As the lifestyles of residents evolve, towns—both existing and upcoming ones—must adapt too. They need to cater for a wider range of uses, while ensuring that there remains space for unforeseen needs.
We need to reserve spaces in towns for future developments to meet new or unexpected needs.
Some land within towns will be set aside for:
Infill Developments
As a town’s demographic shifts, different amenities such as childcare or eldercare centres may be required to meet evolving lifecycle needs.
New Amenities
Emerging social and recreational facilities can be introduced in response to changing live-work-play patterns and preferences.
Pop-Up Facilities
Such sites may also come in useful for interim uses such as pasar malams (night markets) or test centres during a pandemic.
Buildings and facilities can also be designed to accommodate multiple uses throughout the day — increasing flexibility of existing spaces, while encouraging social interaction. In addition, underutilised spaces such as selected carparks or spaces under viaducts could be creatively repurposed. We are working with partner agencies on a courier hub pilot project, where designated areas within public carparks can be used for unloading, sorting and storage of parcels. In future, this pilot can be expanded to other commercial and residential carparks.
As our towns mature, there are various programmes such as the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme, Remaking Our Heartland programme and Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme to rejuvenate residents’ living environment: In the longer term, more estates may also be redeveloped progressively to ensure that towns are able to meet the changing needs of the community such as through Voluntary Early Redevelopment Scheme.