For Regenerative Urban Ecologies: Strategies and Synergy of Integrated Community Hubs

Abstract

Within the past decade, the Singapore government has completed four integrated community hubs around the island. These nodal developments leverage their urban context and programmatic offerings in a bid to generate a sustainable hub ecology for the city. A manifestation of the whole-of-government, and now whole-of-society approach, these large-scale communal architecture play a significant role in rejuvenating the heartlands, advocating citizen engagement and advancing civil society. The vision behind this emergent typology is in the creation of synergistic and generative environments. This paper seeks to investigate the potential of this shared urban model of integrated communal architecture as testbed for better-than-sustainable concepts, to advance policy agendas and support wider collaboration to establish and achieve district-based targets in regenerative outcomes. Using Our Tampines Hub and Bukit Canberra as case studies, the paper looks at the complexities of synergistic operations, and analyses specific design strategies and the participatory approach to support an urban-social-natural regeneration framework. It examines not only economic value in land and space optimization, but new synergies produced for circular mind-shift, closed-loop environmental outcomes and social impetus.