Singapore doesn’t have a lot of empty land. About six million people live on the island, which is about 730 square kilometers big. Every time the government makes a planning decision, it has to choose between two very different uses, which is something that most cities never have to do. When an industrial zone is no longer useful, the question isn’t whether to redevelop it or not, but how to do it and what it needs to do at the same time: provide housing, green space, economic growth, climate resilience, and something that looks good on a master plan. The answer is more and more often to stack all of those things on top of each other.
Right now, what’s happening in a number of Singapore’s old industrial areas is the clearest example of that reasoning so far. The S$80 million Greenphyto vertical farm was opened in Jurong West. It is a 23-meter-tall structure made for hyper-automated farming that grows crops in controlled conditions without having to depend on soil or weather. That height is important. In order to build upwards on flat industrial land, space below must be made available for other uses while the farm itself runs above. The automation means that fewer workers are needed than on a traditional farm to produce the same amount of food, and the controlled environment means that the farm can produce food all year, even when it rains in Singapore, which is on the equator.
Overall, the Jurong Innovation District is going in the same direction. It sees an industrial park as something that doesn’t have to look or feel like the ones from the 20th century. Planners at JTC and the Urban Redevelopment Authority want to create a district with both factories and open spaces. In this district, workers will be able to walk quickly from the production floor to an elevated path lined with trees. We still don’t know if that vision will come true in full. Large-scale urban planning is often changed as new information comes in. But the fact that resources and planning time have been put into this suggests that it’s not just a rendering exercise.
The 39-hectare site of the old Jurong Bird Park is likely the most symbolic of the projects to change things. Before Bird Paradise in Mandai took its place, the Bird Park was one of Singapore’s most popular tourist spots for many years. What is built on that land now will be on land that has a real public memory along with its development possibilities. The new destination is being talked about by JTC and the URA in terms of play, community, and green technology. It will be a layered, multi-use space instead of a one-use replacement for what was there before.
Sungei Kadut, the northern industrial zone that will become the SKED eco-district, gives the story another layer. The plan includes high-tech farming, environmental technology companies, and more green spaces. It’s a cluster model that tries to put together businesses that work well together with the kinds of spaces that make a place enjoyable to live in rather than just useful. Sungei Kadut was linked to lumber yards and industrial suppliers for a long time. A different type of productive landscape is taking its place.
