Managing deforestation in a tropical compact city (Part B): Urban ecological approaches to landscape design

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how landscape architecture can address the socio-ecological impacts that will result from current and future secondary forest loss in Singapore. Addressing the gap between ecological design principles and the generation of actionable design strategies, the paper draws a more explicit link between them to guide future attempts to generate design solutions to the issue of secondary forest loss. Design/methodology/approach – The study identifies actionable and contextualized design strategies from 18 academic design studio projects dealing with threatened secondary forest sites in Singapore and examines the ecological concepts which underpin the design strategies. These design strategies were then mapped to urban ecological principles. Findings – In total, 15 actionable design strategies, aligned with four urban ecology principles, were identified for addressing the impacts of secondary forest loss in Singapore. Originality/value – The paper makes an attempt to bridge theoretical principles and design action, and explicates how the two may be aligned. This helps to close a persistent gap between design projects and the science-based design principles generated in the academe. The paper also highlights the potential of academic design studios as a platform for generating ideas to emergent local problems not yet addressed by conventional practice, and offers a range of ideas to mitigate the impact of secondary forest loss in Singapore.