Singapore redefines a city with an abundance of green spaces

It is a challenging task to find room for green spaces. This is especially true for the world's most densely populated ones. Singapore is one such city and in downtown Singapore, when anyone wants a new park to stroll, he might have to turn toward the sky. The CapitaSpring tower is an example of what humans can create to ensure a mix of modern living amidst an abundance of greenery. Its soaring glass and aluminum facade apparently bursts open to reveal plants and trees growing hundreds of feet above ground. From the street level, anyone can queue up to enter an elevator that leads to this so-called "Green Oasis." The spiral garden path winds past exercise equipment, benches and tables on its journey through four stories of tropical flora. The 919 feet high, CapitaSpring is now one of Singapore’s tallest skyscrapers. 'Biophilic' skyscraper bursting with 80,000 plants opens in Singapore. The 51-story building houses over 80,000 trees and plants across 90,000 square feet of landscaped area, which also includes a shady covered plaza at its base.

On the top floor of the building, visitors can stroll through a massive 4,500-square-foot rooftop farm. It supplies fruits, vegetables, herbs and edible flowers to three on-site restaurants. Incidentally, an urban farmer who tends to the garden estimated that it generates nearly 220 pounds of produce on a monthly basis. Most of the plant species found here are indigenous to Singapore and thus adapted to the year-round heat and humidity. This is a commendable achievement. Moreover, the placement of greenery follows a certain pattern. It "mimics the plant hierarchy of tropical rainforests." Those that require the least direct light lying beneath a "canopy" of taller trees. The tower can be considered a vision of a future where city and countryside can coexist with culture and nature. The government of Singapore has long promoted itself as a "garden city." This is a term applied to the country by its founding father and former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew. That was in the 1960s. Subsequently, planners have embarked on citywide tree-planting programs and landscaping projects in its vast public housing complexes.

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Tourism in Madagascar takes a beating - no visitors to watch the lemurs

Madagascar depends a lot on tourists to boost up its economy and the Lemurs' Park near Madagascar's capital is touted to be one of the city's top attractions, but it is not getting enough number of visitors. Right now, it is the high season and, only a handful of tourists are seen in the park to get a glimpse of the furry creatures unique to the tropical forests of this vast Indian Ocean Island as the ring-tailed lemurs scamper through nearby eucalyptus trees.
This has been reported in ibnlive.com dated 3 August 2015.

A section of tour operators blame this to the mass cancellations that followed a month-long Air Madagascar strike kept all internal flights grounded. Tourists used to arrive in large numbers during 2008, but there was political unrest since 2009 and that has affected tourism.
Of course, the authorities want to reverse the trend. It is promoting its rainforests, reefs and weird and wonderful plants and animals and are aiming for 1 million tourists by 2020. This would be five times higher than last year and more than double the 2008 peak, when 380,000 people visited the former French colony.
They want to showcase Madagascar as a ‘honeymoon’ destination like Mauritius and Seychelles.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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