En-bloc fever

This came up in a chat the other day with a friend, when I brought up the topic of building design and how much wastage (in terms of renovation, repair, etc) emerges because of poor building design and construction.

The conversation broaded to construction in general, and to en-bloc developments. For those international readers (note to self, international readers are a big ask given hardly anyone reads this blog) who might not be familiar with the term, "en-bloc" development refers to a process (common in recent years) in land-scarce Singapore where developers purchase a site (usually condominium) from owners in a collective sale requiring consent from a minimum 80% of unit owners. The development is then torn down, and rebuilt typically in a much denser fashion that maximises "plot ratio" (the maximum permittable ratio of built up area to land area). Singapore is a young country and often the development being torn down and rebuilt is relatively young, less than 20 years old.

A huge waste of concrete, the production of which is resource intensive and far from environmentally friendly.

Standardised mobile phone chargers in the EU

This article appeared in the Straits Times yesterday - a very big step forward and something that should be adopted outside of the EU / Europe. In a nutshell, the EU has managed to line up 14 phone manufacturers (representing ~90% of mobile phones sold) who have agreed to use microUSB mobile phone chargers as an industry standard. Think of all the crap that is going to save - no need to bin old phone chargers, no need to bundle phone chargers with new phones, and so on.