· "Supertrees" made by concrete but covered with green vegetation

· Fuses modern architecture with tropical flora

Jewel Changi Airport

· Neo-Futurist design

Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay

· Sky bridges and a rooftop urban farm

· 2400 trees to absorb heat, shading the hotel interiors and improving ventilation

• High costs of implementation

• Challenging in maintaining long-term sustainability

• High cost of future maintenance of infrastructures

• Eco-Technologies may become out of date when the city is complete due its long term plan.

Meanwhile, the reliance on imported resources could make the city vulnerable to global supply chain disruptions.

2. What challenges do you think this approach helps to solve?

   DSD will revitalise water bodies, construct flood retention lakes, and apply sustainable drainage elements such as green roof, porous pavement in urban development.

3. What examples (case studies) can you summarize for this example?

   Hong Kong is on the common track of tropical cyclones. It is one of the cities with the highest rainfall in the Asia Pacific region with an average annual rainfall of about 2,400 millimetres. Under this climatic setting, Hong Kong always experienced substantial flooding in the past. Since the establishment of DSD in 1989, it has been striving to prevent flooding by adopting a Three-pronged approach: stormwater interception, flood storage, and drainage improvement, which are proven effective in mitigating the impact of rainstorm and flooding hazards, resulting in reducing the number of flooding blackspots in the city from 90 in 1995 to 7 in 2017.

   The following projects vividly illustrate the result of the “Sponge City” concept in practice:

   Underground Stormwater Storage Scheme

   Green Roof and Vertical Greening

   River Revitalisation

   Rainwater Harvesting Systems

   Kowloon City No.1 Sewage Pumping Station

   The First Flood Retention Lake in Hong Kong

   The First River Park in Hong Kong

   Inter-Reservoirs Transfer Scheme (IRTS)

4. What potential problems to you see in this design approach?

   High cost- To design a sponge city, the budget will be quite high to create flood retention lake or river park based on the local distribution of lake. The possible places for constructing these water sites might already being occupied by architectures.

   Threatening biodiversity - the expansion of the original water area can break thhe original food chain or causing animal's habitat being destroyed.

1. Paris

2. Melbourne

3. Ottawa

4. Barcelona

5. Shanghai

   
   

A city in which all residents can access their needs within 15 minutes. These basic needs include living, working, commerce, healthcare, education, and entertainment.

Pros:

• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions through reduced traffic, making net zero ambitions a reality.

• Less reliance on vehicles. Accessibility for everyone, not just for car owners.

• Boosts local economy. More footfall and employment opportunities for locals.

• Enhances public health and wellbeing through the increase in green spaces and walkways. Commuting time also positively correlates with depression and mental health issues, thus the overall wellbeing of residents will be improved.

• Improved social opportunities through the creation of more closely-knit communities.

• The use of facial recognition in surveillance systems, public transportation, and payment

• Establishment of a citizen identity in the national database

• AI-integrated self-driving vehicles (cars and subways) for public transportation

• Internet of Things (IOT): IoT describes networks of everyday objects, including vehicles and home appliances, that are connected to the internet and can communicate with each other.)

• Smart factories: use of advanced technologies such as the IoT, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and robotics to optimize production processes and improve efficiency. The development of smart factories in China is also driven by the country’s “Made in China 2025” plan, which aims to transform China from a low-cost manufacturing hub to a global leader in advanced manufacturing technologies.

• Lychee farmers: XAG - utilizes artificial intelligence, drones, and cloud computing to optimize efficiency and reduce resource consumption. As of the end of last year, XAG’s smart agricultural products covered an area of 966,666 sq km (373,232 square miles), serving 194 million people.

  Its unstaffed equipment, such as automatic spraying and flow control systems, has saved 520 million liters (137.37 million gallons) of fuel and more than 49.08 million tonnes (48.3 tons) of water, the company said, helping to reduce carbon emissions from agricultural production by 1.4 million tonnes.

1. fuelling class division, larger the social disparity

2. hard to implement the plan

3. overwhelming of essential services and facilities

4. might cause inconvenience for disabilities, since the mindset of 15-minute city is about efficiency, which fail to cater disabilities' needs