Caught this interview floating around on fb: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/5-governments-5-hdbs-5-moes-tay-kheng-soon-on-decentralisation-8843960?cid=fbcna It's lengthy, but one paragraph stood out: "Why did Lee Kuan Yew worry about having more
trees in Singapore? Because it makes money? No. Because he could see
that the kind of densities that we are living in, the kind of concrete
we are exposed to, it’s not a good thing. Therefore, we must soften the
environment. It was something that came out of his own emotional
reaction to the environment."
Happens that I recently attended a talk, and the only thing I remembered from it somewhat relates to the above paragraph. Twas pretty much a research presentation (think FYP presentation but with an audience larger than ~3 ppl) highly focused on methodology and numeric results. On what topic? The perceived densities of urban spaces. As in, while the true mass over volume may be constant across different scenarios within the same space, what the human feels may differ depending on what makes up the mass. [They didn't actually use m/V, more like line of sight i.e. how much one sees and at what distance.]
So here's the interesting part. The study found that when even when more space is taken up by greenery (such as when walking down a boulevard with trees bearing down on you and blocking out the sun) as compared to concrete (pavements, tall buildings beside, no shade), perceived density reflects the opposite. Perceived density is like a measure of liveability -- unless one is some sort of small creature with many legs it's prob harder to live where one feels overly boxed in. This led to the conclusion that green spaces, though denser they may be, are more liveable.
The science way definitely proved that, after running hundreds of volunteers down simulated streets, getting their scaled responses and finding correlations. But then must hand it to LKY la his foresight really damn good. He saw the same results like 50 years before any sort of these technologies used in the experiments came into the light. I guess as a visionary he's really exemplary, but all of us normal people can also feel when things are right to certain extents. We don't need a detailed scientific study to tell us we prefer trees to concrete, right? [Not dissing the study, it is ongoing but this was one of the more confirmed outcomes.]
Not everything works this way (esp not designing a plane/being hungry in a supermarket), but when we feel that things are right (or wrong), it might be worth heeding the feel. And doing what we feel works. Well it's worked for SG, just because someone thought it right to plant trees.
[I'm not about to do anything drastic HAHA. Just interesting to think about separate happenings that fall under the same theme.]
