Cultivating the City, Citygreen Issue 8

CITYGREEN, winner of the APEX Awards for Publication Excellence for three consecutive years - 2014, 2013 and 2012, is a biannual publication of the Centre for Urban Greenery & Ecology, Singapore. It presents current research on greening and ecology of the urban environment, and features outstanding green projects in international cities. This issue of CITYGREEN showcases the different forms that “Urban Horticulture” can take, including a shopping mall, public housing project, airport, and school. In “Parks & Landscapes”, two gardens designed specifically for children are compared, the new state-of-the-art Far East Organization Children’s Garden at Gardens by the Bay and Asia’s first children’s garden, Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden, at Singapore Botanic Gardens.

One of the key aims of CITYGREEN is to promote interdisciplinary thought between policy experts, professionals, and researchers on issues related to our urban landscape— for example, how urban greening can result in an overall improvement in quality of life, mitigate urban environmental pollution, and increase the competitive advantage of cities in an increasingly global economy.

An important issue that cities face is the integration of urban landscapes with ecological systems. In “Commentary”, Dave Kendal and Mark J. McDonnell advocate that urban landscape managers have a unique capacity to contribute to the adaptation of cities through careful tree selection and management.

Cities have adopted similar yet distinct positions on their green branding. Natalie Marie Gulsrud observes that the concept of “Green City Branding” increasingly includes level and quality of “greenness”.