AY1516 T2 Group10 WalkThere Overview
Project Background
The concept of new towns dates back to the late 1800s where the cities in UK became more crowded with poor living conditions. In 1898, Ebenezer Howard provide ideas on how we can improve our quality of life by imagining “garden cities” being surrounded by a “country belt” which was known as the “new towns movement” (Little, 1990)
In Singapore, new town planning is done by the Housing and Development Board (HDB). Queenstown was the first new town to be built when the new town concept was first introduced in Singapore. Currently, there are a total of 22 new towns in Singapore. These new towns have three key features which include high accessibility to public transportation, mixed land use and lots of greenery within the town.
Out of these new towns, Tampines is known to be the most outstanding and well-planned new town in Singapore. Built in the 1970s, Tampines new town has since developed into an institutional, social, recreational and commercial hub of the eastern part of Singapore. Its new town model has even won an award for its outstanding housing design and contribution to human settlement development. Now, it is home to over 200,000 people with a population density of 47,000 people/km.
Motivation
Recently, the government initiated the “Re-imagining Tampines” project that aims to develop Tampines into an even more people-friendly place to live in, streets that are safer for everyone, and bringing nature closer to our doorstep with more greenery and water bodies. However, assigning this project to planners alone does not help to foster a sense of belonging in the community in Tampines as it is based on how the planners imagine Tampines to be. As such, “Reimagining Tampines” project involves a community effort where individuals from various groups such as the public sector or even students are able to contribute their ideas and expertise for a “Dream” Tampines.
Thus, CLC would like to make a mature town like Tampines a more liveable place for everyone by promoting ideas for liveability and improving current physical infrastructure.
Objectives
The aim of this project is to analyse the walkability in Tampines East Zone 2 based on connectivity of residential areas to points of interests. As our sponsor might look into implementing a wider research for the whole of Tampines, this project will also provide a feasible research plan that includes: our projected time taken (i.e. man hours) to collect data and conduct research, and the steps taken for analysis
The objectives of our project are:
- Analysing the demographics of the residents at Tampines
- Understanding if the current physical infrastructures cater to the needs of the residents (based on demographics)
- Analysing the connectivity of the residential areas to the points of interests
- Highlighting the areas in Tampines East Zone 2 that are less accessible and propose recommendations to improve walkability
- Understanding the amount of resources required for this research for future expansion of the project
