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Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

> Singapore is ranked as Asia’s most environmentally sustainable city.

The provided link is dead. I find this hard to believe. Singapore imports almost all of its food and all of its energy (mostly not sustainable) and much of its water. Practically speaking, the land is fully developed with relatively little in the shape of parks and reserves.

I'm currently living in SG, I love SG. But (and I had to look this up), sustainable, in this context means: "involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources." I don't see how Singapore is #1 (If you told me Singapore was literally the least sustainable country in the world, I'd more likely believe that)

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> But (and I had to look this up), sustainable, in this context means: "involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources."

Yes, that's what 'sustainable' means: It can be sustained indefinitely over time.

To have to import food, energy, water, etc. means that they are not self-sufficient, which is different and quite obvious since they are a city.

Now, to be accurate, a claim of sustainability should take into account whether these imports are from sustainable sources. However, cunningly, the claim is not that they are sustainable, it's that they are the most sustainable city in the region, which is a relative metric and may mean no more than "they are the least bad".

Something that's sustainable should scale / be reproducible. If only _some_ parties can do it, it isn't sustainable. If everyone did "sustainability" like Singapore, we'd literally all die in a few weeks.

Sources need to be more than sustainable, they need to be sustainable for everyone.

At least according to 1 source, my original guess as right: Singapore is the _least_ sustainable country in the world [1]

[1] - https://www.sustainabledevelopmentindex.org/

Cities are usually much greener and more environmentally because of the density of people. The same population in a rural area would need a lot more fuel for cars (as you couldn't offer public transit). They'd have much bigger houses (needing more fuel to heat and electricity to light/cool). One of the greenest things people can do it move to the city.

They don't need rural area because they import foods.

These norms are written in capitals and city states, and they always get them in the form where their lifestyle = most sustainable, the people who actually grow their food and extract fuel = least sustainable.

Incentives matter.

sustainablity doesn't mean independece of outside economy, it looks weird in SG case, but it's how sustainability is measured across the world, the ability to keep existing econologically rather than economically even though it relies on foreign trade to satisfy even the most basic need

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