SINGAPORE GREEN VISION

"I grew up in a small town surrounded by trees in Italy, but my life has led me to face pollution problems in Asia. I have always been uncomfortable with pollution and chaos and I dream of living in a place where great architecture, design, transport and trees can live in harmony. But this is not happening much in the big cities of Asia and the highest levels of air pollution in the world come from Asian countries with a huge impact on weather patterns across the northern hemisphere.

Singapore, the city-state, has thought otherwise since 1960, when Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew envisioned Singapore as a 'garden city in the heart of Asia'. In 1963, he planted the first tree to begin the campaign to make Singapore green. Since then, open spaces have been transformed into parks and gardens, planted tens of thousands of trees of different varieties and become attractive to foreign investors. Since August 2011, the National Parks have launched a series of activities to encourage the community to contribute ideas to transform Singapore from a garden city to a "city in a garden" I first saw in 2010 how they were tackling the situation with a perfect Asian pragmatic style.

Singapore now combines exponential city-state growth with air quality, overheating, health and lifestyle. The Clean and Green Singapore campaign has been running for almost two decades and 900 hectares of land have been set aside for the development of new parks over the next 10 to 15 years. Everything is perfectly under control, every single corner is part of the project and the green vision is always central. Singapore is now considered one of the greenest cities in the world. I have been touring Singapore's Green Plan for the past four years, trying to find a form of spontaneity".