Recently I have read about noise in cities (New York Times, July) and now WSJ has run an article which our planners in Singapore should read and try to understand!

For Creative Cities, the Sky Has Its Limit

By RICHARD FLORIDA

Aurora PhotosShanghai's skyscraper district is ultradense, but New York, London and Milan are better at promoting innovation.

Ours is the century of the city. For the first time in history, more than half of the people in the world, 3.3 billion of us, live in cities. By 2050, according to the best projections, urbanites will account for as much as 70% of the global population.

Over the next 50 years we will spend trillions of dollars on city building. The question is: How should we build? For many economists, urbanists and developers, the answer is simple: We should build up. But the answer is more complex than that.

Researchers at the Santa Fe Institute have been able to demonstrate that bigger, denser cities literally speed up the metabolism of daily life. Larger beasts may have slower metabolisms in the animal kingdom, but the opposite occurs in cities, which get faster as they grow. Doubling a city's population, the Santa Fe researchers found, more than doubles its creative and economic output, a phenomenon known as "superlinear scaling."

Still, density is only part of the solution. In the hyper-crowded skyscraper districts of Shanghai, densities can approach 125,000 people per square mile. Giant buildings often function as vertical suburbs, muting the spontaneous encounters that provide cities with so much of their social, intellectual and commercial energy. People live their lives indoors in such places, wearing paths between their offices and the food courts, always seeing the same people.

In terms of innovation and creative impetus, Shanghai pales in comparison to New York, London, Paris and Milan, not to mention high-tech hubs like Silicon Valley, the Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, Austin and North Carolina's research triangle, all of which have much lower densities.

It turns out that what matters most for a city's metabolism—and, ultimately, for its economic growth—isn't density itself but how much people mix with each other. And there isn't just one formula for that. It can happen in the pedestrian-oriented sidewalk culture of New York and London but also—to the chagrin of many urbanists—in the car-dependent sprawl of a suburban nerdistan like Silicon Valley. That region, as Jonah Lehrer has pointed out, manages to emulate the functions of bigger, denser cities by encouraging the clustering of talent and enterprise and fostering a high level of information-sharing.

In fact, there are two types of density, according to a recent study by Peter Gordon of the University of Southern California and Sanford Ikeda of the State University of New York, Purchase. "Crude" density is achieved by districts packed with taller and taller buildings but doesn't, on its own, generate innovation or economic development.

By contrast, what the authors call "Jacobs density" sparks street-level interaction and maximizes the "potential informal contact of the average person in a given public space at any given time." It makes networking and informal encounters more likely and also creates a demand for local products and diversity—not just of populations and ethnic groups but of tastes and preferences.

The authors dub it "Jacobs density" in tribute to Jane Jacobs, the renowned urbanist and author of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." She famously said, "In the absence of a pedestrian scale, density can be big trouble."

Look at New York City. Its hubs of innovation aren't the great skyscraper districts that house established corporate and financial headquarters, media empires and wealthy people (an increasing number of whom are part-time residents who hail from the ranks of the global super-rich). The city's recent high-tech boom—500 start-ups in the last half decade, among them Kickstarter and Tumblr—is anchored in mid-rise, mixed-use neighborhoods like the Flatiron District, Midtown South, Chelsea and TriBeCa.

Google's New York office, second in size only to its headquarters in Silicon Valley, is in the old Port Authority terminal building across from the Chelsea Market, for which it paid $1.8 billion in 2010. These neighborhoods are filled with the sort of old buildings that, in Jacobs's famous phrase, new ideas "must use."

None of this is to say that New York should be preserved in amber. The move to increase density in Midtown East, for example, raising height restrictions to as high as 80 stories, will generate much-needed development in an area that's set up for it.

But balance is key. A great city needs a mix of neighborhoods and districts of varied heights and densities. And great care must be taken not to muck up those critical areas that spur true innovation and creativity. "Densities," Jacobs cautioned, "can get too high if they reach a point at which, for any reason, they begin to repress diversity instead of to stimulate it." It's a crucial lesson to absorb as our world grows ever more urban.

—Mr. Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and global research professor at New York University, is author of "The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited," published this month by Basic Books.

A version of this article appeared July 28, 2012, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: For Creative Cities, the Sky Has Its Limit.

Night Games On The Roads

Video of accident (taken from a taxi) in which a Ferrari broadsides a Singapore taxi:

ABOVE: once a Ferrari.

LEFT: relative/friend of family of the Ferrari driver. Note the sartorial flair of our PRC 'cousins'.

Every major city in the world has an 'underbelly' of sorts. Singapore is no exception, despite it's hyped "clean and green", law-abiding image.


It's been boot-strapped into the 21st century and to maintain its economic progress the government has opened the tiny island to immigrants from all over the world, notably South Asia and the People's Republic of China.


Some say that native Singaporeans have not taken this well, blaming immigrants for loss of job opportunities, traffic jams, overcrowding in hospitals, almost unaffordable property prices and generally a lowering of standards in cleanliness, orderliness and respect for the country's laws.


While the government has let the prices of COEs climb to above SIN$90,000 for the Open category of private cars, with accompanying increases in COEs for other categories, public transportation has been shown to be insufficient to meet demands.


Some of you may not know that a COE or Certificate of Entitlement is merely the 'license' to buy a car and keep it on the roads for 10 years. 


In Singapore, cars themselves are among the priciest in the world as they attract hefty taxes.


According to edmunds.com (a leading auto web site in the USA)  the cost of a Lexus IS250 is approximately US$35,000 . That's about HK$272,000 or SIN$44,000.


However that model lists (at the Lexus agents in Singapore) at Sin$239,000! Add in a COE at Sin$91,000 and the car will cost you Sin$330,000 - before insurance and odds and ends.


That's around US$262,000 or HK$2.04 million!


When arrivistes buy Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Ferraris and Lamborghinis they are paying big bucks for those cars. The sight of these cars is just the thing to endear them to the working stiffs who are crammed like sardines in a bus or MRT train.


This leaves the government in a cleft stick; encourage foreign talent and capital or risk losing more votes at the next election?


Honestly, I like cars as much as any Singaporean, but I have an issue with drivers of the fast cars that shatter my slumber late at night (or, if you like, in the wee hours of the morning).


I live off Orchard/Scotts/Stevens roads and I hear these sports cars' night-shattering exhaust noises. Friends live on the other side of Orchard Road (Orchard Boulevard) and they hear these cars being driven hard too. 


But, complaints to the Traffic Police or the Land Transport Authority don't work. I hope that perhaps after this accident the authorities will take some much belated remedial action.


In the day time Singapore roads are generally too busy for speeding, but car enthusiasts come out to play when people are preparing to go to bed or have gone to sleep.

And if you believe what the Sports Car Club Singapore president said, then you also believe in fairy tales and the Tooth Fairy!


These enthusiasts should join those who drive their cars to a race track in Malaysia - where they can speed (in safety) to their heart's delight. And keep our roads safe - and quiet.

Pleasures of Air Travel

It’s 10:33am and I have been up for hours. The morning was bright except for some wisps of mist, but now the sunlight is being obscured by a thick mist and I cannot even see across the podium level gardens.

If it’s this misty, it must be Hong Kong in the throes of spring.

But I feel chipper all the same; it’s the sheer luxury of being alone, to do as I like for the rest of the day until I meet my friends for a celebration. Freedom!

Yes, I have things on my “to do” list, but they can wait a couple of days.

Nowadays I don’t enjoy traveling as much as I used to because of the planning and packing (in my case it is not accessorizing clothes but trying not to leave bits of computer and peripheral cables behind).

But once - like yesterday - I set out my hesitation at leaving the ‘old man’ at home evaporates. It helps to have a pleasant ride to the airport and I did, arriving in good time to check in. The SQ Economy check in at Row 3 was a little busy so we were asked to go to Row 6 (Business).

I met Miss New (her badge said ‘I am New’) who was flummoxed because she could not find my name on her computer. Only when she called a colleague over did I realize what it was about and suggested she flip a few pages; I’m not going to go through the hassle of getting a short term biometric passport (mine is good until 2014) for my abbreviated name.

As there was a screen that asked me to rate the service, I asked Miss New about it - and was duly informed that it was not yet in service or wasn’t working, I can’t remember which.

Same thing with the AED (defibrillator) stations in T3 which had signs that said they were not yet in service. So please don’t have a heart episode or attack when using T3. I only noticed it because the AED station was hard by the Information Counter where I had to go to get a slip of paper that facilitated using the ‘free’ wi-fi.

At least this time I only had to hand over my passport; before this I had to fill in a form. A real pain and I do not know what purpose it fills except to keep the bored Information Counter staff bobbing up and down.

A survey lady collared me “for less than a minute” to ask my opinion about the wi-fi registration and she kept her promise. Enough time for me to say it was a waste of time and no bar to terrorists or whatever. Maybe the government is just being a busybody and helping keep residents employed.

I took my time and got to Gate A12, to find it still closed. There were some personnel there but not the full complement and so early birds sat outside until the gate opened around 12:30p for our 1:30p flight.

Sometimes I fall sleep quickly on flights - usually after I am tired out running errands or cleaning house. But since I was reasonably organized, I was rather surprised to be overcome by sleep even before take-off.

Singapore may not be toxic for me, but it must be stressful because I only woke up to have my meal during which I imagined myself trying to eat in a straight jacket. My elbows were pinned to my sides; on my left by a well built man and on my right by the interior panel of the aircraft.

While I know I am expanding sideways, I am still not quite as portly as some and I wondered how they managed in today’s aircraft where there is a huge difference in seat dimensions, ranging from suites in ultra-first, through various configurations of business to ever tighter economy.

Since economy is the bread and butter of the airline business, you wonder when they will realize that there is a limit to how long they can treat passengers like battery chicken while they waste acreage on big spenders.

I liked it when Valuair, the precursor to Jetstar, came on the scene years ago - their one class seats were rather decent.

Anyway, we arrived on schedule at 5:15p although it seemed as if we were taxiing a long way - I asked the fight attendant if we were taxiing to Shenzen but she didn’t understand me at all! How is it that more often than not the male attendants speak better and are more efficient than some of the females who look as if they were cloned in the airline’s training school?

By 5:57p, I was ensconced in the Airport Express to Hong Kong having waited for luggage and then bought my 30-day return ticket.

That beats T3 perhaps because I usually land at the farthest gate, miss the train and then have to wait ages for luggage (I have this notion that economy class luggage is delayed so that Singaporeans can appreciate traveling First, Business or be a high value frequent traveller).

Also at T3, if you are descending to the car park, you have to contend with the world’s slowest lifts which are programmed to be on another floor! With the vast amount of space Singapore affords the air terminals, why didn’t the architects incorporate escalators that accommodate luggage trolleys?

It’s not as if it’s the first airport or terminal we have ever built.

By 6:22p we arrived in Hong Kong and just before 7p I was at home (luckily most of the traffic was in Central or heading down Stubbs Road)! How I wish Singapore had such seamless and quick public transport.

Couldn't believe my ears

Well, I decided to looks for some statistics that would back up what I thought I heard on TV last night. But what I found was different from what I heard!


Here goes:

The population 'bulge' is moving upwards but over 70s are not as big a bloc as I thought I heard the CNA presenters say. My fault!

Our Sun Times finally arrived and so we could have our Sunday 'read'.  

Back to Boring

Woke up to more of the same. 

On the surface nothing has changed in post-Presidential Elections Singapore of August 28, 2011.

Toadie Tan won by a margin slimmer than a skimping restaurant’s slice of jamon iberico.

But hope springs eternal and I hope that the ruling party and government do not continue to deny the presence of the elephant in the room.

It has grown from little Dumbo to a huge Jumbo.

The people of Singapore want more value for their money and less elitism; the Pyramid Club is not the only society with brains and ability. In part, thanks for this must go to our new citizens.

I suspect that my fellow Singaporeans are not going to be satisfied with the status quo.

Toadie was expected to win comfortably but the margin suggests that even new Singaporeans think before they cast their votes.

The majority of old, the very rich, the inner circle, the kiasu continue to vote for the ‘safe’ choice. 

Paradoxically, the "uncles and aunties"  form a significant bloc (CNA said last night that The 70+ or 75+ years of age account for something like 25 or more percent of Singaporeans). 

I say that because this is the group that has a less than  comfortable old age - having trouble making ends meet  -evIdenced by many of them working clearing tables in food centres.

A win by Dr Tan Cheng Bock (“Doc”) would have meant a new spring in our collective step. 

Hobbled though the Presidency might be, he would have brought fresh air into our our tightly controlled bubble.

This election also showed that the obedient mainstream media was not a match for the updates from the likes of Facebook (I don’t tweet). 

The paucity of news at 7:00am this morning and the feed was from the wire services shows what a lack of competition can do.

No doubt editors were hotly debating headlines and photographs but in the meantime early risers had themselves for company at coffee shops on our tiny speck of an island.

Singapore Airlines web site emulates Icarus?

It's been a busy few months and I have NOT been short of thought starters for this blog. But yesterday, the most urgent and appalling topic kept me awake all night. Well jet lag too!


Everyone thinks of Singapore Airlines as one of the best airlines in the world and as a national icon it ranks up there with the Marina Bay Sands building for foreigners who speak of Singapore today.

The Home Page (above) is hardly impressive - and as a baby boomer I wish they had used larger fonts. And LESS variety - it's an "Ah Beng" goes to town look with font variations galore. Distracting rather than functional.

And what large calendars with small typefaces - wasted use of precious space.

When I got frustrated with the web site and what I was trying to achieve, I clicked on SQCorporate (see top of the page) to find it was not about the company - instead the link leads to their corporate travel web site! (I had been looking for someone to email about my trials and tribulations.)

Somewhere along my route through their web site, I came across the web page (below):

Again, wasted space as there is needless repetition. The first mention of "Sign Up for our newsletter" doesn't take one anywhere, although the second one does.

And see those dots - we are meant to do the work to find where they might lead us. Who has time to go on a treasure hunt these days?

The grey panel at the bottom - could have been better laid out so that we oldies need not strain our eyes to read the 'small print'.

Anyway, all this is subjective and there will be eloquent defenders of the cause! But what is unforgivable is that the web site is almost unusable, at least in my case.

In my defense, when I gave up and called the Singapore Krisflyer number from Hong Kong, their automated answering service acknowledged that there were problems with their Web site and warned of large call volumes which might affect the waiting time. So it isn't just me.

When I tried to change my flight for a later one on the same day, it offered a flight that I selected. However it rejected my Krisflyer number (the same one I have had for years and with which I accessed the site) and would not implement the change.

That's when I called Krisflyer and spoke to Ms Cardoz who verified my details and then informed me that yes, it was possible to change my fight but I would have to pay more. (The web page I visited said that I did NOT have to pay more). I could, however, be put on a wait list.

This morning (22 June), just out if curiosity,I visited the site and was informed that the flight I requested was available for selection. The hitch being that only my current flight had a little circle for selection; not the flight I wanted and on which I am waitlisted! 

Being Singaporean, I sense a kind of Singapore logic at work here in the writing of the code for the site - and that leads to some of the dead ends I encountered.

I don't know why we proud Singaporeans don't just examine some of the leading airline web sites and do what they do - and in some case, improve on what they do. Why reinvent the wheel? It's not as if there aren't enough good alloy wheels to copy instead of starting with raw metal, an anvil and a hammer?

Maybe I have been away, but I have not noticed many complaints or even coverage in our diligent main stream media bringing SQ's shortcomings to light. Perhaps I am the only complainer in Singapore - or are we a nation so used to being treated like spittoons (I did not make this one up, I read it; a sportswriter recently said that of one T. Woods' attitude to writers and the public)?

On battling insurance bureaucracy or pushing a rock uphill.....

Time flies, but it also drags. We've had some qualified good news in that Lin's white blood cells have recovered sufficiently for us to pack our bags.


But we're still in limbo because he's now scheduled for a consult with the endoscopy specialist (this coming Monday) and until he's had his colonoscopy his feet are still nailed to the floor here in Singapore.


Thus far I have made some flight bookings and the ETD from Hong Kong is March 30th, 2011, with arrival in Ponte Vedra early April! Unless something untoward happens we should be able to make that deadline. It's the Singapore-HKG leg that is the moveable feast.


Prof. Wong is quite pleased that Lin has put on some weight. Unfortunately for me, I too have put on some weight - about 4 kilos since September last year! Must be the stress and keeping him company coaxing him to eat!


I have not been good about keeping all of you posted in recent weeks and I have wondered why. Is this experience starting to become tiresome? Yes, somewhat. Look at it this way, sometimes pushing a rock uphill calls for short rests!


But it is probably more about battling health insurance bureaucracy, in this case BUPA HK and the beady-eyed bods in their Claims Department.


After a hectic few months I settled down enough to put together the bits of paper we had accumulated from hospitals and such and sent them off for reimbursement. And that marked the beginning of a long and tedious trek to fulfill their requirements; the list of supporting documents looks innocuous enough at first glance. But be forewarned - or as we learn the hard way, get yourself a decent insurance broker.


Their claims forms are confusing (starting with trying to decide WHICH form is the correct form)  and belie the amount of information that is needed - we have spent months shuffling from pillar to post to satisfy the Claims tartars.


Now I believe it when I read that doctors in some countries have quit practicing because of the amount of red tape they have to deal with in between treating the sick. That and the malpractice insurance premiums, no doubt.


In Hong Kong (and even in the USA) some doctors refuse to accept any form of health insurance - it's strictly cash, cheque, VISA or Mastercard. Or any combination of the foregoing. And I don't blame them having tried to walk the walk with the paperwork.


This saga began in September (about the time I started to put on weight so that puts the kibosh on me being fat when happy!). We had to appeal to have some claims accepted for review because some of our earlier bills missed the 90 day deadline for filing.


It seems most unfair that when one is least prepared to tackle (and has the least time for assembling and submitting) health insurance reimbursements is the time they must be in the clutches of the Claims Department. 90 days is too short a time when the family is dealing with a major illness or injury.


Anyway, getting hold of the same person at the end of the phone is like being in pursuit of the holy grail and Lin wasted much time recounting the situation to successive customer service personnel. In the end we managed (through divine intervention?) to transition to corresponding by email with the same person and that has been a help in recent months. What a relief!


I also discovered (who checks out these things when all is well?) that Lin's health insurance policy was being handled directly by one of Bupa HK's office sales staff with whom we had not exchanged a word with all this time, so long story short we switched to using an insurance broker recommended by a friend.


The only time we heard from this individual was when he emailed us to confirm whether if was Lin's intention to switch to a broker.


By the time that the switch was confirmed by Bupa the bulk of our claims were already in the pipeline so I continued rolling the rock uphill.


The system at the hospital means that we routinely obtained tax invoices and credit card charge slips. Having paid by Medisave and our credit card, we did not know to ask for the official receipts. Bupa would not accept the tax invoices accompanied by the credit card slips; they demanded receipts too.


And if we forgot or did not obtain an invoice when we left the hospital, we could ask for and were issued duplicate tax invoices at the next visit. These were not acceptable (Bupa seems to think that the presence of the word 'duplicate' means that their clients have tendered the originals to another insurance company!).


In the last month, the customer relations officer we have been liasing with at Bupa managed to contact the central finance and administration office at NUH and asked for receipts - that's how I learned where to go for them. What a revelation - it was the key log in easing that logjam!


Then, unknown to us, the Claims Department - a law unto itself - kept sending letters by snail mail to our Hong Kong address to ask for more details (despite us having spoken and written to Bupa to contact us in Singapore). These demands required that the submission be made within a month; not exactly easy when we do not receive our HK mail here in Singapore.


Anyway, another piece of mindless bureaucracy is the requirement that each claim must be accompanied by a letter from the doctor stating the diagnosis and the treatment! Surely any human being with a modicum of commonsense would accept that the diagnosis was made in April when the cancer was first detected - and had not changed.


As for treatment, surely that was obvious from the invoices and receipts which stated what was done. But no, the doctors have to provide covering letters.


In the end Prof. Wong wrote a letter summarising what had happened between May 24 and December, which he kindly provided. Thank goodness the Prof. has been most understanding.


Since then we have periodically submitted lists (signed by the Prof.) headed  with the description of the condition followed by the dates and treatment or diagnostic tests ordered (all this merely repeated what the other bits of paper had to say).


The 'war' is not over yet.


We appear to have surpassed the annual or other limits for some of the claims. Again it doesn't make sense because the benefit limit for diagnostics is really rather low so that when one has more than two or three scans and various tests, including blood tests, the budget's blown.


So how's the doctor going to monitor the progress of the treatment and to see if anything else is brewing?


If it's been boring and exhausting to read this, you can well imagine what it's been like to live it, all 4 kilos worth.