Sustainable Water City—A Case Study in Singapore

Although the Republic of Singapore has become one of the leading economies and is an attractively developed country with a growing population, the nation faces the problems of insufficient freshwater and a chronic shortage of housing. Further, rising sea levels resulting from the climate change may require adaptation measures such as relocation of infrastructure and housing from lowlands to hills (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in IPCC fifth assessment report—climate change 2014. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014) [1]. To cope with these challenges, we selected the coastal areas of Singapore as a case study to examine “sustainable water city” in future that will mitigate shortages of water and housing by creating high-density floating communities. In this paper, “City” or “city” implies a community or a group of communities. In the case study, we proposed excavations in the potential sites locating along the coastal regions of Singapore to construct as many large-scale artificial reservoirs as possible in which floating platforms will be built. High-rise residential towers will be constructed on these floating platforms. Not only the case of Singapore but also other similar geographic locations, the sustainable floating water city concept may present a unique solution against population growth, water shortage, and flood and sea-level rise attributable to the climate change.