the many parks. When a new development goes in, the builders must
figure out how to more than replace the nature it displaced, by making
green roofs, integrated gardens, parks over parking lots, and so on.
The government will help fund the extra costs. I visited several
mesmerizing structures, including the “world’s largest vertical
garden,” a twenty-four-story condo tower whose entire west face was
covered by 23,000 Thunbergia grandiflora vines. The effect was a
little bit Body Snatchers: the wall was alive! The builders calculate a
15 to 30 percent savings in energy use from better insulation and
reduced air-conditioning, a big deal on a tropical island on a warming
planet.
Because of these policies, the country’s percentage of green space
is actually increasing. Even while the population grew by some 2
million between 1986 and 2007, the percentage of green space
expanded from 36 to 47 percent. By contrast, my city, Washington,
D.C., has experienced the opposite, along with most places on the
planet: only 36 percent of the overall tree canopy remains, a decrease
from 50 percent in 1950. Singapore is a remarkable model of what’s
possible when green gets coded into a city’s DNA. Furthermore, “we
try to achieve a goal that 80 percent of people live within 400 meters
of green space,” Yeo said. “We’re pretty close. Now we’re at 70
percent.”
Yeo bounded outside, where the rain had ceased, to show me the
garden’s heritage trees. One, a sprawling, 150-year-old native
Tembusu tree, is so beloved that it graces the five-dollar bill. A long,
horizontal branch as thick as a barrel thrusts out from the trunk not
far above the ground. “This is a sentimental tree for many
Singaporeans because children grow up climbing it on the family
outing,” he said. “And then they hang out there with their friends, and
it becomes a dating tree, then a proposal tree, and then people take
their wedding pictures here!”
“Was your wedding picture here?” I asked.