Ideas and Thoughts
20 Minutes Neighbourhood: A Case Study of East Coast
Context
Source: Melbourne Land Use Plan
In 2019, Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) released its Land Transport Masterplan 2040. One particular feature caught my attention - this was the ‘45-minute city, 20-minute towns’ concept.
The idea of creating "complete neighbourhoods" have been talked about lately, with numerous variations to fit different city's urban context: 15-minute neighbourhoods in Boulder, 20-minute neighbourhoods from Portland to Detroit and beyond.
I was particularly interested in Singapore's adoption of this concept. It resonated with my belief that we generally lack a neighbourhood identity because we do not fully utilize the space and amenities around where we live.
In addition, I also see this concept as a commitment to a polycentric urban form, which tackles several deep-rooted transport issues. By having neighbourhoods/towns which are more self-sufficient, the demand for travel to town centres can be reduced. Hence, the need for more road infrastructure/ vehicular ownership could be likewise lessened.
Source: Land Transport Master Plan (2040)
This approach works hand-in-hand with other LTMP2040 goals like urban mobility and car-lite targets. Overall, this idea is great and I look forward to seeing it carried out - both in the point of view as a fellow citizen as well as a public policy research student.
So... how "far" are we from this 20-Min Neighbourhood?
For this project, I aim to conduct a quantitative assessment of the East Coast, to explore connectivity distance between residents to their neighbourhood amenities. I will look into each of the 5 types of amenities mentioned in the Land Transport Master Plan.
Methodology
Residential Plots on the Street Network
//Data Used:
#Baseline Data
Residential Plots: URA Land Use Master Plan
Street Network: Private Data
#Amenities Data
Schools: OSM* (amenity=school,college)
> Primary/Secondary/Tertiary
Polyclinics: OSM* (amenity=clinic)
Hawker Centres: Data.gov dataset
Parks: URA Land Use Master Plan
Retail Shops: OSM* (amenity=shop)
*All OSM queries came with both points, lines and polygons. All polygons were converted into points (centroids) for simplicity
1) Data Cleaning and Cropping
(Amenity)
This is just exhausting; mostly clipping datasets so it saves space, and that the spatial data remains around the East Coast area. Also, OSM queries do need much cleaning to be reliable :").
2) Catchment/ Isochrone Analysis
(Amenity to Street)
I utilized the Space Syntax Toolkit which contains a catchment analyzer. Basically, what it does is returns the minimum distance of each street segment to the nearest amenity (e.g. distance from Jurong East Ave 1 to a primary school)
3) Nearest Neighbour Joins
(Street to Residential Plots)
After which, we need to reflect the values of the street onto land plots. However, I noticed numerous homes are situated fairly far away from the nearest street. Hence, I did a Nearest Neighbour Join, pushing the distance data from the nearest street to these land plots. Additionally, I also included the euclidean distance between them.
As such, we have a pretty accurate estimate of the distance between every household in East Coast to respective amenities.
//Steps
Most of the spatial processing were done within QGIS using plugins/ toolbox/ default tools.
Visualization of Catchment Analysis
Colour Range
Layers
1) Hawker Centres
2) Polyclinics
3) Parks
4) Retail
5) Schools (Primary)
6) Schools (Secondary)
7) Schools (Tertiary)
Results and Discussions
*20mins=1600m
The Difficult - Hawker Centres, Polyclinics
Based on the graph, Hawker Centre and Polyclinics seem to be the least accessible - some households have to travel 4km to reach their food/ medical amenities. This is to be expected since there aren't many of them in the first place.
A Multi-modal Transport Plan (Cycling)
It's not the most feasible idea to build more Hawker Centres; there just aren't enough resources. A more practical method is to improve connectivity within the neighbourhood. In light of the government's plans to intensify cycling paths, this might be an opportunity to design paths which will help connect residents to amenities that tend to be further away. Hopefully, if the culture of cycling does pick up in Singapore, this might just be the solution to both our local (neighbourhood) and semi-local (district) connectivity woes.
With a well-planned cycling network, I am confident that the amenities within the neighbourhood will be better utilized.
The Good - Parks, Retail, Schools
A few amenity types are well connected - namely parks, and retail shops. They fall comfortably under the "20min"(1600m) threshold. It seems that Singapore's emphasis and focus on planning green spaces and local neighbourhood centres have paid off.
The accessibility to Schools is fairly connected, except for Tertiary institutions (which is understandable).
Focusing on the Quality of Spaces?
The graph might have painted a narrative that contradicts the sentiments of residents. In the context of Tampines, there seems to be a disconnect between the residents and their neighbourhood because it is a mature estate and its spaces might require rejuvenation. Likewise, the issue seems similar for the East Coast residents. There has been feedback about how residents are less motivated to walk to East Coast Park as it is inaccessible on foot. Hence, beyond Quantitative measures, there is still a need to understand more about the Quality of these Spaces and Connections.
I have hopes that DPM Heng's "East Coast Plan" will serve as the primary initiative to pursue this.
Equality in Accessibility?
I have categorized residents who are living in landed properties and non-landed properties as an approximate for socio-economic background. In general, non Landed properties tend to connect better to amenities (that's great). However, it is observed that there are a couple of non-landed residential plots which are anomalously inaccessible to amenities (floating cyan points for the retail shops). This draws focus on specific households that seem to be overlooked and do not have the luxury to depends on private vehicles for their primary mode of travel.
Additional Graphs
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