The Editor,
I am writing in response to Chuck Chiang’s Aug. 6, 2024, article: “Is Singapore's housing model a realistic solution for Canada's affordability woes?”
Singapore is known as the Garden City because of its prodigious integration of trees and green space with urban density; nature is used as infrastructure to manage urban heat, flooding and support the population’s well-being.
As a result, residents of Singapore enjoy 66 square meters of green space per person — one of the highest ratios of any city in the world.
In Vienna — also mentioned in Mr. Chiang’s article — residents enjoy 120 square meters of green space per person. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a minimum of at least nine square meters per person.
BC Premier David Eby failed to learn this vital lesson of supporting density with green space during his 2023 visit to Singapore or he is deliberately ignoring it.
The BC NDP’s housing bills do not consider green space, urban heat management or human well-being at all.
In fact, their bills override any municipal bylaws designed to protect existing trees and green space or add more parks to support a growing population.
The fruits of this folly are clearly reflected in Vancouver’s Broadway Plan, which will only provide 1.8 square meters of green space per resident — well below the WHO’s minimum recommendation — and one of the lowest ratios of any urban area in the world.
Eby’s monomaniacal obsession with density at any cost will diminish every BC community forced to implement his housing bills.
BC should look to places like Singapore and Vienna for housing solutions, but we must pay attention to how they support well-being with green space if the real intention is to create Homes for People rather than just density for profit.
-Grayson Barke, Coquitlam
