Corporate Greening of Foreign Transnationals in Singapore     

Martin Perry  Sanjeev Singh 《Singapore journal of tropical geography》2001,22(1):52-73

The environmental performance of transnational corporations (TNCs) may need to be updated to include evidence of increased corporate environmental responsibility. This is a challenge to geographical perspectives that have been critical of the environmental performance of TNCs. The paper reports the findings of a survey of TNCs with branches in Singapore. Using the survey evidence, TNCs are classified according to their degree of participation in a range of voluntary environmental initiatives. According to the classification, there is a similar proportion of low and high performers but a dominance of medium level activity that can involve little organisational change. A significant association between organisational size and environmental activity is found. Respondents most frequently report that corporate environmental standards motivate environmental action in Singapore. Overall the survey evidence indicates that few TNCs are significantly changing their environmental behaviour. The absence of citizen, NGO and government pressure on TNCs is reducing the extent of voluntary environmental action in Singapore and expectations of widespread corporate greening overlook organisational differences in their opportunity to benefit from investment in environmental management. It is concluded that voluntary corporate environmentalism does not reduce the need for government regulation.  相似文献   

Spatial order through the family: the regulation of urban space in Singapore     

Christopher Mele 《Urban geography》2017,38(7):1084-1108

This article examines the regulation of urban public space through a study of the role of the family unit in past and present urban development in Singapore. Since the founding of modern Singapore 50 years ago, the nuclear family has remained the preferred social institution for state policies and subsequent regulation of education, housing, employment, health, leisure, social welfare and even neighborhood development. Drawing on primary government documents and field work and interviews with current and displaced small business owners on a commercial street in Chinatown, the article demonstrates how a “softer” version of spatial regulation emerged from an intersection of state commercial development policies that favored small, family-owned businesses and the extension of a family-based moral social order applied to the surrounding public spaces. The result is the regulation of Chinatown’s streets and sidewalks became inextricably bound up with the everyday operations of family-run businesses. More recently, state interest in creating an entertainment-based global Singapore has jeopardized this arrangement, as corporate gentrification threatens to displace family ownership of small businesses.  相似文献   

Changing Geographies and the Geography of Change: Some Reflections     

Victor R. Savage 《Singapore journal of tropical geography》2003,24(1):61-85

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography and the 75th anniversary of the teaching of geography in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, the home of the Journal, this article, based on personal reflections and "objective" academic materials, provides an overview of developments in geography in the Department and Journal. The paper argues that the department's and Journal's"identities", since the post-World War II period, have been shaped by Singapore's changing domestic politics, the changing university academic environment, the personalities and academic interests of heads of the department and the Journa's editors, the state of the changing regional and global political economic environment, and the individual research interests of faculty in the department, and reflects a complex mix of colonial/post-colonial, modern/post-modern, North-South and East-West discourses. While a defined Singapore school of geography has yet to emerge, the article shows that both the department and the Journal have made major strides in meeting the challenges of globalisation and, in the process, have gained international visibility and academic legitimacy. In particular, the Journal has consolidated its position as a major voice for academics in lesser developed countries, its platform for "tropical world" discourse and maintaining its edge in the colonial/post-colonial and modern/post-modern discourses of states within the tropics.  相似文献   

Chronic light reduction reduces overall resilience to additional shading stress in the seagrass Halophila ovalis     

Siti M. Yaakub  Eugene Chen  Tjeerd J. Bouma  Paul L.A. Erftemeijer  Peter A. Todd 《Marine pollution bulletin》2014

Seagrasses have substantial capacity to survive long periods of light reduction, but how acclimation to chronic low light environments may influence their ability to cope with additional stress is poorly understood. This study examines the effect of temporal light reduction by adding two levels of shading to Halophila ovalis plants in two meadows with different light histories, one characterized by a low light (turbid) environment and the other by a relatively high light (clear) environment. Additional shading resulted in complete mortality for both shading treatments at the turbid site while the clear site showed a pattern of decreased shoot density and increased photochemical efficiency (F_v/F_m) with increased shading. These contrasting results for the same species in two different locations indicate that acclimation to chronic low light regimes can affect seagrass resilience and highlights the importance of light history in determining the outcome of exposure to further (short-term) stress.  相似文献   

Nature and the Singapore resident   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

Belinda Yuen  Lily Kong  Clive Briffett 《GeoJournal》1999,49(3):323-331

Singapore has witnessed rapid urban development in the last thirty years. Its landscape has changed from one of slums and squatters in the immediate post-war years to a city of gardens and high-rise high-density housing. The concept of a `garden city' was introduced to guide the development of a city-state with abundant greenery. In the process, many parks and gardens were created including park connectors which are green linkages between parks and other land uses. This paper presents the findings of an ongoing research into park connectors. It reports on that part of the survey results which examine the views of residents towards nature provision in park connectors and suggest some design options to enhance the planning of park connectors. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.  相似文献   

总部经济视角下港口城市转型发展的规律与启示   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

甘旭峰  黄青青 《地域研究与开发》2011,30(2):82-85,90

世界港口城市发展演变规律表明,在不同历史时期,港口城市发展与演变均体现了总部经济实质:港口城市以先天区位优势成为吸引代表先进生产力发展水平的高级要素聚集高地,形成了以集聚性、扩延性、示范性、辐射性和吸引性为特点的先进经济形态,并最终演变成现代总部经济形态。世界先进港口城市的转型与发展给我们以下启示:现代总部经济发展必须以发达的交通集疏网络为前提;以高水平的信息化建设为重点;以高素质的人力资源为依托;以优越的法制环境为保障;以完善的专业化服务体系为支撑。  相似文献   

Genealogy of the Singaporean black‐and‐white house     

Andrew Ballantyne  Andrew Law 《Singapore journal of tropical geography》2011,32(3):301-313

The distinctive black‐and‐white houses from Singapore's colonial era that survive in enclaves as fine dwellings for the present‐day elite have been recognized and documented as a type. In this paper we tell the story of their cultural formation, which is one of remarkable hybridity. Various influences were brought to bear and resolved into the black‐and‐white house‐type, which was not invented ‘all at once’ in Singapore, but developed over the course of more than two centuries. We begin the story in India, when British settlers learnt from local Bengali practices to make serviceable dwellings for a climate that they found difficult. The overhanging roofs that shaded walls and the tall internal volumes were formalized with reference to European expectations of geometry and finish, and the bungalow was born. In British Malaya the bungalow was further hybridized with the house on stilts that was well known to the indigenous tradition. This produced the spatial configuration that is to be found also in the Singapore houses, with their extensive verandas on an upper floor level. Their distinctive colouring comes from a different tradition: the black‐and‐white Tudoresque style that was very popular in Britain and sometimes called ‘Old English’. This was used by the British colonizers so that they could feel more at home in surroundings that were in a far‐off foreign cultural environment.  相似文献   

“特色全球城市”目标下的新加坡河滨水空间再生与启示     

张祚  李江风  陈昆仑  刘艳中 《世界地理研究》2013,(4):63-73

本文尝试在新加坡经济发展与转型的基本背景下,理解新加坡建设“特色全球城市”的目标;探讨在该目标的驱动下曾一度衰落的新加坡河滨河区如何实现空间功能的转变与再生,成为兼具社会开放性与包容性、全球化与本土化的空间载体,并推动新加坡城市的可持续发展与“特色全球城市”目标的实现;最后总结了其对于“建设美丽中国”目标下中国城市滨水空间开发的借鉴与启示。  相似文献   

The Transnational Assembling of Marina Bay,Singapore     

Erica X.Y. Yap 《Singapore journal of tropical geography》2013,34(3):390-406

From Shanghai's Pudong to Dubai's Marina, waterfront developments are increasingly popular urban forms worldwide. Drawing on the literature on urban assemblages, I explore how urban waterfronts are produced out of the transnational assembling of models, knowledge and expertise. My case study here is Marina Bay, Singapore, a landscape that like much of the rest of Singapore is a product of talent and ideas from elsewhere. In this paper, two strategies employed by Singapore's urban authorities to court global expertise for Marina Bay's development are examined – their formation of an international panel of experts in the fields of urban planning, policy and design, and their launching of international competitions to attract top design firms. Like transfer agents that enable policies to travel, I argue that these individuals and firms are situated within wider knowledge circuits that straddle the globe, and are thus well placed to filter and channel ideas from elsewhere to Singapore. Drawing on selected developments within Marina Bay, I trace the routes taken by these ideas, the changes they underwent as they travelled, as well as their relationships with the actors that facilitated their journeys. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate the usefulness of understanding the urban as more‐than‐territorial in both theory and practice.  相似文献   

Making “Unofficial” Sacred Space: Spirit Mediums and House Temples in Singapore          下载免费PDF全文

Terence Heng 《Geographical review》2016,106(2):215-234

Although there has been significant work done on the creation of sacred space in residential housing, not enough attention has been paid to a particular segment of Chinese religion leadership in Singapore – spirit mediums – and the processes in which they practice within the political ideology of the modernist Singaporean state. In this paper, I will show how spirit mediums operate within “unofficially sacred” spaces, specifically house temples that subvert and resist functionalist policies of the Singapore state. Using two visually focussed, participant‐observation case studies, I will argue that this subversion is sustained in two inter‐related ways—one, through the visual comportment of the spirit medium's body through behavior and aesthetic markers and two, through the social prominence of the spirit medium when he or she is in a trance. These two factors come together to temporally displace the importance of the physical location, allowing a spirit medium to operate in any location, “official” or “unofficial.”  相似文献