New towns of Singapore

The new town planning concept was introduced into Singapore with the building of the first new town of Singapore, Queenstown, from July 1952 to 1973 by the country's public housing authority, the Housing and Development Board. Today, the vast majority of the approximately 11,000 public housing buildings are organised into 23 towns and 3 estates across the country.

The new towns in Singapore are large scale satellite housing developments which are designed to be self contained. It includes public housing units, a town centre and other amenities. Helmed by a hierarchy of commercial developments, ranging from a town centre to precinct-level outlets, there is no need to venture out of town to meet the most common needs of residences. Employment can be found in industrial estates located within several towns. Educational, health care, and recreational needs are also taken care of with the provision of schools, hospitals, parks, sports complexes, and so on.

Singapore's expertise in successful new town design was internationally recognised when the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) of the United Nations awarded the World Habitat Award to Tampines Town, which was selected as a representative of Singapore's new towns, on 5 October 1992.

The Singapore of the 1950s contained a city centre surrounded by slums and squatter colonies. By the time Singapore attained self government in 1959, the problem of housing shortage had grown. Combined with a fast population growth, it led to congestion and squalor. The Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) had been previously set up by the colonial government to solve the housing shortage. Although it built around 23000 dwelling units, it was not sufficient for the rapidly increasing population.

In 1958, the first Master Plan was formulated which recommend redistributing the population from the central area of the city to new towns in the suburbs. The SIT was dissolved in 1959 and subsequently, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) was set up in 1960 to deal with the problem.

These statistics reflect the boundaries of HDB towns and are not necessarily the same as planning area statistics.

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