building integrated large-scale urban infrastructures: singapore's...

Building Integrated Large-Scale Urban Infrastructures: Singapore’s Experience 49

Building Integrated Large-ScaleUrban Infrastructures:Singapore’s Experience

P.C. Lui and T.S. Tan

and foreign citizens. But since its independence in 1965, this smallcity-state has progressed in all fields, a result of its phenomenaleconomic growth. While the credit has been given to the stablepolitical situation and the system of governance in Singapore, equallyimportant have been the rise in the standard of living and theimprovements in the quality of life that have accompanied thateconomic growth. Today, Singapore boasts of infrastructures that arecomparable to, and in some cases better than, those of some first-world economies.

As the country looks forward to new waves of advancements,the economic well-being derived from them will translate into greaterdemands for all kinds of resources. As the economy continues toexpand, people will expect commensurate improvements in theirstandards of living and in the quality of their lives. They will want lesstraffic congestion, less pollution, and more natural parks and recre-ation facilities; the list goes on.

Thus, underpinning that optimistic future is the critical task ofdeveloping sustainable infrastructures that can support economicgrowth and a continuation of improvements in the quality of life.Without this linkage, economic growth on its own is unsustainableand will not benefit the people. This challenge is particularly dauntingJournal of Urban Technology, Volume 8, Number 1, pages 49-68.Copyright © 2001 by The Society of Urban Technology.All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.ISSN: 1063-0732 paper/ISSN: 1466-1853 onlineDOI: 10.1080/1063073012005217 2

SINGAPORE is a very small country of 680 square kilometers(but still growing), with a population (also still growing) ofthree million citizens and one million permanent residents

Journal of Urban Technology/April 200150

for Singapore, a country with scarce natural resources. The develop-ment of infrastructures in Singapore is particularly interesting; itssmall size imposes severe constraints on the options available, but itscompactness and unique social and economic setting also offeradvantages that could be harnessed. Any holistic solutions to thedevelopment of sustainable infrastructures must make use of theadvantages while overcoming the constraints. This necessitates theadoption of a systems approach, and as a result of this approach, aneed to ensure that key infrastructures are integrated across multi-dimensions, such as:

� integration over functions� integration over organizations� integration over time� integration with other countries (i.e., globalization).

The adoption of this management philosophy of a systems approach,coupled with a political will to ensure integration across multi-dimensions to fulfill the needs of the systems approach, has allowedSingapore to develop successfully large-scale, integrated, urbaninfrastructure systems. This paper focuses on this experience so as toarrive at a better understanding of how Singapore has been built. Ittraces the evolution of several of Singapore’s urban systems—PublicHousing, Land Transportation, Airport Development, Sea Port Develop-ment, the Jurong Island Petrochemical Complex, and Singapore ONE,the integrated information and communications system—that demon-strate the application of the systems approach to urban infrastructures.

This retrospection offers an opportunity to evaluate the optionsfor future development, studying how continued economic growthcan lead to improvements in the quality of life. This is as daunting asever, but in the New Economy, this challenge has assumed an evengreater importance because it is now recognized that the availabilityof talent is one of the most important factors in deciding the economicsuccess of a country. Also, it is known that attracting and retainingtalent is dependent upon the quality of life available to residents. Thismeans that a city’s ability to develop urban infrastructures that candeliver a high quality of life is as important as its ability to develop anyother kind of cutting-edge infrastructure.

Historical Background

To understand and appreciate Singapore’s efforts to develop large-scale urban systems, it is essential to understand the history leading


to the birth of modern Singapore. Sir Stamford Raffles foundedSingapore in 1819 as a trading post of the East India Company.Raffles recognized the potential of exploiting Singapore’s uniquegeopolitical position. In the 1930s, Britain determined that Singaporewas an essential piece of its empire: “The unum necessarium formaking the British Empire in India complete.” The Royal Navy wouldmake Singapore into an impregnable fortress, the “Gibraltar of theEast,” so as to dominate the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In many ways,modern Singapore continues to benefit from this unique geographicalposition.

For over 120 years, the invincibility of the British was unques-tioned. The conquest of Singapore by Japan in World War II in 1942was a turning point in the history of Singapore. The right to rule byBritain was questioned after the end of World War II, and the demandfor self-government and independence from Britain grew over time.

The Road to IndependenceIn 1959, Singapore was given the first taste of partial independence;she was given the right of self-government, with Britain responsiblefor defense and foreign affairs. A stark fact confronted Singapore inthose days. It was a small state with no natural resources, thrivingmainly on entrepot activities. However, such activities, mainly relyingon imports and re-exports, were highly dependent on the presence ofa hinterland. That was also the common wisdom of that era, whenindustries were essentially involved in commodity processing. Thoughthe people would have liked to have been independent, Singaporedepended on the British forces stationed there for defense. Theprovision of services to British military bases also accounted for avery significant proportion of Singapore’s GDP. It had a small butgrowing population of 1.9 million with a rate of unemployment ofabout 10 percent.

Thus, there were great domestic political debates on whetherSingapore should become independent from Britain by merging withits much larger neighbor to the north, Malaya. The two are separatedby the thin strip of Johore Straits and linked by a causeway. Thisperiod was also characterized by great volatility in the region. TheCommunist insurgency posed a major threat to internal security. Thegiant neighbor to the south, Indonesia, posed a threat to externalsecurity. The proposal to merge with Malaya and form Malaysia wasmet with fierce opposition from Indonesia. Nevertheless, the peopleof Singapore voted to do so, and Singapore became a state in the newlyformed country of Malaysia in September 1963.

Singapore Ministry of Trade andIndustry


Serious disagreements between the Malaysian Federal Govern-ment and the Government of the State of Singapore led to Singapore’sbecoming an independent sovereign nation in August 1965. Thepolitical events of that period are not of concern in this paper and willnot be further discussed. However, the context in which the newnation came about was crucial as it provided the impetus andmotivation for the adoption of a certain philosophy in the developmentof infrastructure in the early years.

Conditions at the BeginningAll the considerations that were argued and debated during the run-up to merger now became challenges for Singapore to overcome onits own. The statistics were stark. At independence, Singapore hadonly 580 square kilometers (225 square miles) of land. WithoutMalaysia, the economy faced the loss of a hinterland. Jobs would needto be created for the many unemployed as well as for those born duringthe baby boom years after World War II and just entering the jobmarket in large numbers. The Vietnam War and the danger ofCommunism sweeping through the entire region were serious secu-rity concerns. At the same time, the British began debate on a policyto withdraw its military forces east of the Suez. The British, then,accounted for 20 percent of the GDP and directly employed some30,000 workers and indirectly another 40,000 out of a population ofabout 2 million.

For Singapore to survive as an independent and sovereignnation, she had to be able to meet swiftly the national objectives ofsecurity, economic development, social development, and nationbuilding. Very scarce resources, in terms of people and money, weregiven primarily to three areas critical in meeting the above objectives,namely, defense, economic development, and social development,which include housing, education, and health.

Right from the start, the approach adopted by the governmentwas based on pragmatism, referred to as “Management by Objec-tives” by the leader of the country during that period, Lee Kuan Yew.This applied especially to the development of infrastructures; theirdevelopment was objective-driven, and not technology- or publicity-driven. The central tenet of this development philosophy was thatsecurity, economic growth, and associated social development wouldlead to peace and prosperity. Another tenet, but of less concern in thispaper, was the belief in the need for racial harmony. These considerationsvery much laid the foundation of the development philosophy adopted.

Lee

Lee


Challenges to National DevelopmentFor the newly born Singapore in 1965, the challenges were many.First was a growing population crowding into a small island. Even theavailability of drinking water was a major challenge as the catchmentarea was too small for the country to be self-sufficient. Indeed,Singapore continues to rely on Malaysia for its water—a treatycondition that was part of the terms of separation in 1965.

The GDP per capita at the birth of the new nation was aboutUS$400, and thus there were no adequate financial resources to carryout many of the required infrastructure developments. At the sametime, there was a sense of great urgency; there was the need to raceagainst time to make the nation viable. The most knowledgeable betthen was that the country would not be able to survive, given itsmeager resources, its multitude of challenges, and its lack of visiblefuture options. To a large extent, this sense of great urgency dictatedthe need to adopt a pragmatic systems approach.

The Development of a Systems Approach to Nation Building

To tackle the multitude of problems and conflicting demands, asystems approach was adopted in infrastructure development rightfrom the start. The physical reality that Singapore is a small countrywas immediately obvious. Thus the most important system constraintwas to build urban systems to meet basic needs, while using as littlespace as possible. At the same time, to increase room for maneuveringin the system, a process of physical space creation was initiated.

A second system consideration was to ensure greater multidi-mensional integration of infrastructure development through masterplanning. With multidimensional integration, the potential of thesystems approach was exploited to the maximum. This again had asmotivation the need to ensure that every inch of space was used in anoptimal way. A third consideration was to embrace technologicaladvancement so as to harness the latest available technologies, bothas opportunities for economic growth and also to ensure that the bestaffordable infrastructures could be built. Clearly, these systemscharacteristics led to hardheaded economic evaluations of projects.Singapore’s survival depended on her moving quickly and decisively;thus agility and flexibility in decision-making were standard practiceby the Government. To a large degree, these principles still hold truetoday, though the system has by now evolved to a much moresophisticated level. This theme will be explored in greater detail in thefollowing sections.

Singapore Department of Statistics,“Selected Historical Data”


Land is the First Critical ResourceIt was recognized right from the onset of independence that the lackof land space was a critical issue that affected all others. To partlyalleviate this highly restrictive condition, land reclamation was deemeda top priority. Figure 1 shows the increase in land space from landreclamation since 1965. The city-state has grown from an area of 580square kilometers (sq km) to an estimated area of 662 sq km today,an increase of 17 percent. Ongoing and already approved projects willadd at least another 68 sq km in the next ten years, while those beingplanned will add at least another 50 sq km in the following ten years.As can be seen in Figure 1, short-term perturbations, such aseconomic crises in 1974, 1985-1987, and 1998-1999 did not slow theland reclamation program. The need to plan ahead and invest, evenduring “bad times,” is evident from this chart. This is the firstillustration of the systems approach in which short-term perturbationsdo not derail long-term objectives.

Two little-known facts will further illustrate the systems ap-proach. Initially, most of the fill materials came from hill-cut materiallocally. But since 1980, the depletion of that source of fill has led tothe import of sand from the region. The high cost of land in Singaporehas made it economical to keep reclaiming land from the sea even with

FIGURE 1Increase in Land Area of Singapore


imported fill. Using technology, a new project scheduled to start in2001 will exploit new alternative fill. The proposed 15 sq kmreclamation at an offshore island in the eastern coast of Singapore,Pulau Tekong, will use dredged seabed material and constructionwaste soils such as marine clay as fill. This development is also drivenby the fact that the disposal of such materials has become increasinglydifficult in land-scarce Singapore. Thus, by adopting this systemsapproach, two issues handled by two different agencies can beresolved, allowing for a solution to a disposal problem while makingthe waste material become useful. In that sense, technology has beenused to provide the leverage to solve two problems with one solution.

Master Planning is CriticalThe creation of physical space is an obvious task. Though there aretechnical issues to be solved, these are highly focused and thus it is notdifficult to develop the technology to overcome the problems. How-ever, despite this huge effort, the rate of land reclamation still cannotcope with the increase in population, not to mention other industrialand commercial activities. Thus, the density of population continuesto increase at a very high rate as shown in Figure 2. The Jurong TownCorporation, the largest industrial landlord in Singapore, had alsoprojected that unless land productivity increased, Singapore wouldrun out of land for industrial use by the year 2035. Thus, there was nochoice but to increase land productivity, meaning the need todevelop infrastructures that also minimized space utilization.This was a difficult task because it often required coordination andintegration among government agencies, and it also required theadoption of solutions that were more expensive initially but whichanticipated future problems. Those investments were made withthe expectation that the resulting future saving would exceed thecosts of initial investments.

This is a classic example of the need for a systems approach, andmore importantly, for all relevant agencies to abide by the solutions tobe adopted. Central to the development of such optimal solutions isthe need for master planning to coordinate multidimensional integra-tion. In Singapore, the Urban Renewal Authority is the MasterPlanner for land use. As part of that planning, two aspects ofintegration are looked at:

� integration of the demand for spaces (surface, subterranean, air,and sea spaces)

� integration of functional needs for residential, industrial, com-mercial, and defense development.

Jurong Town Corporation


Other agencies also play roles in the planning process. Forexample, the Ministry of Communications and Information willintegrate transport and information and communications policies withthe Master Plan. This includes for example, the integration of road andpublic transport systems and less obviously, the integration of infor-mation systems with Singapore ONE—the world’s first nationwidebroadband super highway.

In the following section, a number of examples will be given toshow how such urban infrastructures have been developed andintegrated within this framework. In particular, the key aspects to bediscussed in greater detail include the development of public housing,land transport infrastructure, and developments of various hub services.

Housing the PeopleHousing the people has been a major social program of Singaporesince 1965. Table 1 shows the comparison of home ownership withother cities. In land-scarce Singapore and with a growing population,there was no choice but to house the majority of people in high-risehousing. To make it affordable, this form of housing had to be built bypublic funds. What has remained unique is that such public housing,which in many countries connotes poverty, is now the abode of the vastmajority. The transformation, especially the social challenges to

FIGURE 2Increase in Population Density


transform the mindset of an entire nation to accept such a fundamen-tal change, was significant.

Currently, Singapore has a population of 2.973 million citizens(74.0 percent), 0.290 million permanent residents (7.2 percent), and0.754 million expatriate workers (18.8 percent), giving a total popu-lation of four million. Eighty-six percent of the four million people livein public housing. The authority in charge of public housing, theHousing and Development Board (HDB), has built homes at aphenomenal rate in the last 30 years. The 800,000th apartment wascompleted and handed over to its owner in 2000. (Of the 828,148apartments under HDB, 763,247 or 92.2 percent are owned by theoccupants. The balance are rental apartments.) The success of thepublic housing system laid the foundation for many other develop-ments. It reduced the amount of space for housing, thereby freeingup space for other uses. It also afforded dwellers larger space thanresidents of other similarly crowded cities such as Tokyo and HongKong. (See Table 1.) Close to 80 percent of all housing in Singaporeis public housing. With the majority of the population living in HDBdwellings, public housing is no longer stigmatized as housing exclu-sively for the poor. (See Table 2.) This change in attitude has allowedauthorities to continue to use public funds to improve public housing,thereby ensuring that the quality of life in such housing is constantlyimproving. Just as important socially is the fact that it allows youngpeople to own such housing, thereby anchoring them to the place andgiving them a stake in their communities.

The development of public housing estates has also been anintegral aspect of master planning. The layout of the estates ensuredan even distribution of population centers and dovetailed with publictransport policies, allowing the greatest use of public transport andthe optimal use of the road network. Thus, in almost all public housingestates there has been or will be the provision of a mass rapid transitsystem coupled with an internal feeder system either through busesor light rail, to move people either intra-estate or inter-estates.

Singapore Department ofStatistics,

“Singapore Census...”

Singapore Department of Statistics,“Singapore Census...”

Cities Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo, Japan

Home ownership 90 51 40

(in percent)

Space (m2/person) 24 15 7

Table 1Home Ownership in Cities of the Pacific Rim

Singapore Housing and DevelopmentBoard


TABLE 2Distribution of Housing Types in Singapore*

Besides housing being integrated into the transport network, it isalso integrated into a systems of schools, commercial centers, parks,and other recreational facilities to ensure that each estate is self-contained, minimizing residents’ need to commute.

Moving People and Goods by LandThe Economist Pocket World in Figures 2000 ranked Singapore ashaving the second densest road network in the world with 4.72 kmroad per km2 of land area. The highest is Belgium with 4.78 km perkm2 while the United States has a density of 0.67 km per km2 and ranks38th in the world. Currently, a total of 3,150km of public roads cover15 percent of the land space of Singapore Island. It is clear that thereis a severe limit to Singapore’s ability to continue to provide valuableland space to facilitate moving people and that this is a multidimen-sional problem, calling for a systems solution. This was alreadyalluded to when public housing was discussed. Thus in the develop-ment of the necessary infrastructure for facilitating movement onland, two solutions have been adopted:

� mass rapid transit rail systems (US$1B a year will be investedin new rail systems for the next 25 years.) (Figure 3 shows theexisting and soon-to-be completed lines, and Figure 4 showsproposed lines.)

� integrated residential and commercial development in newtowns to reduce pressure on the Central Business District.

For these two solutions to be effective, they need to be furtherintegrated with other policies, so that the combined solution can beeffective and achieve the synergy desired of a systems solution. Thesepolicies include:

� encouraging the use of public transportation� employing taxes to discourage private ownership of cars� reducing taxes for goods-moving vehicles that contribute to

the economy

Cain et al.

Type of Dwellings Number Percent1990 2000 1990 2000

Total 690,561 964,138 100.0 100.0HDB Dwellings 564,053 763,063 81.7 79.1Private Flats 39,354 76,099 5.7 7.9Private Houses 49,116 60,620 7.1 6.3Other 38,038 64,383 5.5 6.7

*Based on Census 2000Source: Singapore Department of Statistics, “Singapore Census of Population 2000”


� employing an Electronic Road Pricing system that will lead todynamic pricing in the future

� requiring a Certificate of Entitlement for car ownership.

The overall integration of these policies has allowed Singapore to putinto place an infrastructure that can facilitate speedy movement overland for people and goods. This is a good illustration of how a widevariety of issues are integrated to ensure an effective solution. Itinvolves town planning, road planning, public transport policies, andtaxation policies.

Thus, policies are set in place to ensure that the systemsobjectives are met. But in implementation, the market mechanism isused to allocate scarce road resources. As shown in Table 3, carownership restraint measures limited the growth of the car populationto 3 percent per year. This is done through a system known asCertificate of Entitlement, whereby a buyer of a new car will have tobid for a certificate from a predetermined quota of certificates beforethe purchase of a new car can be executed. This provides a directmeasure to control the growth of car ownership.

FIGURE 3Rapid Transit Network by 2005


One problem with road infrastructure is its low overall use;certain roads at certain times will be overused causing massive jamswhile at other times, the same roads can be grossly under-utilized. Achallenge in all major cities is to effect change in the behavior ofmotorists so that roads can be more evenly utilized, spatially andtemporally. This is now achieved through a measure known as theElectronic Road Pricing (ERP) system. The use of the busier roads ismonitored, and pricing is regularly adjusted to reflect the intensity ofthat use. Thus a road seeing very heavy traffic during the period ofmonitoring will see the pricing for the use of that road increase whenit is next adjusted. Ultimately, this can facilitate the introduction of adynamic pricing system.

Another integrated feature of this systems approach is theexploitation of subterranean space for transport purposes to minimizethe use of surface land for transportation. For example, in the firstmass rapid transit line constructed in the mid 1980s, only the portionof the line in the central business district was placed underground; theremaining line was elevated. However, the second line that is cur-rently under construction, the 20km Northeast Line, is entirely

FIGURE 4Rapid Transit Network in the Long Term


underground. (See Figure 3.) This is also the case for two other linesthat are under construction. As for roads, over 6 km of a newexpressway, known locally as the Kallang Expressway, will also beconstructed underground. The need to exploit underground spacewhenever possible simply underlines how crucial is this constraint ofland space. Two more examples to be discussed next will show howrelentless is this quest to reduce land space requirements.

Table 3Moving People and Goods by Land (in thousands)

Year 1989 1999

Vehicle Population 521 689Cars 271 403Goods Vehicles 128 151Motorcycles 121 134

Using Subterranean SpaceTo replace the existing sewerage system and the associated seweragetreatment plants, Singapore has just started work on 80 km of tunnelswith diameters of up to 6.5m, which will be built at 50m belowground. This will be linked by another 170 km of smaller link-sewers.The deep tunnels and link-sewers will convey sewage from theexisting network of sewers to two new centralized wastewatertreatment plants to be built on reclaimed land in the eastern andwestern ends of Singapore. With the Deep Tunnel Sewerage Systemin place, the six existing sewage treatment works and 134 pumpingstations located all over the island will be phased out eventually.Through this, a space equivalent of nearly 10 sq km will be freed forother more high-value uses as treatment plants usually will have anarea of exclusion to other residential or commercial activities becauseof the odor and other related environmental problems.

The tunnel system is placed at a depth of about 50m in moststretches in anticipation of other future subterranean exploitation.Thus, this development is planned to not only free the land spaceabove ground, but to also ensure that the shallower subterraneanspace can be used for other purposes. This exploitation of under-ground space will continue to be the trend of the future. Just as in theearly years where the public was educated on the benefits of adoptinghigh-rise public housing as the mode of living, there is now a need toeducate the public about the benefits of going underground.

The philosophy and management approach adopted in thedevelopment of public housing, roads, and public transport have also

Singapore Ministry of Environmen t


been applied to developing both infrastructures for moving peopleand goods by air and sea and infrastructures for moving information.These infrastructures are also linked to, and are a part of, Singapore’smaster planning efforts

Moving People and Goods by AirSingapore has three military airfields, a general aviation airfield, andan international airport, Changi International Airport on the easternend of Singapore, as shown in Figure 5. There is no domestic airtraffic in Singapore, so Changi International Airport handles onlyinternational traffic. The development of Changi International Air-port, and the success it achieves, illustrates another aspect ofSingapore’s pragmatic approach.

In 1999, Changi International Airport handled 83,000 aircraftlandings, 24.4 million passengers, 1.5 million tonnes of cargo, and3100 weekly flights to 151 cities in 51 countries. Changi InternationalAirport is currently ranked the sixth busiest international airport

FIGURE 5Layout of Key Infrastructures in Singapore


(handling 24.4 million passengers) after London (48m), Frankfurt(31m), Hong Kong (30m), Paris (29m), and Amsterdam (27m).

A number of characteristics set this airport apart from many ofits competitors. It recognizes that more important than statistics is anemphasis on efficiency. Towards this end, the philosophy is customer-oriented to ensure speedy and hassle-free passenger movement. Tocomplement these policies, the airport authority has to engage inplanning that will create additional capacity in the airport and attractmore traffic. Changi International Airport was built on reclaimed landand subsequent extensions were also built on reclaimed land. A totalof over 11.63 sq km of land have been reclaimed since 1976, andanother 6.3 sq km will be added within five years. Planning is criticalto ensure that land is available when the need to build additionalrunways arises. The Changi International Airport currently has tworunways, and a third is already being planned, with the land alreadyreclaimed. The new runway will be designed to receive the newgeneration of “mega jets” that are being developed. Ongoing reclama-tion at this site anticipates needs beyond that. This ongoing planning,as part of master planning, is an integral aspect of the way this facilityhas developed. To facilitate people movement, the airport will bedirectly linked to the mass rapid transit system through a link that isunder construction now.

Moving Goods by SeaThe Port of Singapore is the world’s top bunkering port (19 milliontonnes in 1999) and also the world’s busiest port with shippingtonnage of 877 million gross tons in 1999. It is also the world’s busiestcontainer port, handling 16 million twenty-foot containers a year. In1999, 141,500 vessels called at the Port of Singapore, and at any time,more than 800 ships and 100,000 shipping containers are in port.Besides these statistics on the port, Singapore’s merchant fleet is theworld’s eighth largest, with 3,400 ships and a total capacity of 22million gross tons. Overall, the sea transportation sector contributesmore than 5 percent of the nation’s GNP. The drive behind thesestatistics is also a reiteration of the principles enunciated earlier:efficiency, planning, and integration into master planning.

A particularly important illustration of these principles in thedevelopment of infrastructure in this sector is the story of PSA,formerly an acronym for the Port of Singapore Authority. However,since it was privatized in 1997, the authority, now a private corpora-tion, is called PSA. The new entity’s mission is to build a world-classport with first-rate infrastructures. These first-rate infrastructures arecomplemented by efficiency and interconnectivity. For example,

PSA Corporation

Maritime Port Authority


Australia used to ship ice cream directly to Japan, taking 22 days.Now it takes 17 days to ship them through Singapore. This is achievedbecause of the high reliability (ships get a berth on arrival and arecertain of being able to quickly move transhipment containers fromship to ship) and the speed of PSA’s operations (PSA holds the worldrecord of 234 container moves per vessel/hour). In addition to thesenumbers, PSA currently is connected to 700 ports and serves 400shipping lines. Daily, it provides 22 sailings to South Asia andSoutheast Asia, three sailings to the United States, four sailings toJapan, and five sailings to Europe. This combination of efficiency andinterconnectivity is essential in allowing PSA to stay ahead and todelight shippers by meeting their specific needs, which means theybecome more competitive.

Planning is central to this effort. For example, PSA has com-pleted part of the work to develop a new, automated container terminalat Pasir Panjang Terminal. (See Figure 5.) The site of this terminalalso brings it closer to a proposed chemical island (which will bediscussed next) and the major Jurong Industrial Estate, ensuringbetter integration. In building this new terminal, the latest technolo-gies have been harnessed to save land, boost productivity, andimprove service. Each berth at the new container terminal can handle750,000 TEUs (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units, a measure of con-tainer capacity) per berth (compared to 600,000 TEUs for most otherports), and the plan is to increase productivity to one million TEUs perberth. The facility is also designed to handle a wide variety of ships,from small feeder ships to third-generation post-panamax ships(8000 TEUs vessels). The building of the new container port is alsopart of a master plan to relocate the existing port from a site that canbe used for more high-value activities to a point where it is of lesservalue and closer to the industries it supports. Thus, the developmentof the new port is not viewed as an isolated development; the need tointegrate into an overall plan is also recognized.

However, even with these internal advantages, it is not enoughto ensure that PSA can continue to stay ahead of its competition. Theglobal economy means that many of the features Singapore has builtcan be replicated by others. When PSA was an agency, it was limitedin its ability to grow by Singapore’s physical and economic space.However, with incorporation in 1997, PSA began expanding out-wards to create more economic space and to leverage on its experi-ence to be able to run a first-rate port. It now operates 10 portsthroughout the world.

PSA Corporation


Developing Jurong Island: The Petrochemical HubA number of factors in Singapore have converged to spark theconstruction of a new infrastructure to support the development of anew petrochemical hub. Economically, the development leveragesthe fact that Singapore is a major oil refining center, is a majorshipping hub, and has a well-educated work force. The developmentof Jurong Island (See Figure 5.) will create a competitive advantagefor Singapore by clustering in one place the manufacturing of a chainof petrochemical products. As planned, the project will include theconstruction of five upstream petrochemical plants known as “crack-ers” and 60 downstream plants. But like all the other infrastructuresdiscussed, this development takes into account Singapore’s landconstraints. For a small country, this clustering has a number of otherbenefits; it will optimize the use of space, and it will facilitate themovement of hazardous goods via pipelines instead of road networks.

Again, such a massive undertaking requires a great amount ofplanning. The important point to note here is the long lag time fromthe moment the decision to go ahead to the moment where all theinfrastructures can be put in place. In particular, the plan calls for arapid creation of an island of 2,650 hectares, reclaimed from watersbetween a cluster of seven existing islands as shown in Figure 5. Atotal of nearly 20 sq km is added by reclamation in four phases costingUS$4B and another US$600m for building the other infrastructureson this petrochemical island. The infrastructures will include a roadlink, an amenity center, sewers, and common pipelines. Natural gasimported from Natuna and Sumatra will provide fuel for the facility.The island itself is being built with integrated logistics facilities suchas wharfing, terminaling, and tanking, and an IT master plan for theisland calls for the installation of a fiber-optic network. To date, thishub has attracted US$12B committed investments and anotherUS$12B more is projected by 2010.

Moving Information: Developing a Knowledge-Based EconomyThe last example to be discussed is the development of a totallydifferent kind of infrastructure, an infrastructure to facilitate themovement of information and to improve communication. These arenow recognized as basic needs of a knowledge-based economy. Asearly as 1992, an IT master plan was already being devised forSingapore. The final version is known as IT2000 - A Vision of anIntelligent Island. As part of this master plan, an integrated agency,the Infocom Development Authority, was established in 2000 tointegrate the development of information and communications.

Singapore Ministry of Trade andIndustry


In this development, the key ideas are again integration andconnectivity. Thus, for a small country of four million residents,Singapore currently has seven undersea cables, 31 VSAT satellitedishes covering 12 satellites, and 37 large satellite dishes covering 29satellites. This connectivity, together with the world’s first nationwideprovision of broadband cable linkage to every home, will support thecenter of gravity of that integration—Singapore ONE (One Networkfor Everyone). As Singapore is sufficiently compact, it is economi-cally feasible to lay a nationwide broadband network to promote localusage to create an e-commerce-savvy population. In other words, itscompactness, which is a liability in many other developments, is nowused to provide the leverage to gain an advantage in other areas.

The Road Ahead

The ability of Singapore to grow without the associated ills ofpollution and traffic gridlocks suggests that other cities might benefitfrom its systems approach to planning. As presented in this paper, theintegrated systems approach in the development of infrastructure hasworked well for Singapore. This system integrates:

� over functions� over organizations� over time� over space (globalization).

To be able to carry out this integration, it is vital that planning bedone within a master planning framework. There are political andsocial factors present in the Singapore system that encourage suchintegration through policy making. This last point is outside the scopeof this paper. Another theme apparent in the examples given above isthe need to use technologies to exploit some of the constraints and turnthem into advantages. For example, Singapore’s compactness andsmallness is a very serious constraint, but it also provides a leverageif suitably exploited. There are many things a smaller country can dothat a much larger country will find difficult to replicate.

For Singapore, the vision of the future will allow for moreinnovative solutions to create more space for further growth. TheGovernment of Singapore has recently established a new ConceptPlan, which calls for a population of not less than 5.5 million, a 37.5percent increase from its current level. The goal is to develop an

Mah


attractive and livable country that is able to retain its currentresidents and attract new ones.

The main challenge Singapore faces in the twenty-first centuryis to harness technological advances to work within a philosophy thatemphasizes master planning to ensure a systems solution, pragma-tism, and flexibility so as to develop and support sustainable infra-structures. This requires the concerted effort of all agencies andauthorities involved in the planning, design, development, and inte-gration of infrastructures. R&D efforts in collaboration with researchinstitutions have to be intensified and focused in order to engineerbreakthroughs in the constraints imposed by Singapore’s lack ofnatural resources.

Acknowledgment

We are grateful to Associate Professor Ang Beng Wah of the NationalUniversity of Singapore who reviewed this paper and provided veryvaluable suggestions. The efforts of many officers in various govern-ment agencies and corporations who have supplied relevantinformation and data for this paper are also deeply appreciated.


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