CityLab Daily: Singapore’s Plan to Cool Its City of the Future
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A model of Tengah shows a blend of solar energy, vertical gardens and rooftop cooling plants.
Photographer: Lauryn Ishak/Bloomberg
Beat the heat: Singapore’s latest venture is to build a new town, one with vacuum garbage collection, subterranean roads for electric vehicles and plenty of urban farms. Welcome to Tengah, slated to be the island nation’s greenest community of the future.
One of its most notable features will be the giant solar-powered cooling network that planners say can help keep residents cool in Singapore’s tropical heat and humidity while reducing energy use by 30%. With more cooling units per capita than anywhere else in Southeast Asia, Singapore is hoping to reduce both its fast-rising air conditioning bill and its carbon footprint, which is bigger than that of some countries 50 times its size.