On Jan 1 2019, Singapore will introduce a “no smoking zone” along a three km stretch of Orchard Road—one of the city’s busiest shopping districts. It sounds controversial—restricting people’s right to smoke in public spaces, as a way of tackling air pollution and improving public health. But smoking is not actually banned down the length of Orchard Road: instead, smokers will be concentrated in 40 designated smoking areas, spaced 100-200m apart. Clearly, any attempt to develop solutions should be welcomed. But Singapore’s no smoking zone is an odd intervention, because it doesn’t seem to respond to the nature of urban growth, which requires an integrated approach across many different systems—from transport, to industry, to healthcare—to avoid its more perverse consequences. Secondhand cigarette smoke significantly affects air quality in areas frequented by pedestrians, but this is only one ingredient in a very potent cocktail of pollutants. For Singapore, the challenge is that herding smokers into the 40 designated areas might result in a concentration of micro-plumes.... Continue Reading