What is urban planning? How is biology useful? And what is the meaning of life ? Discover more with our Year 1’s new pieces on topics like time, philosophy, or Biology!
The ice cream truck
Ring ring ring
The ice-cream truck sing
Children stop what they’re doing
Like foxes they start heading
Towards the vehicle treading
The cashier then goes cha-ching
The man’s smile widening
The children smile savoring
when time opens
time is a curtain
sometimes it will close
revealing its folds
and the memories it holds
through our life it follows
and when parts overlap
it ties you to a strap
through a path filled with gaps
close your eyes, take a nap
imagine the curtain withdraw
watch a past world restore
have you seen it before?
you get absorbed in a vision
with a vaguely familiar version
of a world you once loved
and worthwhile to preserve
as the curtain unfolds again
in life, you’ve found your place
reached a brand-new phase
since the curtain made space
for growth, when it opened.
Philosphy
When most people think of philosophers, the first image they have is an eccentric old man, deep in thought. They also seem to be the source of all those motivational, deep or downright incomprehensible quotes. These first impressions lead most to believe it is a boring and pointless discipline with no bearing on our daily life. However, I think philosophy is a field that covers a wide range of subjects and can be applied to many aspects of our life. Thus, I believe it is worthwhile to study it.
Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions such as those about our life, existence and identity. It provides a framework for answering these questions and generating new ones, then critically analysing these answers. Metacognition, the skill of “thinking about thinking” is useful in any field. For example, if you want to go into research, it is important to consider the effectiveness of the methods you used and the assumptions you have made. This will improve the quality of your research. People who study philosophy are able to do research, think logically, organise information systematically and convey their ideas effectively. This is a valuable skill-set for any hiring business, as well as for anyone who aims to solve problems in their daily life.
Finally, sometimes it’s simply interesting to sit beside a window and just get absorbed in pondering some of these big questions that define us.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, one very important discipline helped us to overcome it and find vaccines to help save people and reduce the chances of us falling sick. That discipline is biology. As biology may seem very complicated, it may feel frustrating to study it but it helps us understand the living world and the ways species function, evolve, and interact.
Advances in medicine and many other areas of biology have brought improvements in the quality of life. Biology helps us to understand and learn more about organisms and different types of species. This way, we get to know more about how species function, evolve, and interact with one another.
Studying biology provides us with many benefits. For example, when we study biology, we learn about materials that can and cannot be used to make products. If we do not know these, we may use chemicals and organic products that are harmful.
Did you know that DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) was developed as the first of the modern synthetic insecticides in the 1940s? It was initially used with great effect to combat malaria, typhus, and the other insect-borne human diseases among both military and civilian populations. It was a very effective pesticide but due to lack of research in the field of biology, we did not know that it was extremely poisonous and harmful. After studying the effects of DDT, it was then banned.
People rely on living things and their products for the food they eat, their homes, their personal care, their fuel and medicines.
For example, people wear clothing made from organic substances. Cotton provides material for many clothing items. Tires are made from the rubber of the rubber tree. Biological sources make up the ingredients for many personal care and beauty products. Many products are plant-based. Many fuels used today originate from a biological origin. Fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas are formed from decayed plant and animal matter. Biology is needed for us to know what substances can be used.
Doctors must study biology to learn how to aid both humans and animals. Learning about the human body is essential for treatment and research. This way, doctors will know what medicines should be prescribed to the ill. They will also know what ingredients are safe for consumption. This way, they will know how to operate and patients properly. For example, during acupuncture, doctors must study the human anatomy properly as improper placement of the needle can cause pain during treatment. Organs could be punctured and a person may even end up paralysed.
Without learning biology, doctors will not be able to treat the sick properly and the population will decrease. Doctors would all be quack doctors and will not be capable of giving the right treatment to patients. The quack doctors would just add ingredients that may be harmful to the human body, for example, they may add water hemlock, a toxic plant that causes nausea, abdominal pain, and epigastric distress (pain or discomfort right below the ribs in the area of the upper abdomen) within 15-90 minutes. They might even worsen the condition of their patients and cause them to die
Back in 1665, when the outbreak of bubonic plague ravaged London, many prominent doctors fled and escaped to the countryside, leaving behind quack doctors to treat the suffering patients. The quack doctors gave “free advice” to the poor and did not mention that their medicine would cost extra. Their medicines had harmful ingredients such as hellebore, a toxic herb thought to release sickness by producing copious sweating. Some medicines included theriac, a toxic herb that blended garlic, vinegar, rue and the flesh of a viper. These medicines often had the opposite effect and caused the patients to either die or become even sicker.
If we do not learn biology, doctors will not be able to save human lives. Doctors will become quack doctors. Viruses will spread and mutate beyond control. Humans will be at the brink of extinction and no one will be able to save us. We will not have the abundance of materials that we have now and many things around us will still be a mystery.
How Urban Planning Changes Lives
Have you ever seen pictures of the Bharavi slum in India? Or the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong? Don’t you think they look so cramped and uncomfortable? Now look outside your window in Singapore. You’ll probably see lush landscape with winding roads, happy pedestrians walking along the sidewalk, or waiting for the frequently arriving bus. Do you know why there’s such a stark contrast? Well, urban planning is one major contributing factor.
The reason why the Kowloon Walled City came to look like something like a compressed mud brick is due to mostly lack of government control. This culminated in construction going unregulated, and thus lack of urban planning. As a result, the alleyways were all squalid, dark and damp, and 1-2m wide. It was also a massive fire hazard and building failure hazard, since most buildings were created from wood and built willy-nilly, without any proper foundations.
As you can probably tell, there is a massive difference between Singapore and the Kowloon Walled City in quality of living. Now, let’s see how Singapore is planned.
Currently, Singapore is planned out by Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). The URA forms Master Plans every five years; the most recent one was in 2019. They are planning and building the Jurong Lake District in Jurong East, which supplements the Jurong Digital District, the Punggol Digital District, in Punggol and so much more. URA also works with Land Transport Authority (LTA) to create new Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) lines to serve the developing areas, which also allows many commuters to reach the Central Business District (CBD) in less than an hour by public transport.
URA designs road networks and zoning, too. How about your convenient local coffee shop that sells delights such as roti prata, fish ball noodles, and nasi lemak? Said coffeeshop was planned by URA. The sheltered footpaths that shield residents by the thousands during gloomy days were created by URA. If you think about it, the way URA plans our City in a Garden is magical. They create small conveniences for your day-to-day life.
Good urban planning gets people out of their homes, into parks, regional centers, malls, jobs, and so many more useful things. It allows people who take 1 to 2 hours to reach school to reach in less than an hour. It can better connect living spaces. It can help people get job opportunities. It can help people interconnect at community centers.
Yes, sometimes it can cause an inconvenience for you, when you must walk further to reach the MRT station or bus stop, or road closures force you to take a longer detour. But this is the solution that helps most people. Without proper urban planning, would you even have a MRT to begin with? Not even a bus stop? The closest supermarket requires a 5-minute drive? There are some things we indeed must sacrifice to take more steps forward.
Look at rural America for example. It is mostly suburban homes lined down the winding streets. Though not once do you see a coffee shop. Not once do you see a small business, or a community center. The closest supermarket may be Wal-Mart, and even that requires a drive. There are no sheltered walkways, not well-maintained sidewalks and so many things that we take for granted here in Singapore many other places in the world just do not have.
Another example of a well-planned city is Tokyo. If you look at the car ownership percentage in America, over 91% of households own a car. https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/car-ownership-statistics/
While over in Japan, only 3 in 4 households own a car (https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00416/auto-appeal-fades-one-in-four-japanese-households-do-not-own-a-car.html), and the rate is much less in Tokyo. Why, may you ask? This is due to the insanely well-connected transportation system in Japan. I’ve been there myself, and to say that it was amazing is an understatement. It was so easy to get around Tokyo by the metro, and even when my family went outside the city (by high-speed-rail), transportation options still existed there, like a bus hub with multiple bus services to different towns, a rail station, and even a cable car. This is a town of just 26,000. The general surroundings were overall pleasant to look at. In fact, even the urban part of town was filled with trees.
And that was another example of good urban planning. I know it’s not easy to create good urban planning, but when it is done right, it is awesome. I just hope more people in Singapore can understand the greatness of urban planning and what good of a change it has done for their daily lives.
Draft 2
Have you ever seen pictures of the Bharavi slum in India? Or the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong? Don’t you think they look so cramped and uncomfortable? Now look outside your window in Singapore. You’ll probably see lush landscape with winding roads, happy pedestrians walking along the sidewalk, or waiting for the frequently arriving bus. Do you know why there’s such a stark contrast? Well, urban planning is one major contributing factor.
Urban planning doesn’t just cover roads and zoning. It covers transportation, parks, heck, even your neighborhood public swimming pool! The bus stop you sit at while waiting for the bus? That’s been planned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). URA is also in charge of visualizing and creating ‘new towns’, places to expand and build more homes, to fit more people in our tiny island we call home. For example, the new Jurong Lake District is forecasted to add 20 thousand more homes and 100 thousand new jobs to Singapore, and that is in a mature estate of over 60 years.
Urban planning not only helps you find new jobs, it also helps you connect to said jobs, using the Transportation network of Singapore. There is the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, that allows many people to travel across the island in less than an hour. The bus system helps with last-mile journeys from MRT stations, or for short-distance travel. You know those sheltered walkway networks that shield you from the rain on a gloomy day? Those were created by URA, in a network spanning over 200 kilometers! That’s like walking from the east coast to the west coast of Singapore and back twice!
The HDB flats that most people in Singapore stay in are also planned by URA. They house around 75% of the population of Singapore (around 4.5 million). Many amenities in a sheltered, short walking distance like coffeeshops, supermarkets, bus stops, businesses, and even malls were all planned out for the biggest benefit by URA.
Traffic lights and crosswalks are strategically placed along roads for the least chance of traffic incidents. A lower number of traffic incidents saves more lives. Over the years, traffic accidents causing fatalities to have dropped a lot, partly thanks to the installation of traffic lights, right hand turn signals, turning-left slip roads to name a few.
Another well planned country is Japan. The entire system is connected by fast trains that can take the same amount of time as planes in some cases. Tokyo is filled with boulevards and avenues full of neighborhood shops, restaurants, convenience stores (in fact it has the most 7-elevens per capita in the world) and most homes are a 15-minute walk to the nearest train station. Tokyo is a very walkable city, as the sidewalks are well paved and connected, with not many cracks or holes. Many residents of Tokyo do not own cars due to these reasons.
To conclude, urban planning generally creates comfort and convenience, among many other things. I hope more people can shine a light on urban planning and how important it is to your daily life.
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