With insights from: Pigs and the City & Wild hogs in the water: Contested infrastructural ecologies of reservoir storage in texas Sayd Randle, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies.
Revisiting how humans can co-exist with wild boars
On March 9, 2022, a wild boar entered a public housing block in the evening. The boar spent a moment wandering around through a busy pedestrian area before it hit a woman, who fell to the ground unconscious, before proceeding to ram into the glass window of a nearby shop and disappearing into the forest.
This incident exemplifies an all too familiar type of human-boar encounter, one that has gained attention in Singapore’spublic discourse. A wild boar enters areas occupied by people, and leaves after causing injuries and chaos. The news reports days or weeks later, state that the boar has been “humanely euthanised”by state authorities.
Others blame habitat loss that free up precious land for home and commercial development.
Some call for stricter animal population control to protect residents
Both reflect the complex challenges of managing cities as urban ecosystems. Assistant Prof Sayd Randle believes that urban greening efforts should include a re-look at how humans share space with animals and nature.
The term “urban ecosystem” can sound contradictory. Ecology, which is the study of ecosystems, is associated primarily with undeveloped landscapes, rather than skyscrapers. Despite the inherent contradiction between these two terms, societies have strived to reconcile them.
In 1967, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew announced a goal of developing Singapore into a “garden city”, incorporating greenery into the rapidly urbanising landscape.
Because of this, Singapore invested in sustained programmes of tree-planting and park development over the next 60 years. This has helped to provide a lush green cityscape and shade for pedestrians. Singapore is regarded as the model of green urbanisation, within and beyond Asia.
For the past 20 years, cities have engineered ways to maximise the ecological benefits of urban nature. Examples include China’s “Sponge Cities” initiative, which approaches flood management with nature-based infrastructure to redirect storm and flood runoffs in urban areas.
Singapore’s wild boars may be beneficial ecologically, but as their natural habitats shrink due to urban development, they threaten the population because of their frequent forays into dense urban settings.
The response to mitigating these ventures has included the use of fencing barriers, culling of reproductive females, and habitat management through the removal of boar food sources like oil palms. The government has also partnered with animal welfare groups to educate the public about peaceful coexistence with the wild boars.
In Hong Kong, due to the pig farming industry in the territory, the presence of wild boars is a sensitive one. The government, in 2021, chose to take an aggressive response of culling the wild population, which drew criticism from animal rights groups.
This isn’t purely Singaporean. In Texas, feral hogs, who live around reservoirs built to stockpile water for cities, root and wallow - degrading infrastructure and compromising water quality. The Texas government’s response has involved encouraging residents to limit the hog populations through trapping and culling, with an eye to protecting water resources and reducing property damage.
Cities all over the globe address the human-wildlife encounters differently, depending on local regulations, cultural attitudes, and the kind of neighbouring industries that could be impacted.
Creating a “City in Nature”– a goal rooted in recent advances in ecology, engineering, and planning research–is both a valuable and innovative goal. The ability to balance the inherent contradictions in this complex environment will demonstrate a new form or urban leadership.
RANDLE, Sayd. Pigs and the city. (2024). Asian Management Insights (Singapore Management University). 11, (3), 74-80. Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/ami/267
RANDLE, Sayd. Wild hogs in the water: Contested infrastructural ecologies of reservoir storage in Texas. (2025). Antipode 57(4): 1216-1235 Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/159
RANDLE, Sayd. A ‘City in Nature’ and its porcine interlopers: Confronting the edges of urban ecological order. (2025) Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/457
[SMU CP] Pigs in the City
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With insights from: Pigs and the City & Wild hogs in the water: Contested infrastructural ecologies of reservoir storage in texas Sayd Randle, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies.
Revisiting how humans can co-exist with wild boars
On March 9, 2022, a wild boar entered a public housing block in the evening. The boar spent a moment wandering around through a busy pedestrian area before it hit a woman, who fell to the ground unconscious, before proceeding to ram into the glass window of a nearby shop and disappearing into the forest.
This incident exemplifies an all too familiar type of human-boar encounter, one that has gained attention in Singapore’spublic discourse. A wild boar enters areas occupied by people, and leaves after causing injuries and chaos. The news reports days or weeks later, state that the boar has been “humanely euthanised”by state authorities.
Others blame habitat loss that free up precious land for home and commercial development.
Some call for stricter animal population control to protect residents
Both reflect the complex challenges of managing cities as urban ecosystems. Assistant Prof Sayd Randle believes that urban greening efforts should include a re-look at how humans share space with animals and nature.
The term “urban ecosystem” can sound contradictory. Ecology, which is the study of ecosystems, is associated primarily with undeveloped landscapes, rather than skyscrapers. Despite the inherent contradiction between these two terms, societies have strived to reconcile them.
In 1967, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew announced a goal of developing Singapore into a “garden city”, incorporating greenery into the rapidly urbanising landscape.
Because of this, Singapore invested in sustained programmes of tree-planting and park development over the next 60 years. This has helped to provide a lush green cityscape and shade for pedestrians. Singapore is regarded as the model of green urbanisation, within and beyond Asia.
For the past 20 years, cities have engineered ways to maximise the ecological benefits of urban nature. Examples include China’s “Sponge Cities” initiative, which approaches flood management with nature-based infrastructure to redirect storm and flood runoffs in urban areas.
Singapore’s wild boars may be beneficial ecologically, but as their natural habitats shrink due to urban development, they threaten the population because of their frequent forays into dense urban settings.
The response to mitigating these ventures has included the use of fencing barriers, culling of reproductive females, and habitat management through the removal of boar food sources like oil palms. The government has also partnered with animal welfare groups to educate the public about peaceful coexistence with the wild boars.
In Hong Kong, due to the pig farming industry in the territory, the presence of wild boars is a sensitive one. The government, in 2021, chose to take an aggressive response of culling the wild population, which drew criticism from animal rights groups.
This isn’t purely Singaporean. In Texas, feral hogs, who live around reservoirs built to stockpile water for cities, root and wallow - degrading infrastructure and compromising water quality. The Texas government’s response has involved encouraging residents to limit the hog populations through trapping and culling, with an eye to protecting water resources and reducing property damage.
Cities all over the globe address the human-wildlife encounters differently, depending on local regulations, cultural attitudes, and the kind of neighbouring industries that could be impacted.
Creating a “City in Nature”– a goal rooted in recent advances in ecology, engineering, and planning research–is both a valuable and innovative goal. The ability to balance the inherent contradictions in this complex environment will demonstrate a new form or urban leadership.
RANDLE, Sayd. Pigs and the city. (2024). Asian Management Insights (Singapore Management University). 11, (3), 74-80. Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/ami/267
RANDLE, Sayd. Wild hogs in the water: Contested infrastructural ecologies of reservoir storage in Texas. (2025). Antipode 57(4): 1216-1235 Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/159
RANDLE, Sayd. A ‘City in Nature’ and its porcine interlopers: Confronting the edges of urban ecological order. (2025) Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/457