come into discussion like material stock, energy flow, and green ratio. 2.4.1 Working with Morphological Indicators Adolphe (2001) tried to obtain some generic behavior laws covering the complexity of urban morphology and the variety of climatic conditions which have been put in a substantial form through a scheme of morphological indicators which further had been gone through a kind of rectification by a set of general criteria at the system level which has been described in the paper as follows
(a) Completeness, (b) No redundancy, (c) Operationality,
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At the indicator level, she has concentrated on the following criteria:
(1) Physical consistency, by looking for consistency of indicators with the physical phenomena they are supposed to cope with;
(2) Spatial consistency, with indicators consistent with geographical (macroscopic) scale;
(3) Measurability, the availability of required data from common sources
(4) Legibility, with indicators easy to interpret;
(5) Comparability, by choosing indicators for which absolute values are not highly significant, but for which relative variations (range and direction) are significant.
The hypothesis behind the selection of these set of indicator is as follows
The city is subjected to various interactive climatic considerations. This approach is focused on the four most significant ones: wind, temperature, solar radiation (heat and light), and humidity.
Adolphes model defined a set of indicators to measure the environmental performance of urban fabrics: namely density, rugosity, porosity, sinuosity, occlusivity, compacity, contiguity, solar admittance, and mineralization. This model has been embedded in a GIS called Morphologic and applied to the analysis of existing urban fabric.
Applying the above indicators on three different urban areas i.e. a medieval neighborhood in the center Toulouse (France), a suburban area predominant with detached house in Blagnac (France), and a dense downtown area of Portland (USA) Adolphe summarized the result as follows:
Literature Review
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Building density: The lower building density (built area/total area ratio) prevails in the suburban area, where it is four times lower than in a dense medieval fabric; in the US city, the low footprint area of high-rise buildings is balanced by their height, but the density is twice as low as in the European historic center.
Rugosity: The absolute rugosity which is the mean height of the urban canopy, variations of which have been considered three times more important than those of mean building height, because the area of non-built outdoor areas is used in the first calculation. Despite large variations of the building height between a medieval fabric and a downtown district in the United States, the absolute rugosity of the latter is only twice that of the first. The comparisons between the three relative rugosity roses (defined as is the mean square deviation of canopy height) give information about changes in the mean wind speed in a given direction.
Porosity: The number of open `pores' in the urban canopy is significant in a high-rise urban center, especially when compared with a dense medieval pattern but the comparison with a suburban area with a high rate of non-built open spaces shows small variations between them.
Sinuosity: This parameter characterizes the corridor effect of the street pattern. The author put the example of the gridiron street pattern of Portland where the two perpendicular directions corresponding to the street axis created a strong effect of wind canalization (with sinuosity values close to zero, for a wide angle of distribution).
Occlusivity: The distributions of the built to non-built perimeter against height were found varied widely between the different patterns. The medieval fabric corresponds to a highdensity city with relatively uniform building height, and can be related to a very narrow mean sky-view angle when compared with the openness of the second pattern. The suburban area has a low density and a wide distribution of the occlusivity ratio. The highrise pattern generates a narrow variation of the occlusivity factor with height.
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Compacity: The analysis of compacity resulted in that the tall and isolated buildings generate a low compacity. Contrastly, an established dense medieval fabric remains insignificant (2.5 times) because the low height of each individual building (high exterior area for the volume) is evened out by the high contiguity between buildings.
Contiguity: The author found the factor contiguity, which showed much variation (one hundred times) between the US downtown and the medieval fabric. The high variations of this parameter when compared to the low relative variations of the compacity factor show the importance of using both parameters to qualify the geometry of buildings in an urban pattern.
Solar admittance: The effect of shading neighboring buildings from sunlight is very important with low and dense patterns such as the historic center. When compared with suburban areas, there patterns can be seen to induce a lower solar admittance (less than twice). Despite high and large glazed facades, a high-rise urban area suffers from mutual shading between buildings.
Mineralization: Mineralization has been defined in this study as the presence of substantial area covered with vegetation and water body which play significantly in modifying local climate. The values of these indicators have been marked with very slight variations between the three examples.
The indicators have been used in this research highly significant for small scale like neighborhood level and it requires very complex data calculation (including various 3D data), lot of metaphors have been used for these indicators so why seems very confusing for beginner researcher. Particularly Adolphes research only concentrated on the territorial arrangements but didnt include the effects of these arrangements on the physical consumption of the particular urban unit. It is also subject to further research whether the indicators applicable for whole city scale.
Literature Review
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In Urban Landscape Model (ULM) developed by Yoshida et.al (2005), the authors used the six types of morphological properties, e.g. (1) surface area per projected area; (2) volume per projected area; (3) building to land ratio; (4) mean height of buildings; (5) surface area of buildings per unit volume of buildings; and, (6) mean volume of buildings on city block wise over a study area sized of 2Km*2Km in Tokyo of Japan. In this study remotely sensed LIDAR data has been used and converted into GIS platform to analyze the selected properties on various types of residential, commercial and sub-urban blocks.
Yoshida et. al. expressed the first two properties by a featured space and represented as a scattergram which is as follows:
For the third and forth properties the authors used two regulatory indicators namely BTL (building to land ratio) and FAR (floor area ratio) which are shown by the following histograms:
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The fifth property named as surface area of buildings per unit volume of buildings has been termed as Compactness also. The compactness value found here according to the calculating procedure depicted by the authors are different from the more conventional compactness and it is called 3-dimensional compactness and the derivation of the formula was as follows: The variable, surface area per building volume was expressed as: C = S/V Where C, S and V denote respectively compactness, surface area and volume. For comparison with the 2-dimensional compactness explained above, the variable for a sphere can be calculated as follows. Surface area of a sphere is:
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S = 4r2 Here r is radius. Volume of a sphere is: V = 4r3/3 Hence, in the case of a sphere, the ratio of surface area to volume is: C = S/V = 3/r This means that the larger the radius of a sphere is, the smaller the ratio becomes. In reality spherical building is really rare however the authors favored the application of same principle.
The last morphological property is derived simply by dividing total volume of buildings by the number of buildings for each block, mean building volume can be derived and expressed as below:
Regarding the limitations of the morphological indicators or properties used in ULM the authors themselves found two items; one, the availability of data as the study area is commercially very important city of Japan so they faced much obstacles to get the required data and Second, there wide applications of ULM for comparison and analysis internationally as well as domestically.
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In Netzstadt method Oswald et.al (2003) used four morphological indicators on the Wigger city of Switzerland and suggested how the analysis of those indicators can be applied for the future sustainable urban planning and designing. These four indicators are
Building Density Shredding Granulation Accessibility
The Netzstadt model proposes five criteria of urban quality namely identification, diversity, flexibility, self-sufficiency and resource efficiency and relates these to specific types of activity in the urban system. The Netzstadt method has put emphasizes on the analysis of the morphological tools that describe the spatial characteristics of a territory and as well as physiological tools--these refer more specifically to processes.
2.4.2 Working with Physiological Indicators During finding the challenges for the compact city as a sustainable urban form, with the support from past literatures Holden et al (2005) identified that three activities namely housing, transport and food are the main source of the highest physical consumption in the form of material flow, energy flow and waste generation and account for as much as 80 per cent of the direct and indirect environmental impacts by the households. The authors have studied the relationships between land use characteristics and following four distinct consumption categories: energy use for heating and operating the house; energy use for everyday travel; energy use for long leisure-time travel by plane; and, energy use for long leisure-time travel by car.
These four consumption categories have been regarded as household consumption throughout the article. The authors conducted study on eight residential areas and tried to
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find out a causal relation between the physical and non-physical characteristics of the household using multiple regression analysis. The assumption of this causal relationship as represented by the authors is as follows:
Urban form: Land use characteristics related to dwellings/ residential areas - Density - Local mix - Location - Access to private/public service - Type of housing
Household Consumption
Environmental Demands
- Energy use for travel - Everyday travel - Long leisure-time travel by car - Long leisure-time travel by plane
Socio-economic and Socio-demographic background conditions
Attitudes/Preferences
Assumptions on causal relationships between characteristics of households and their houses, behaviour, consumption and environmental demands.9
In SOLUTIONs (Sustainability of Land Use and Transport In Outer Neighborhoods) project Mitchell addressed the relationship between non-transport energy use with the urban development and form considering from the previous studies that in the UK, buildings account for over half of all energy consumed (compared to 41% in the EU, and 36% in the USA), with less than 25% each for transport and industry. The author presented a table to show the sensitivity of urban form in terms of energy use. The table is as follows:
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Mitchell assessed the building stock energy use by using two options; one is activityenergy coefficient method where building stock energy use is calculated as a function of activity type, floor space, and specific energy use coefficients (Gj m2 yr) for each activity and this option is suitable to the whole city scale; second option is LT method (Lighting and Heating method) which is mostly suitable for neighborhood scale and related with the geometric form of territory such as building volume, height and plan depth, the suggested unit is KWh m2 yr. Mitchell showed the effect of density on energy use for naturally ventilated offices in London by the following figure.
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Oswald et.al (2003) again in the Netzstadt proposed a set of indicators for the analysis of physical process of the cities. They compared the urban system with living organism and selected the transport and transformation of materials and energy as the physiological processes i.e. urban metabolism. According to the authors, physiological tools are required to understand an urban systems physical resources and management so that the findings can be implemented for planning a new urban system. In the Netzstadt method four basic activities are identified which provoke the flows of material, water, energy and waste in an urban system; these activities are
Literature Review
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to nourish to clean to reside and work to transport and communicate
Assuming that the urban metabolism system is highly driven by the anthropogenic activities, the proposed physiological indicators are as follows:
i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi.
Density of inhabitants (inhabitants/sq. km of settlement area) Density of workplaces (workplaces/workforce inhabitants) Density of services (workforce of tertiary sector/total workforce) Density of institutions (number of specific institutions/ 2000 inhabitants) Workforce (flows) (Commuter ratio) Students (flows) (Commuter ratio)
The two other desirable indicators are as suggested by the authors are Consumers (flows) Information (flows in bits and bytes)
2.5 Multi Scale Assessments of Environmental Performance and GIS
Planners and policy makers operate at various scales to deal with different types of environmental problems of interest within their jurisdictions and seek solutions to handle the complexities of natural and human actions cause these problems. Indicators for assessing environmental performance vary from various levels we want to assess e.g. indicators for assessing a country will be different for the indicators assessing a region or city, similarly the indicators to assess the latter will not be effective to assess in case of community level. Also within each level there are multiple variables that needed to assess for measuring sustainability. Therefore, planners and decision makers sometimes concentrate on the evaluation of multi-scale assessment of environmental indicators to measure the performance of environment. This integrated approach enables to create a planning space where it is possible to take planning decision in more scrutinized way that embrace possible all aspects of environment.
Literature Review
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Isabelle (1999) developed a model based on the statistical tool i.e. regression analysis which establishes a relationship between the electricity consumption per capita per year with some demographic and socio-economic characteristics or variables of few Canadian cities i.e. average inhabitant age, the annual degree-days below 180C, the urban density (inhabitants per km2), the share of homes heated by electricity, the standardized land wealth per inhabitant and planning, leisure and cultural expenditure per inhabitant which the authors represented respectively by AVGAGE, DEGDAY, DENSITY, ELECTRIC, LANDWEAL, PLANLEAS and established the model as: Y = -16964+389.47*AVGAGE+1.016*DEGDAY 0.498*DENSITY+86.47*ELECTRIC+0.1159*LANDWEAL By Y she indicated the dependent variable, the annual city electricity consumption per inhabitant. The author excluded industrial electricity because the electricity consumption per capita for industrial use is not congruent with cities electricity consumption. The model seems very interesting and simply represented an important relationship between the urban population density and electricity consumption but in this model no morphological characteristics have been included. Yang (2007) used such a multi-scale analysis for measuring urban environmental performance of Singapore city. He conducted macro level analysis for tracking material stock in Singapore and micro level analysis for multi-objective decision making within three aspects of environmental performance namely Surface cover ratio (for greenery and urban runoff rate), Sky view factor (for solar availability) Material efficiency (for ecological efficiency of material stocks and usage) and applied to seven categories of housing, i.e. multi-storied housing, row housing, single family housing, special buildings, condominium, mixed use and educational. He stated the outcome of the study as multiobjective decision making space and represented by a two dimensional graph, an example is as follows
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.
80.00%
Environmental Decision Space
70.00% Special Buildings
Open / Green Coverage Percentage on Site
60.00% Condominiums Multi-Storied Housing 50.00% Educational
40.00%
Single Family Housing
Row Housing
Mixed Use
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00% 0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
80.00%
90.00%
Materials Stock Efficiency Percentage
Geographical information science develops techniques for spatial analysis and decisionsupport in environmental analysis. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are extensively used for data processing and visualization of available data sources as well as the handling, modifying and retrieving of data to apply environmental assessment models. Most of the studies referred in this chapter are done with the help of GIS especially the studies focused on morphology; land cover, land uses and so various spatial analyses have either done in GIS platform in whole or converted the remotely sensed data into GIS format. The systems of analysis as conducted by Adolphes (2001) Morphologic, ULM by Yoshida et al (2005), Netzstadt (2003), and Perry Yang (2007) are based on GIS. Wu et al (2006) performed a GIS-based moving window analysis for quantifying the effect of urbanization on the landscape ecology. Pauleit et al (2000) used remote sensing and GIS analysis for assessing the environmental performance of land cover types very successfully. There fore, the capabilities of GIS for doing multi-purpose data analysis and modifications, visualization and prediction, queries have induced the researcher, professionals to apply GIS tools for the specific purposes of land use management, transport and pollution prediction, housing stock and environments mapping as well as in evaluation of built environment.
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2.6 Knowledge Gap It can be certainly said that there are a number of very influential researches on both the morphological and physical characteristics of the city but very limited efforts have been made on the relationship between these two at the same time and in GIS environment. Though Holden et als (2005) research pointed on the relation between land use characteristics and household energy consumption; however, merely accounted the electricity consumption and considered only one spatial indicator. Similarly, hardly any research found that dealt with the relationship between spatial characteristics of any urban unit and the material flow. Therefore, in this research a multi-criteria analysis of morphological indicators and physiological indicators are to be carried out within a GIS platform.
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Morphological and Physiological Analysis for Measuring Urban Environmental Performance: A Case Study of Bukit Panjang
Chapter 3
Methodological Framework
3.1 Selection of Study Area
In the process of selecting study area some factors like data availability, recent development as urban area, presence of diverse environmental attributes are considered. One of the new towns of Singapore named Bukit Panjang was selected, therefore, as study area with the consultation of distinguished research supervisor and past researchers under his supervision.
3.2 Collection of Necessary Maps
There was no individual map so far prepared for Bukit Panjang that meets the research interests. Therefore, a wide range of digital data were needed to collect from Singapore Land Authority and Urban Redevelopment Authority; paper based maps from Information Resource Centre of School of Design and Environment, NUS and from various other discrete sources from which the concerned areas and features were delineated using various software.
3.3 Literature Survey
The literatures that deal with simultaneously urban morphological and physiological characteristics are not satisfactorily available. Very limited literary resources could be gathered to enhance the knowledge of these two diverse fields of urban environment and then tried to explain their implications on my research subjects. Especially while considering the human induced indicators e.g. fossil fuel or electricity consumption, the concepts of urban physiological analysis are relatively new field of knowledge. Therefore, searching literatures to find effective physiological analysis parameter for sustainable urban planning appeared as a daunting task. Various journals namely Journal of Urban
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Design, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Environment and Planning B, Landscape and Urban Planning, as well as few chapters of some text books especially Netzstadt were very useful for realizing my research subjects.
3.4 Identification and principles of Indicators
For morphological analysis of the study area, a number of indicators were primarily selected from various literatures (discussed in literature review chapter). Ironically, most of them involved 3 dimensional calculations of urban elements and required time consuming manual calculations from diverse fields of data. Therefore, considering our time and resource constraints some indicators were chosen mainly based on the indicators used by Oswald and Baccini in Netzstadt by modifying few variables used for mathematical calculations. It should be claimed that, the indicators used in this study are not similar to the indicators used in Netzstadt. These three indicators are:
i. Plot ratio ii. Degree of subdivision iii. Granular index iv. Level of accessibility
Similarly, few indicators were available for urban physiological analysis but most of them are concentrated on highly voluminous data collection and complex calculations so very simple indicators have been chosen for their relatively availability and calculability. The two indicators considered in this research are: i. Material Intensity ii. Electricity Use Intensity
The major activities and materials in the urbanization process are the construction industries and the building materials respectively. It is difficult to compile a consistent series of these building materials information over time since data on all the end uses are
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not available. We therefore select a small number of reservoirs to use in making the assessment of the current stock. The criteria for selection are,
1. Major materials used in the construction 2. Significant amount of material available for reuse like steel and aggregate.
3.5 Collection and Compilation of Data and Information
The main source of data was the Singapore Land Authority from where copyright protected land information of whole Singapore was collected in GIS format with the help of the research supervisor. However, unfortunately all the required information on details of a parcel of land were not included in the SLA data therefore data and information also were collected from URA and synchronized with SLA data in ArcGIS 9.2 platform. The construction materials data have been collected from BCA and HDB and the electricity consumption data has been collected from Singapore Power, questionnaire survey and concerned official interview.
After the collection of the data they are compiled in ArcMap 9.2 and Arc Catalog 9.2 as well as in MS Excel and STATA according to desired order of necessary calculations.
3.6 Calculation of the Indicators
The following mathematical equations are used to visualize the data and the equations have been derived by slight modifying of the original equations as are in Netzstadt. All necessary variables have been calculated in ArcMap using command like Calculate Geography, Select by Attributes, Select by Location, etc as the base database only contain the spatial and oracle attributes.
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a. Building Density:
The mathematical formula used for visualizing the building density of Bukit Panjang is as below (Building Footprint*No of stories) Plot Ratio = Area of the particular parcel of land
b. Degree of Subdivision
Degree of subdivision is realized using the relationship between Degree of coherence, C and Degree of Subdivision, S is S = 1/C
The Degree of Coherence indicator targets the very serious problem of fragmentation or shredding the totality of the territory into numerous parts, which ultimately hinder future development of the land. A highly splintered (i.e. because of road cutting through or small scale allotment structure) land offers less opportunity for urban intervention, than a coherent one. Degree of Coherence is an index for the statistic probability of individual building (Ai) to be superimposed if the building footprints divide land parcel in various segments. For calculating the degree of coherence for land parcel the formula used in this study as follows: C= (Ai/A tot) 2, which equals C = 1/ A tot 2 Ai 2 Where Ai = Building footprint (BF) area (m2) of building i; and A buildings within the same parcel with building i. = total BFA of all
tot
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c. Grain Sizes
In this study to visualize the granular index or grain size differences the gross floor area has been considered to see the mixing rate of the various types and heights of buildings.
d. Degree of Accessibility
Accessibility has been measured here based on the land parcels proximity to nearest level of road network where a hierarchy of road network is made based on their functions namely Expressway, Arterial road, Distributor road and Access road which are again weighted respectively as 1, 2, 3 and 4. Finally a 50 meter buffer is used to estimate level of accessibility of the land parcels and the built elements within them. 50 meter buffer is used because previous researches showed that a persons approximate ability to walk 50 meter without much trouble.
e. Material intensity
In this study actually material intensity has been elucidated with the concept of the stock of four major construction materials namely still, cement, coarse aggregate and fine aggregate for various structures statistics of which have been collected from Building and Construction Authority (BCA) accounted over a period from 1993-2006. The stock has been calculated in average kg per square meter. This stock then estimated for each land parcel as demarcated by Singapore Land Authority (SLA) to visualize the density of the four major construction materials on the land lot basis. This stock (kg/m2) is then converted in to the density by multiplying the Gross Floor Area (m2) of various built structures with corresponding average material stock value. Therefore, Material intensity = Material Stock (kg/m2) * GFA (m2), which is calculated on the parcel basis.
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f. Electricity Use Intensity
It is a new indicator developed to measure electricity consumption per unit area of various buildings. This calculation is a complex process and required a number of datasets as the calculation needs to be synchronized with the base GIS database (SLA data), building typologies layer of which not congruent with building typologies defined by the Singapore Power authority, which is again the source of household electricity
consumption data. So to get exact building area for calculating energy consumption per unit area various calculation, cross-calculation have been required.
Electricity Use Intensity (EUI) = Electricity Consumption (kWh)/ Building footprint area
3.7 Analysis and Visualization of the Results:
With the calculated result of the indicators they are visualized in ArcMap and analyzed according to the properties described for each type of the indicators and criteria in the literatures ideally in the Netzstadt but in case of physiological analysis the analysis is based on self-explanatory and kept for further study to evaluate.
Another important step of the analysis of this research is to see the level of correlation between two sets of indicators which has been performed using commercial software STATA. During this process a multiple linear regression equation is delineated assuming physiological indicator as dependent variable.
3.8 Proposals and Recommendations
Based on the result visualized and displayed and interpretation of non-displayable data some recommendations were generated at the end of the study as to how the overall sustainability of the urban design can be improved in long run.
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The whole methodological framework can be shown by the following chart: Selection of Study Area
Collection of Necessary Maps
Literature Survey
Journal
Online Resources
Text Books
Identification and Principles of the Indicators
Collection of Data and Information
Primary Source
Secondary Source
Calculation of the Indicators
Analysis and Visualization of the Indicators
Proposals and Recommendations
Figure 3.1: Methodological Framework
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Chapter 4 Study Area2

4.1 History and Location Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), a statutory board of Singapore under Ministry of National Development (MND) divided whole Singapore in 55 planning areas in its aim to create a tropical city of excellence. The study area for this research, Bukit Panjang, is one of the planning areas of Singapore. It is situated in the Central North-Western part of mainland Singapore. Bukit in the Malay Language means "hill" and Panjang mean "long". Bukit Panjang literally means "long hill" which gets its name from the long range of low hills which ends in Bukit Timah to the south (Wikipedia).
This area used to comprise rural settlements in early 1990's. Today, it has many suburban facilities like the Cold Storage Dairy Farm, as well as factories and granite quarries. Bukit Timah Hill, which means 'tin hill' in Malay, is Singapore's first and largest Nature Reserve. Today, Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is set aside of the Bukit Timah expressway for the propagation, protection and preservation of the indigenous fauna and flora of Singapore.
Bukit Panjang can be found in the Central North-Western region of Singapore. There are seven sub-zones in Bukit Panjang; Senja, Sujana, Fajar, Bangkit, Bukit Panjang, Dairy Farm and the Nature Reserve. The size of Bukit Panjang Planning area is about 9 Sq Km with an estimated 55,000 residents.
4.2 Profile of the Study Area There are many new HDB Towns here, namely Senja, Bukit Panjang, Fajar and Bangkit as well as private estates comprising of both condominiums and landed property like terrace housing can be found here. Bukit Panjang has been planned by URA to develop as
2
http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/singapore/singapore_district/244/bukit_panjang.php
Study Area
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residential and nature reserve area. As Bukit Panjang is situated opposite to Choa Chu Kang, the town is accessible via the Bukit Panjang LRT from the Choa Chu Kang MRT station. The Light Rapid Transit or LRT is a smaller Rapid Transit line transport passengers deeper into the residential areas.
The study area is surrounded by Kranji expressway at the northern side, Bukit Timah expressway on the eastern side, dairy farm road on the southern side and interconnected Woodland roads and Upper Bukit Timah road on the western side have made the study area almost like a trapezium. Buikt Panjang road goes through the study area connecting Woodland and Upper Bukit Timah Road with Bukit Timah expressway.
A map of Singapore and the study area generated from Google map are shown in the next page.
Study Area
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Map 4.1: Singapore Map3
Map 4.2: Study Area (Bukit Panjang)
http://www.mightyminds.com.sg/images/Maps/sing%20map%20large%20lam.jpg
Study Area
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Chapter 5
Proposed Indicators for Environmental Analysis of Bukit Panjang

5.1 Urban Environmental Performance Urban areas should be the domain of accelerating sustainable human settlement development keeping pace with the ever increasing rate of urbanization. For this sake, it is an essential step to analysis the particular urban environment, which is the most significant aspect for ensuring sustainable development. Urban environment among others is primarily comprised of the spatial patterns developed by human activities as well as the management, process and flow of resources used in various spatial units by human. Referring various studies Alberti (1999) mentioned that urban spatial configuration implies the individual choices that have consequences for the environment. In fact energy flow is considered the major environmental implications when considered the morphological character of the cities which is supported by various studies (Perry, 2007; Adolphe, 2001; McPherson, 1994) that found the relationship between the spatial structures and solar radiation distribution and also the spatial structures are supposed to be an important set of indicators for future energy supply and distribution (Owens, 1986).
In this research, analyzing urban environmental is mainly concerned with the concept urban metabolism and material flow in terms of construction materials and energy flow in terms of electricity uses. So it is required to account material intensity by material types, by structure types as well as change of their intensity over time. Therefore these two play vital role in analyzing environmental performance for urban areas. To measure urban environmental performance therefore need to find relation between the urban morphological characteristics which are subjected to be modified by human interventions and the energy-material flow to accomplish various anthropogenic activities. In this research two different set of indicators namely morphological and physiological are selected for analyzing urban environment of Bukit Panjang.
Proposed Indicators for Env. Analysis of Bkt Panjang
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5.2 Morphological Indicators
The understanding of urban environment using morphological indicators are mainly based on long time experimental knowledge where some apprehended and easily understandable rules are used to define the environment. These rules i.e. geographical, geometrical, economical, topological, social etc. interact with each other again in various complex ways for various new urban areas and therefore sometimes very difficult to ascertain their phenomena. In effect an urban environment is the out come of the both effects of generation of urban shape and change of the shape which in turn determine the quality of environment. In Netzstadt (Oswald and Baccini, 2003) three factors are mentioned behind the generation and change of the urban shapes namely resistance, aggregation and coherence. The resistance may be external and internal factors which affect both systems of urban shape either by hindering or keeping the prevailing stand. The surrounding neighborhoods are believed to have significant effect on the urban environment by segregating or integrating features in urban system.
In this research four set of morphological indicators have been used to understand the environmental conditions of the urban system:
i. Plot ratio ii. Degree of subdivision iii.Granular index iv. Level of accessibility
The explicit objectives for working with these indicators are to find out the weakness and strength of a particular shape of urban environment therefore directing way to enhance new design shape to improve the urban environmental quality. Another substantial aim of using morphological indicators is to get enough bases to assess the strength and weakness of the selected urban environment with excellent interpreting abilities and directing to desired conditions.
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i. Plot Ratio:
It can be undoubtedly said that urban landscape are frequently disturbed by the morphological elements i.e. loss of natural vegetation, land destruction and erosion, unsuitable and exotic species introduction due to gardening and landscaping, and the restriction of wildlife movements by infrastructures and subdivision of land parcels. One of the morphological effects is related to buildings in the urban environment as a spatial function in the form of density and pattern on one side and the temporal component in another side in the form of changing of density and pattern over time. Understanding the effects of buildings density and pattern on urban environment and landscape and its temporal changes may give implicit view of current environmental performance and provide sufficient responses for future urban design. Building density can have positively correlation with the environmental attributes of a specific site because the density exhibits the concentration of activities, consequent flows of materials and energy.
Plot ratio is the simple measure of building density i.e. the ratio between gross floor areas (GFA) in respect of surface occupied by sealed structures to the land parcel. Plot ratio is usually computed as the ratio of the gross total of the areas of all floors of the buildings on a site to the area of land within the land lot areas. Plot ratio is a very important planning tool for land development particularly in zoning regulations as well as an analytical tool for existing situation of any urban scale; sometime it is not only an urban planning tool and land management issue, but also an indicator of a citys historical evolution, because the buildings constructed in different periods have different plot ratio as they are of various styles and vary greatly in land occupancy. In Singapore plot ratio is used as predefined number that is used to control the height/form of a particular development. Each plot of land is assigned a particular plot ratio albeit not always the same. Architects are not to exceed this plot ratio in their design or development charge may be imposed. In all cases the plot ratios to be maximized will depend on the spatial context that includes built form, character and sizes of land parcel and existing or potential public transport capacity to avoid over development of sites and to prevent congestion. Plot ratio has also
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played an important role in the process of preservation and conservation of built form within the City Centre.
Plot-ratio as well as other urban design criteria has been a generally effective method of controlling building height and density for new urban development. It is an important indicator to promote resource efficiency of a parcel of land. It relates the built up area with the total size of the parcel.
The mathematical formula used for visualizing the building density of Bukit Panjang is as below (Building Footprint*No of stories) Plot Ratio = Area of the particular parcel of land
ii. Degree of subdivision
The subdivision of land is an integral part of the development and uses of land are very often regarded as the first step in the development process along with several environmental implications. Subdivision and land use are closely related, because subdivision generally creates new allocation of land for other uses that obviously differ from the main use from where the new uses are sub-divided. Subdivision also establishes the pattern and shape of development for a locality as well as impact on a range of environmental values e.g. ecological amenities, cultural and biophysical values. A single land parcel can be subdivided for multiple purposes in various ways that may be visible and invisible sometimes like road infrastructures, building establishments as visible elements and administrative boundaries of various scales may be as invisible. It is hypothesized that the higher subdividing thresholds to overcome during passing a land parcel the less interaction between the subdividing elements therefore high resource consumption should be observed. Subdivision of land provides for the changing of
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property boundaries and creation of new allotments. These changes of explicit and implicit boundaries of a land parcel together with subsequent developments can give rise to adverse environmental and social effects and resource management issues within the urban system.
Sometimes land subdivision may not have a direct impact itself but establishes a pattern and disposition of land that may result in significant costs to the community and degree of subdivision is required to estimate to know how shredding effect created by subdivision may appear as unsustainable in the long run, such as:
i) The demands for infrastructures services and resources may appear beyond planning projections by the urban community in the long term. The need for public facilities arises from development, but is most appropriately integrated with the subdivision of land.
ii) The ecological habitation can be fragmented by the shredding effect of subdividing the land in various competing uses.
iii) The visual quality of the urban environment may change through unsuitable intensity or direction of development.
iv) Absorption ability of the ground for rain water and other effluents may be reduced due to increase of impervious surfaces in any subdivision by increasing road, parking spaces and building roof.
vi) New subdivisions certainly need access to nearest higher order transportation network. As well as divisions of land parcels for providing new road infrastructures may disintegrate the functional coherence of a land parcel as well as hinder free movement, communications and mutual interchange of all kind of goods, services and living beings.
vii) Shredding of land by subdividing existing developments in the form of different titles and consequent developments may need to conciliation the amenity values and the
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environmental quality including access, utilization of outdoor space and maintenance, and can also trade off redevelopment potential.
viii) The surrounding splendid natural landscapes can be adversely affected by the means of habitat fragmentation and introduction of pests that may lead to the removal of indigenous species.
ix) Lack of coordination between subdivision and infrastructure will require the explicit trade off between environmental impacts and necessary provision of infrastructures as individual and isolated subdivisions are closely integrated with the development process which generally requires the provision of infrastructure to occur and in this case sustainability is an issue.
x) The subdivision and development of land also bring confliction between the citys natural and cultural features. The subdivision processes may lead to the creation of a fragmented parcel that is inappropriate for planned development, boundaries or building platforms therefore sometimes overlook the effective protection of natural ecosystems and vulnerable environment. The environmental effects of subdivision are highly dependent upon the extent, scale, and type of land use changes. Generally other things being equal, that the smaller the average area of subdivision, the larger the impact of subdivision. To understand the effect of land subdivision on urban environment a term degree of subdivision is used as a morphological tool which is a reciprocal term of degree of coherence. Degree of coherence then can be defined in a simple way in this regard that how freely the elements of one subdivision including living organisms can interact with those of other subdivisions. The higher degree of subdivision in a site means the elements of the subdivisions are less coherent as the bondings among the congruent features of environment become much shredded. Discontinuity or splitting up lands can inevitably weaken the smooth functioning of ecological and environmental services. Therefore measuring the degree of subdivision of the land parcels is a very important step to analyze a particular urban environment.
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In calculating the degree of subdivision, another related term degree of coherence also needs to be calculated and in this regard, the formula of degree of coherence has been modified based on the tenet as explained in the Netzstadt i.e. the probability of encounters and prevented contacts within a single land lot
The Relationship between Degree of coherence, C and Degree of Subdivision, S is S = 1/C Degree of Coherence is an index for the statistic probability of individual building (Ai) to be superimposed if the building footprints (BF) divide land parcel in various segments. C has been calculated for this study based on Netzstadt with minor modification to fit it for the current study scale as follows: C= (Ai/A tot) 2, which equals C = 1/ A tot 2 Ai 2 Where Ai = BFA (m2) of building i; and A tot = total BFA (m2) of all buildings within the same parcel with building i. BFA= Building Footprint Area of built structures present in a land parcel; due to ample building structures in the study site, the GFA has been considered here for the formula. iii. Granular Index-1
The indicator has been developed and manipulated for urban analysis from the discipline named Petrography or the study of rocks where the relationship between the content of mineral and textures in a stone is described in detail. Used as metaphor this indicator represents the relation of the elements i.e. buildings of a land parcel to itself in terms of quantity and size. In fact granular index is a matrix of grains that are emerged from various anthropogenic and natural or ecological features in a land parcel or by their subdivisions. As granular index is the aggregations of the grains come up with the breaking up a continuous and bigger object, this can be hypothesized that this index is helpful to understand the corresponding urban environment in terms of its arrangement in
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a larger scale environment. This grains are diverse in size and shape and this mingle can be called as mixing ratio. Grain size of the urban elements is useful for measuring permeability i.e. the movement of people, air, light and other basic amenities. Very common example can be mentioned here as two building with contrasting height on a same land parcel; the taller one must hinder the lower one on the way of air and light flow. This situation may appear more complex. The permeability of the environmental and anthropogenic flow to a large extent depends on the buildings occupied space as well as their rate of mixing with each other therefore. The higher mixing ratio and grain area mean less permeability and vice versa (Netzstadt, 2003).
It is very difficult to show the obvious relation between the heterogeneous shape and area of various elements in a land parcel and the degree of permeability by any mathematical formula rather it is a qualitative indicator that can be perceived on visual ability from a satellite or GIS translated map. In this study a granular index mapping has been created based on the gross floor area.
vi) Level of Accessibility:
Accessibility simply refers to access to nearby public transit, easy mobility along streets and through buildings, and explicit routes of way out in emergency situations. These are much expected features of an urban environment for smooth functioning for most of the physical elements of environment. Level of accessibility defines the relative easiness at which local amenities and facilities can be reached. Accessibility determines one selected land parcels relation with the overall network system from or to the location. This indicator is useful to determine the importance of a selected lot in terms of its access to diverse modalities and transit lines.
One land parcels accessibility level determines the relative importance of the parcel in terms of equity, economic value and no of links connecting across scale. In this study the level of accessibility of each parcel is determined using its proximity to the nearest road hierarchy. The road has been given weight according to their hierarchy namely,
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1 Expressway 2 Arterial Road 3 Distributor Road 4 Access Road
A buffer of 50 meter has been used to find land lot within the mentioned distance of selected hierarchy of land. It can be hypothesized that a piece of lands accessibility level is determined from its proximity to higher level network. As the highest level road network is expressway and this is not allowed to have direct access from any settlement lot; therefore within its proximity any parcel of land is not desirable. Consequently, the expected closest proximity of road network is arterial road which is supposed to be the interface for a leap in scale of destination.
5.3 Physiological Indicators
Physiological indicators are used in this research to analyze the environmental performance of an urban system as to augment the morphological indicators from the material and energy flow viewpoint. The physiological parameters provide suitable measures of the magnitude of resource exploitation and waste generation to be used as indicators for sustainable urban planning and designing. This can be compared that an urban system is like a human being that needs materials and energy for metabolism and hence anthropogenic resource management is concerned. And the built environment is an unavoidable outcome of this physiological process or to say urban metabolism. Recently significant numbers of studies, researches, articles and journals have been published on this highly postulated topic especially this aspect of urban environmental sustainability
has brought multiple stakeholders to be engaged to play corresponding role cautiously. It is believed the morphological characteristics of cities are one of the factors for pushing up of urban metabolism (The encyclopedia of earth). Metabolism can be quantified by tracking the flow of matter and energy within the city illustrating trends in human energy and material fluxes.
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Sum of Material and Energy flow = Sum of Outputs + Changes in Stock4
Identifying material and energy flow as a part of identifying urban metabolism is therefore supposed to be a keen pre-requisite for analyzing urban environmental performance. However, this tracking procedure is a difficult task as diverse materials are used for construction, food processing, as well as residues of all end work; similarly energy has both natural and anthropogenic sources and quantifying them is a very time consuming and erroneous job. Urban physiological analysis can help decision-making regarding resource management, environmental impact, material efficiency for urban infrastructures typologies.
In this regard very simple indicators for analyzing the physiological characteristics of Bukit Panjang have been used namely Material intensity and electricity use intensity
i) Material intensity
Material intensity can be defined another way is material stock for various construction works; this is stored input as a part of physiological processes of urban areas because the construction industries and the building materials are deemed to be the major activities and materials in the urbanization process. Various types of structures use various amount of construction materials. The following types of buildings were assessed in the study, Residential (single family, multifamily, community housing), Commercial, Industrial and Institutional. Commercial Buildings include shops and stores and multi storey shopping complex including car park structures. Industrial buildings include all the major
establishments where manufacturing, storage and services activities take place. As most of the planning areas of Singapore have been planned for compact and highly dense settlement, the account of construction materials per square meter of the settlement may be taken as an important indicator to track the material input in urban environment.
http://www.holcimfoundation.org/Portals/1/docs/F07/StudentPosters/David%20Quinn%20MIT%20Student.pdf
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It is difficult to compile a consistent series of these building materials over time since data on all the end uses are not available. We therefore selected a small number of reservoirs to use in making the assessment of the current stock. The criteria for selection are,
1. Major materials used in the construction 2. Significant amount of material available for reuse like steel and aggregate.
In this study a statistics of the stock of major construction materials namely still, cement, coarse aggregate and fine aggregate for various structures have been collected from Building and Construction Authority (BCA) accounted over a period from 1993-2006. The stock has been calculated in average kg per square meter. This stock then estimated for each land parcel as demarcated by Singapore Land Authority (SLA) to visualize the density of the four major construction materials on the land lot basis.
The estimated average material stocks for various built structures as collected from Singapore Building and Construction Authority are as follows:
Table 5.1: Material Stock in Bukit Panjang from 1993-2005
A) Residential Buildings Items Steel Cement Coarse Aggregate Fine Aggregate C) Mixed use/ Institutional Buildings Items Steel Cement Coarse Aggregate Fine Aggregate
Source: BCA, Singapore
B) Commercial/Worship Buildings Items Steel Cement Coarse Aggregate Fine Aggregate Average kg/ m2 40 118 302 230
Average kg/ m2 23 74 201 158
Average kg/ m 40 109 285 219
F)Services (industrial) Items Steel Cement Coarse Aggregate Fine Aggregate
Average kg/ m2 57 137 352 269
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This stock (kg/m2) is then converted in to the density by multiplying the Gross Floor Area (m2) of various built structures with corresponding average material stock value. Therefore, Material intensity = Material Stock (kg/m2) * GFA (m2), which is calculated on the parcel basis.
ii) Electricity Use Intensity
Electricity is the major energy flow in urban system dominantly driven by anthropogenic activities and intensity of its use is increasing with the rate of increasing urbanization. But it is evident that urban energy consumption is higher in developed countries than the developing countries. High energy consumption has vital implications in urban environment as it is itself produced from depleting natural resources like natural gas, water, air as well as produce additional polluting gas like CO2, waste energy like heat during the production process of electricity as well as its use in cooling and heating the built structures. Previous study (Perry, 2007) found that Singapore is a compact city and studies also show that compact cities consume high electricity.
There are various indicators to track electricity consumption in urban uses like per capita electricity consumption, household electricity consumption, GDP per electricity consumption etc so. Each indicator has its own limitations to represent exact scenario. For this research, a different indicator namely Electricity Use Intensity is tried to find out where electricity consumption by per unit area of a household has been accounted. There is both the building gross floor area for various built structures of Bukit Panjang as well secondary data on electricity consumption by various housing typologies has been collected from Singapore. As most of the built structures in Singapore including Bukit Panjang are combined or row, so individual household area has been calculated based on GIS data, Google image, field survey and online Singapore properties information. Again synchronization has to be made between the housing typologies defined separately by SLA and SP.
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Table 5.2: Average Household area of various building typologies in Singapore
Building Typologies HDB 1 or 2- Room HDB 3- Room HDB 4- Room HDB 5- Room Executive Condominium/Private apartment Landed Property
Average Size (Sq. m) 45 65 92 129 145 42-743 150-400
Source: SLA and http://www.sg-house.com/about286130.html
Below is the electricity consumption scenario by various households where commercial, institutional and industrial consumptions are not included as Bukit Panjang is mainly a residential area. Electricity consumption for religious buildings has been ignored.
Table 5.3: Average Electricity Consumption for all households of the same house type
Premises Type HDB 1-room HDB 2-room HDB 3-room HDB 4-room HDB 5-room HDB Executive Apartment Landed Property
Source: Singapore Power
Electricty Use (kWh) 104 159 255 358 417 506 648 1420
According to SLA, the building typologies are as in GIS database described below-
Table 5.4: SLA defined building types
Code
Description
C I H
Condominium Industrial Building HDB Building
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K S U A E R UM US
Block (can be residential or commercial) Standard Walkup Apartment Executive Condominium Residential Walkup (Main address) Walkup (Sub address)
Source: Singapore Land Authority (SLA)
With the help of SLA official the ambiguity of the descriptions again removed by the following clarifications:
HDB Residential Standard
= Public Housing/flats developed by Housing Development Board = Private residential (eg. landed properties) = Standard buildings built by BCA (usually Public/ Commercial buildings)
Executive Condo = Condo housing developed by HDB Condominiums = Private Development Walkup Apartment UM US = Usually old HDB without elevators (eg. 4 storey flats) = service apartments = Part of U (with main address) = Part of U (with sub-address)
To include the electricity intensity data in GIS database the author needed to bring the terms for building typologies used in table 5.2 and 5.3 with the SLA defined building typologies, so few adjustments and assumptions are needed especially five types of HDB buildings had to bring under one typology namely H or HDB as for getting final output and regression analysis. From the field survey it was assured that the HDB (3+ rooms) is predominant therefore the average electricity consumption is made based on that of HDB 3-rooms, 4-rooms and 5-rooms by calculating weighted average. Same statistical method has been followed for other buildings which have no unique features i.e. building size. Formulation of this indicator is mainly focused on residential buildings as the commercial and industrial building are not unique in character so determination of electricity
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consumption per unit area of buildings may raise the question of validity. As this is a very time constraint research, an approximation was highly required to exhibit kind of relationship with other indicators.
Thus, based on above estimation and cross-estimation the following table has been generated:
Table 5.5: Calculated Electricity Use Intensity for Built Structures in Bukit Panjang
Code
Electricity Use Intensity (kWh/ m )
C I H K S U A E R UM US
8.76 Unknown 3.53 ~H Unknown ~H ~C 3.49 9.22 ~H ~H
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Chapter 6
Analysis of the Indicators and Findings

This is the vital chapter of the research where the various spatial and non-spatial data is analyzed for finding out the environmental performance of Bukit Panjang Area. Before starting the analysis of main indicators, some initial analysis of the study site characteristics are shown below.
The total land area of the study area and corresponding built structures are as estimated from the GIS based SLA data as follows
Figure 6.1: Share of Built and Non-built area
14% 47% Building footprint Road Non-built areas 39%
Table 6.1: Existing Characteristics of the Building typologies in Bukit Panjang
Building Types Condominium Commercial centre Executive HDB Industrial Block (residential/commercial) Landed Property Standard Walk Up
No. of Average Building Maximum Average Building Footprint (Sq.m) Floor Floor 30 946.4315 30 18 1 5754.3845 4 4 7 689.9606 30 27 323 1134.5193 30 17 2 1922.0253 4 4 9 779 222 14 1223.9259 154.0503 569.6031 138.3957 30 30 30 3 24 3 4 3
Analysis and Findings
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Calculated from the GIS data of SLA, the above table clearly shows that Bukit Panajng is mainly a residential area as designated in the Singapore Master Plan 2003 with highly dense development (Map 6.1). It is also evident that the Master Plan of Singapore city has put emphasize on the vertical expansion rather than horizontal expansion. At the same time sufficient provision for accessibility and open space has been provided to cater the population living on these skyscrapers. These observations are supported by the building density mappings based on the plot ratio which have been collected from URA which is described the next section..
The following table is showing the status of built structures in Bukit Panjang planning area.
Table 6.2: Status of the Built Environment Data in Bukit Panjang
Building Status Estimated Existing Proposed Under Construction
Count 15 1284 57 31
Out of 57 proposed buildings major are landed properties (R) which are in total 35, followed by Standard buildings built by BCA which are 15 and Condominiums are 7; in case of under 31 construction buildings 29 are landed properties or terrace houses and other twos are school buildings under Standard Building category (Map 6.2). Governments future plan seems concentrated on the disperse settlement as manifested from the dominance of landed property like terrace and low height settlement in the proposed building outlines of the SLA data.
The main reason for highlighting the proposed and under construction buildings is to find out their impact on the urban physiological process based on the physiological indicators.
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6.1 Morphological Analysis i. Building Density The contour mapping based on the plot ratio (Map 6.3) is representing the topographical scenario of Bukit Panjang where the various colored lines are drawn along buildings of same plot ratio. Building density mapping of Bukit Panjang based on the plot ratio (Map 6.4) does not show consistently high dense built up area rather the plot ratio values are not more than 3.5 and not less than 0.35. The darker color shows the maximum plot ratio, as the contour lines tending to be lighter indicates low maximum density and tending to be white indicates plots with no building. No significant fluctuation or variation of building density is observed in the actual condition than the master plan 2003 developed by Urban Redevelopment Authority for this area. Thus, a good tendency can be observed in implementing planning principles of the Singapore master plan 2003.
The plots having higher plot ratio (>2.48) are mainly HDB building followed by landed property and standard buildings. Again the highest plot ratio contained lots are mostly occupied by condominiums and executive apartments. In condominium a series of luxurious facilities e.g. swimming pool, tennis court etc services are provided for the economically well off residents which mutually benefit all the residents of the corresponding condominiums. This can be regarded as a sustainable approach in response to land crisis of Singapore. The contour lines with lower plot ratios (< 1) represent 54% of the total study area. The extreme low plot ratios indicate the presence of low building volume means the morphology of built areas is consuming less resource. Again the density map notice that the most of the low dense or no developed plots are ring shaped; surrounded by plots with medium to high plot ratio therefore the ring shaped plot can be used as community gathering or activity generating place.
As the plot ratio of various values are in a continuous shape along the periphery of the study area, it can be envisaged that significant amount of primary ecological features has been sacrificed. However, the make up attempts have been taken later to compensate the natural vegetation undergone for development.
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ii. Degree of Sub-division
Map 6.5 is showing the map of the degree of subdivisions due to various built features e.g. building outlines, road network, and land allotments. Map 6.6 is showing the map of degree of subdivision where the dark shade is showing the corresponding plots and surrounding plots are more subdivided. That means the more intense the color, more subdivided and as discussed in the previous chapter that subdivision is the inverse value of the degree of coherence, therefore more the intense colored plots are less coherent; the built structures of the plots are less related to each other.
The significant subdivision is done by the street networks at the community level but high to medium degree of subdivision also have been observed due to property boundaries. However, its remarkable that relatively high degree of subdivisions is few in the study area. An intensity of subdivisions is apparent in the portion of the map where mainly landed properties i.e. terrace housings are present. This phenomenon is caused because of the individualities of the terrace houses. The nil degree of subdivisions is observed in the south east portion of the study area where because that portion of land parcels have no built parcels, however some shredding is observed for the parcel boundary.
The study area is confined by two expressways namely Kranji expressway from north side and Bukit Timah express way from east side, major arterial roads as woodland road and upper Bukit Timah road in western side and by Dairy Farm road in the southern side. Though a high degree of subdivision is marked in the northern side at the edge of Kranji expressway, due to the presence of regional highway further subdivision may not be possible towards north. However, a degree of subdivision is stands out along the edge of western edges which is also accessible by arterial road showing development trend across the road. Relatively less subdivision is observed along the Bukit Timah expressway. It means there is no intensity of development is towards Bukit Timah expressway as on the other side there is reservoir, which is a nature reserve of Singapore.
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iii) Granular Index
Granular index based on the Gross Floor Area (GFA) (which considers both height and footprint area) has been shown in the map 6.7, indicates very heterogeneous granulation interspersed with capacious grain sizes. Already mentioned in previous sections that Bukit Panjang is mainly a residential area, and most of the buildings have been designed to accommodate ever increasing population of Singapore without consuming lateral land surfaces as well as having a uncompromising policies to let develop any squatter and slum settlements. Therefore, the tall buildings are ideally predominant across the study area. But the people are living in these residential buildings must need some social services like schooling, commercial activities, medical services etc which have been provided mixing with some residential units which have been categorized as standard buildings; this buildings are not so tall as some HDB residential building situated at the North-western side of the study area. Thus a complex mixture of grain sizes has been observed in some part of Bukit Panjang especially around the Bukit Panjang ring road.
A homogeneous structure of grain sizes can be seen where the terrace houses are located. As these are the landed properties, no scope for Governments intervention in future for high density development. In terms of environmental permeability, the terrace housing parts are in suitable position as no larger grains are around those so there is easy movement of air, sun and sound through the spaces. Of course the largest sizes of grains are very few as in the granular index map, only 3 grains are found to have largest value two of which have a visible buffer from the surrounding grains so they might not appear as blocking the environmental flow to surrounding grains.
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iv) Accessibility Index
Accessibility has been measured here based on the land parcels proximity to nearest road network where a hierarchy of road network is made based on their functions namely expressway, arterial road, distributor road and access road. These roads are again weighted respectively as 1, 2, 3 and 4 therefore higher order road network is having lower weight. Finally a 50 meter buffer is used to estimate level of accessibility of the land parcels and the built elements within them. The concept behind 50 meter buffer is taken from transport engineers that a person can comfortable walk up to 50 meters.
Map 6.8 shows the topographical findings of the level of accessibility in the Bukit Panjang. The lighter areas represent accessible to highest order (lowest weighted) network, the darker areas have access to the lower to lowest order road of the hierarchy. Similar results have been represented in the Map 6.9 where the accessibility level has been shown on parcel basis. Some plots have no accessibility in the southern parts of the map which are mainly vegetated areas. As the closest residential areas are mainly terrace houses, the inaccessibility of the vegetated sites will retard the potential developers to develop those ecologically important lands.
When land market is considered, those plots have higher values which have easy access to the higher order transport network for traveling without delay and with minimum distance. In that case the land parcels having close proximity to expressway but expressways do not have interfaces with the local access; they are only accessible through arterial road. Thus the land parcels are showing easy accessible to the expressway in a bad position in a sense that they have to depend on either distributor road or local access road for accessibility and in fact most of the settlements have been formed in the land parcels which are in proximity of either distributor road or local access road. So, it can be said that higher level accessibility has a prohibiting effect on the settlement development.
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6.2 Physiological Indicator
i. Material intensity
In this research the main reason for accounting Material intensity is to analyze the stock of major construction materials for various buildings as a part of urban physiological process. Here four construction materials namely still, cement, coarse aggregate and fine aggregate are used to visualize the concentration of their uses on the plot basis. Another main intention for this analysis is to find out the material efficiency for various building blocks.
The maps 6.10 to 6.13 indicate the density of four construction materials in the Bukit Panjang. Ideally all the four materials intensity show similar trend in terms of their share in construction for various types of building. Thus it is clear that materials stocks may vary from building typologies but the share of construction materials remain same. There is a direct and positive relationship between the GFA and material stocks in buildings, therefore material intensity is higher in those parcel of lands where more than 20 storied condominiums and other buildings are situated. And low materials are concentrated in the region where average three storied terrace housings are located. The material stocks are still growing as there are lot of estimated and proposed buildings but as discussed early of this chapter that majority of proposed buildings are terrace building which has the highest material efficiency (kg/m2) according to a study done by Perry (2007) on the material stocks for various building typologies, the likely material flow can be possible to keep limited. These maps are simple representations of the four types of materials stock in the Bukit Panajng without accounting their life cycle assessment, inclusion of which must give truer picture of the effect of material flow in urban environment. But it can be assumed that after demolition of a buildings, the still can be reused out of the four materials, but cement should remain as a binding material with the two types of aggregate which are most of the times are dumped as wastes and this wastes have again adverse impact on the environment.
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ii. Electricity Use Intensity
The very simple indicator to account the energy flow into the urban environment based on the relationship between building area and electricity consumption is named as Electricity Use Intensity also indicate same trend as like the Material intensity (Map 6.14). Thus it can be hypothesized that the physiological indicators used in this study are positively correlated with each other. The main use of electricity in the high rise buildings are air condition. Due to the stable weather condition in Singapore, electricity doesnt need notably for heating purposes in the buildings. An explicit positive mutual relationship among the socio-economic conditions, population density and electricity consumption could be found. In case of both factors per capita income and population density are high for Singapore; so literally it can be assumed that electricity is highly consumed in Singapore.
Electricity is the only static source for producing heat in urban environment for the building cooling process. Therefore high electricity consumption by the residential buildings in the Bukit Panjang inevitably affect the micro-climate and induces along with other dense settlements the effect of urban heat island for whole the island wide state.
6.3 Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression Analysis
Apart from the individual analysis of the two sets of indicators another important part of this research is to find the mutual effects of the two different set of indicators that affect urban environment. Keeping this in mind, Pearson correlation coefficients have been measured using commercial statistical software STATA. Granular index represents at the calculation level based on land parcels exhibits same result as plot ratio therefore excluded while measuring correlation to avoid data redundancy.
The coefficients of Pearson correlation for the two sets of indicators are given at table 6.3 where PR, SUB, ACS, STLL, CMT, C_AGT, F_AGT and EUI denote respectively plot
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Ratios, degree of subdivision, level of accessibility, still, cement coarse aggregate, fine aggregate and electricity use intensity.
Table 6.3: Pearson Correlation Coefficients for two sets of Indicators
PR PR SUB ACS STLL CMT C_AGT F_AGT EUI 1 -0.6846 -0.1551 0.3349 0.3542 0.3581 0.3604 0.2814
SUB
ACS
STLL
CMT
C_AGT
F_AGT
EUI
1 0.1406 -0.2315 -0.2425 -0.2447 -0.2460 -0.2171 1 -0.0824 -0.0798 -0.0791 -0.0788 -0.0799 1 0.9966 0.9950 0.9938 0.9360 1 0.9998 0.9996 0.9238 1 0.9999 0.9202 1 0.9180 1
This table represents relationships between the indicators whether they are positively or negatively correlated but these do not necessarily indicate the any statistical significance of the coefficients, for which a Multiple Linear Regression Model is run with the two sets of indicators proceeded by the objective to measure the dependency of the physiological indicators on the morphological indicators. This objective is stemmed from the hypotheses that Bukit Panjang already has got its territorial shape so nothing to plan about the arrangement of the land parcels rather how to make efficient the physiological process taking place on the territory.
The multiple linear regressions equation therefore formulated as follows:
Yi = a + b1 * PR + b2 * SUB + b3 * ACS + i Where, Yi = Dependent variables (physiological indicators) a = Regression Constant b1, b2, b3 = Co-efficients of explanatory variables
i = Regression errors
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Based on this equation, a Multiple Linear Regression Model has been run in STATA for each dataset of physiological indicators and morphological indicators. The estimated results are tested for statistical significance at 95% confidence level, which means that if the estimated mean of the coefficients are within 95% confidence interval of a t distribution, then the corresponding P-values are lower than 5%. The P-value is the probability of seeing a result as extreme as can be found in a collection of random data in which the variable had no effect. A P-value of 5% or less is the generally accepted, where decision can be made to accept/reject the null hypothesis that a coefficient is zero. If the P-value of a coefficient is lower than 0.05, the null hypothesis can be rejected, and can be concluded that the coefficient has reasonable effect on the dependent variable.
Constant values are excluded from the regression equation which can be explained this in this way that, when the values of all the variables will be zero, the value of Y would be equal to the constant which is not expected; therefore, running the models with the constant term can be erroneous. As calculated in STATA, the multiple linear equations have become as follows:
(i) STLL = 694468.5*PR 216474.5*SUB 154887.8*ACS
Where the P-values for PR, SUB and ACS are respectively 0.000, 0.403 and 0.168 (significant values therefore respectively 1, 0.597 and 0.832) with R2 value and Adjusted R2 are 0.1888 and 0.1822.
(ii) CMT = 2192165*PR 757032.8*SUB 474797.9*ACS
Where the P-values for PR, SUB and ACS are respectively 0.000, 0.332 and 0.161 (corresponding significant level are 1, 0.668 and 0.839) with R2 value and Adjusted R2 are 0.2033 and 0.1968
(iii) C_AGT = 5930590*PR 2089239*SUB 1277210*ACS
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Where the P-values for PR, SUB and ACS are respectively 0.000, 0.317 and 0.159 (significant level therefore 1, 0.683 and 0.841) with R2 value and Adjusted R2 are 0.2062 and 0.1998
F_AGT = 4651046*PR 1657359*SUB 998256.7*ACS
The P-values for PR, SUB and ACS are respectively 0.000, 0.309 and 0.159 (the significant level are then 1, 0.691 and 0.841) for the regression equation with R2 value and Adjusted R2 are respectively 0.2079 and 0.2014
The last regression equation is correlating electricity use intensity with the selected morphological indicators which found as follows,
EUI = 114.99*PR 53.71*SUB 22.22*ACS
With the P-values for the independent variables are 0.000, 0.305 and 0.328 (corresponding significant level are 1, 0.695 and 0.673) and containing R2 value and Adjusted R2 are respectively 0.1343 and 0.1273
6.4 Discussion
Every regression equation assume physiological indicators as dependent variable found and noted above shows that physiological indicators have a positive relationship with Plot Ratio (PR) and negative relationship with the other two morphological indicators, namely Degree of Subdivision (SUB) and Level of Accessibility (ACS). The P-values of SUB and ACS are found to be higher that 5% whereas these should be 0.05 or lower for accepting their influence on physiological indicators. Again while considered Adjusted R2 value which exhibit the predictability of the model should be close to 1 for making decision based on the analysis result but in all the four
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equations the Adjusted R2 value is very low so the predictability is stumpy. So, the model will not be effective for any decision making based on the result.
There may be several reasons for very low predictability of the model. These may include simple issues like the selection of the indicators for measuring correlation is not well justified, or may have multiple effects of same set of indicators on the other set of indicators. After all the two set of indicators may not linear with each other. Another practical reason for failure of the predicting a rational relationship between the two sets indicators can be quoted here that all the physical indicators calculated here based on the buildings properties resulting significant relationship only with plot ratio that contains the building information only from the morphological set of indicators. Other two indicators obviously represent the characteristics of land parcels but not linked with the buildings material stock or electricity consumption therefore does not show any significant relationship with the physiological indicators.
So, planning decision for Bukit Panjang for improving environmental performance based on this research should focus on the individual analysis of the indicators merely on the correlation analysis. In the future endeavors if more diverse physiological indicators like household fuel consumption, material stock for road networks etc would be integrated the model may show good predictability.
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Chapter 7
Recommending Proposal
From the previous chapter the findings can be summarized as follows:
i. The total built up areas is very low for Bukit Panjang with a significant percentage is totally dedicated for road network. For smooth functioning, an urban area should have 40% road network of the total area where Bukit Panajng has 39% which is a very strong indication of good urban planning. The total area dedicated for buildings is only 14% of the total study area which implies that the area is developed compactly and less convoluted.
ii. The plot ratio or building density mapping of Bukit Panjang indicates the overall scenario of Singapore as part of the master plan 2003 (which designates Bukit Pangang as mainly residential and nature reserve) which explicitly represents the Governments wholehearted effort to make
Singapore a garden city by preserving land horizontally for green and intensifying development vertically. However, the plot ratios again can not be said so high compared to other dense and compact cities like New York Manhattan because of relatively small population size of Singapore.
iii. The degree of subdivision is also not so high because of compact settlements; only subdivisions are higher where the individual landed properties are concentrated. One of the main subdividing elements is the road hierarchies; however, the road networks have not subdivided the land parcels in Bukit Panajng because most of the HDB housing estates have only access way to get out from the boundary which is absent in case of individual housings.
iv. In case of the granular index based on the GFA, the study area is composed of heterogeneous grain sizes therefore it can be assumed that the low storied
Recommending Proposals
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buildings behind the tall buildings may face less exposure to sunlight, air circulation and sound transmission, but in this case the high density development also has made it possible to have less effect due to varied grain sizes.
v. Most of the terrace houses are far from the top hierarchy road network, it can be hypothesized that people who live in terraced houses want to live with some kind of tranquility which can be ensured partly by living far from the roads to avoid noise. Therefore, there may a car dependency be observed. But from sustainable township viewpoint car dependency should be reduced so concentrations of terraced houses are not advisable.
vi. The physiological indicators all are related to the buildings consumptions and stocks that are positively correlated with the buildings height and area, therefore less significant with the other non-building morphological indicators. Two physiological indicators show different efficiency rates for same building typologies. Where the terrace houses show materially efficient, they appear inefficient for electricity consumption. This is a very crucial planning issue to trade off as still there are still some proposed building lots catered for future terraced housings. It is also found that terraced houses cause higher degree of subdivision as well as higher intensity of electricity use.
vii. The material flow has been only considered in terms of their density or stocks in various buildings but the materials must have an end use which is not included in the analysis due to unavailability of end use data.
The above proposals have included the obvious features of built urban environment that deal with the critical tasks for the urban planner and policy makers to address in planning or policy making. The most important part of dealing with the built urban environment is to take corrective measures so that the built morphological characteristics can have less impact on the environment. Therefore some proposals can be drawn towards the
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sustainability of the environment of Bukit Panjang based on the findings which are discussed below.
The plot ratio for Bukit Panjang is already planned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority therefore planning decision should focus on the building functions as to reduce their impact on the environment by energy modeling and rational calculation of building materials. As the building density positively correlated with material intensity and electricity consumption and as electricity consumption is the only static source of urban heat island, building technologies should adopt to reduce dependency on air cooling appliances at the building architecture level. On the other hand, selecting materials for building should consider the efficiency at the end-use level as each building has its life time and after that time the building may need reconstruction. This process must require putting material stock on the same land unit. In addition, wastes can be produced within the lifecycle of buildings, during the construction, modification and demolition phases which become serious environmental problems in many countries.
The primary environmental target regarding these two physiological consumptions of buildings should be the prevention and reduction of construction waste generation and reducing electricity consumption. One of the optimum solutions to reduce the material intensity in Bukit Panjang can be the recover and re-use of the demolished materials in reconstruction process in future. Policies to reduce the electricity use intensity should be accompanied by the adoption of technologies to reduce the impact of high electricity and fuel consumption. Though the effects and diversities of vehicular fuel consumption have not been covered in this study; a detailed investigation for the environmental effects of vehicular fuel consumption in Bukit Panjang should be carried out.
Land allocations for individual terrace housing result more subdivisions of the corresponding land accompanied by more land requirements for their accessibility. The scarce land for Singapore therefore is not suitable for allocating to development of landed properties like terrace houses. The accessibility required for the terrace houses also subject to supply of more construction materials like gravel, asphalt may result inducing
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low albedo5 which again exaggerate the urban heat island. On the electricity consumption site the indicator used here electricity consumption per unit area shows the higher value for the terrace houses. Thus, in terms of electricity supply terrace housing is not advisable as Singapore has to spend a high premium to produce electricity from natural gas which is comparatively environment friendly electricity source in Singapore.
The government of Singapore is already largely engaged with tree plantation and increasing green coverage over the Singapore which can be multiplied by increasing green plot ratio (Lay, 2003) in the highly dense residential areas. This can be enhanced by promoting greening the roof top as well as vertical gardening, faade and balcony planting. The urban park planning can be the most effective approach for not only absorbing the CO2 but also by providing shade so that less solar radiation can reach the building surfaces which causes further worsening the heat situation of urban environment. National Parks Board of Singapore is charged to promote and enhance green coverage by implementing opens space and park connecting plan for Singapore. Singapore governments long time efforts to build Singapore have attenuated the environmental impact of anthropogenic energy consumptions to a remarkable limit.
Government can think economic incentives for materially efficient buildings to promote materially efficient buildings but the problem of inflation in status quo may hinder the positive effects of economic incentives for resource efficient buildings. The purposes of buildings again should be considered if government really thinks about the economic incentives for the improved building technology. This is because a building might have living or financial investment option in which case the latter one will not be purposeful.
Finally, for sustainability of an urban environment, an integrated effort by the authorities e.g. URA, SLA, BCA and Singapore power authority is needed to generate a multipurpose valid and quality database for evaluating the environmental performance of various urban infrastructures ranging from the morphological properties to physiological
5
Albedo refers to the ability of a surface to reflect solar radiation but it differs from the reflectivity as it accounts all kind of incoming radiation to the surface. The asphalt has low albedo value range 0.05-0.20 where grass has high albedo value of 0.25-0.35. (Dhakal, Shobhakar)
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attributes. And more research regarding the material and energy flows in urban environment should be carried out to find out the efficient metabolism process. Recently, a research wing is established at the School of Design and Environment of National University of Singapore named as Center for Sustainable Asian Cities, where some researches on the industrial ecology is going on. Industrial ecology is the field of science that deals with the material and energy flow through an urban and industrial system. As the name suggests, the principles of this studies are the natural ecological rules, i.e. closing the energy and material loop.
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Chapter 8
Conclusion
Urbanization takes place in terms of spatial, temporal and demographic change associated with modification and generation of spatial form, the changes in physical consumptions which ultimately determine the performance of the environment. To find the relationship between the urban form and its physiological process has been the main focus of this research to ascertain the environmental analysis for the selected study area, Bukit Panajng, a new town of Singapore planned for residential and nature reserve. Two sets of indicators namely morphological and physiological have been used to see their correlation by multiple regression analysis. Morphologically Bukit Panajng has been analyzed by the plot ratio of land parcels, degree of subdivision of the same parcels, buildings grain sizes based on its gross floor area and the parcels level of accessibility. To measure the effects of these morphological characteristics on the physiological process the material intensity as construction materials stock in the buildings of Bukit Panjang and electricity use intensity as electricity consumption per unit area of buildings have been used as physiological indicator.
The physiological indicators used here have not shown so remarkable correlation with the morphological indicators except plot ratio therefore planning decision based with the multiple objectives should not be practiced in this case; rather planning focus should be based on the individual indicators responses to the built environment. Morphologicall, Bukit Panjang has indicated the Singapores governments intention to make this area as a compact residential area with natural vegetated area by allowing steady building density over the maximum plots of the area and providing almost strong accessibility for the plots at the same time less degree of subdivision. In terms of physical consumptions, the land parcels containing landed properties or terrace houses have shown the highest rate of aggregate consumption. These morphologies have appeared as more land subdividing and irrational in respect of Singapores land crisis and aim to be city in garden.
Conclusion
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Singapore is a small island city; due to have very good per capita income and being strategically a very good business hub, the citys metabolism process is also excessively high which eventually gives rise to the effect of heat island, environmentally an unexpected event for healthy and sound urban life. To attenuate this effect would require a rational selection of material for building construction and electricity i.e. energy efficient building operation. In this research a very small part of Singapores metabolism process has been considered by relating with the morphology; future extensive studies which may account more energy and material flow in Singapores urban environment should give a platform for sensible planning decision to ensure a livable community by optimum resource allocation for urban buildings and infrastructures. However, it is not wise to make any decision about the sustainable performance of Singapores urban environment without expanding the analysis towards other dimensions like ground water availability, the albedo values across the island as well as more extensive behavior of urban energy and material consumption.
Conclusion
8-2
Morphological and Physiological Analysis for Measuring Urban Environmental Performance: A Case study of Bukit Panjang New Town
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MORPHOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF URBAN ENVIRONMENT Case Study: A Singapore New Town

BY FAYSAL KABIR SHUVO

This book is fully dedicated to my loving wife Farzana Afrin Tani

Faysal Kabir Shuvo Singapore 22/06/2010

1-1 1-2 1-3 1-3 1-4 1-5

CHAPTER 7: RECOMMENDING PROPOSAL CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION REFERENCES

7-1 8-1 Ref-1

GIS IT IUCN WCED EPA GHG CIAT USA

1.2 Motivation of this Study

1.3 Objectives of the Study

1.4 Scopes of the Study

1.5 Research Questions and Hypothesis

In the research following research questions are to be address:

2. What tools are available to analyze urban environment? and

(a) Completeness, (b) No redundancy, (c) Operationality,

At the indicator level, she has concentrated on the following criteria:

(3) Measurability, the availability of required data from common sources

(4) Legibility, with indicators easy to interpret;

The hypothesis behind the selection of these set of indicator is as follows

Building Density Shredding Granulation Accessibility

Socio-economic and Socio-demographic background conditions

to nourish to clean to reside and work to transport and communicate

i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi.

2.5 Multi Scale Assessments of Environmental Performance and GIS

Environmental Decision Space

70.00% Special Buildings

Open / Green Coverage Percentage on Site

60.00% Condominiums Multi-Storied Housing 50.00% Educational

Single Family Housing

Materials Stock Efficiency Percentage

3.2 Collection of Necessary Maps

3.3 Literature Survey

3.4 Identification and principles of Indicators

3.5 Collection and Compilation of Data and Information

3.6 Calculation of the Indicators

f. Electricity Use Intensity

3.7 Analysis and Visualization of the Results:

3.8 Proposals and Recommendations

Collection of Necessary Maps

Identification and Principles of the Indicators

Collection of Data and Information

Calculation of the Indicators

Analysis and Visualization of the Indicators

Proposals and Recommendations

Figure 3.1: Methodological Framework

Chapter 4 Study Area2

Map 4.1: Singapore Map3

Map 4.2: Study Area (Bukit Panjang)

Proposed Indicators for Environmental Analysis of Bukit Panjang

Proposed Indicators for Env. Analysis of Bkt Panjang

5.2 Morphological Indicators

Proposed Indicators for Env. Analysis of Bkt Panjang

Proposed Indicators for Env. Analysis of Bkt Panjang

ii. Degree of subdivision

Proposed Indicators for Env. Analysis of Bkt Panjang

Proposed Indicators for Env. Analysis of Bkt Panjang

Proposed Indicators for Env. Analysis of Bkt Panjang

vi) Level of Accessibility:

Proposed Indicators for Env. Analysis of Bkt Panjang

1 Expressway 2 Arterial Road 3 Distributor Road 4 Access Road

5.3 Physiological Indicators

Proposed Indicators for Env. Analysis of Bkt Panjang

Sum of Material and Energy flow = Sum of Outputs + Changes in Stock4

(i) STLL = 694468.5PR 216474.5SUB 154887.8*ACS

(ii) CMT = 2192165PR 757032.8SUB 474797.9*ACS

(iii) C_AGT = 5930590PR 2089239SUB 1277210*ACS

F_AGT = 4651046PR 1657359SUB 998256.7*ACS

EUI = 114.99PR 53.71SUB 22.22*ACS