Bad Town Design
January 27th, 2023 | 
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I always think the Town design for the relatively new HDB Towns like Punggol, Senkang, Sembawang etc are badly designed.
I have made quite a number of posts on forums back in late 1990s and early 2000s about how illogical Punggol was designed, after PAP Goh CT proudly proclaimed his grand plan of “Punggol 21″.
But it seems that nobody really cares.
Over this CNY period, I happened to meet a non Singaporean, real Foreign Talent Professor who is expert in town and city design. Over our casual chat, I was surprised and delighted that he holds the same view as me!
He said older towns like Toa Payoh, Ang Mo Kio, Bedok are very well designed and we seem to have mastered a perfectly logical, functional and good Town design formula. However, he couldn’t understand why Punggol and Senkang were so badly designed!
Neighborhood amenities are lacking, wet markets and hawker centers were missing and road networks were in a mess.
For me, apart from these, the design of the flats is really bad without much considerations made for cross ventilation. When summer comes, the flats will be like concrete ovens with everyone either sweating or turning on their Aircons.
That’s the great idea of how they could possibly squeeze 10 million people into this tiny island!
I told the Professor there are reasons why these new towns are designed in such a way. They wanted to do away with wet markets and hawker centers because they couldn’t optimize profits from these as the rental is low and these will compete with the coffeeshop chains and supermarkets owned by their cronies! It’s the crony economy we are looking at.
If these places were allowed, then GLCs & NTUC owning the shopping malls will not be able to optimize their rental collections.
It’s an irony that PAP is trying to get hawker centers to be registered as intangible world heritage while at the same time, killing it off in their future town planning!
I have visited the Paya Lebar airport grand master plan exhibition a few months ago. I realized that there isn’t any MRT station planned for this large estate!
I guess those scholars up there didn’t realize with such new addition of residential and commercial estates built into that region, without any MRT station, it will just jam up the whole place!
That area is already surrounded by roads which are very busy during peak hours. It has Kaki Bukit industrial park, Ubi industrial park, Defu industrial park, Tai Seng Industry park, Tampines Town, old Tampines Road etc.
I really wonder how future residents will survive the jams and inconvenience if no MRT station is situated there.
Goh Meng Seng
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“I really wonder how future residents will survive the jams and inconvenience if no MRT station is situated there.”
No worry. Future residents are used to jamming on top of trains and buses. They will praise the great city design.
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The Stupid scholar who is in charge of MRT planning made a big mistake in the 2000s. He should have planned the cross island line first instead of the circle line . The cross island line runs from one corner to the other of the island and is most useful for everyone.instrsd the dumb scholars go build useless lines like downtown line
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The whole design of Singapore is same as PAP, can be sum up as: Avoid facing the problem, run away from solving the real problem. As we know the whole Singapore design is base on British colonial design. Firstly, it is design for ports so a concentric zone model where south is the center, CBD because it is use as a port by British. Then with road to Singapore North part, south part, east part, west part, it become linear city. Next towns are build and more develop, it become multiple nuclei model. With MRT build now, it become back to linear city where near MRT stations has shopping center and many facilities. The whole Singpore design is base on British colonial, add on linear, then add on multiple nuclei and back to linear city. In all, it is a Rojak. They never change the old British colonial design for south port to fit new and total different Singapore now. They avoid changing to face the problem and terrain and run away from solving the difficult problems and add on as easy ways to run away from problems. When facing obstacles and difficult terrain, they run away just like how they govern and how they live their life. Run away from problems and not face the problem to solve it.
Poor planning led to many roads face traffic jams during rush hours. And for example the MRT journey from East to west is so long, people traveling to work or visit take a long time. It is not only so, North to east, west, south like all the other parts take long time by transport. People are traveling less from east to all parts like all other parts. Bus transport take long time so have MRT. Now MRT route is like a maze with so many routes and stations. A new circle line name implies everyone taking MRT transport to go in circles. Cars suppose to be the shorter time transport now face jams. Reasons being the center Bukit Timah Road jam and many other major road all jam at peak hour and rainy days. It is because the center Bukit Timah lives all the rich people with cars coming out at the same time to jam the road and rich people live in bungalow area did not make way for major roads to be build. Bukit Timah is part of the center area need for transport as crossroad where people need to pass. They shift to south and everyone has to detour when people want to go from east to west, all others parts to all other parts. Even MRT bend to shift to south, wasting traveling time of people travel like East to West. Unless the rich people move to other parts of Singapore like North, South, East,West, Singapore design is bad. The center area is an important crossroad where transport route need to go through instead of detour. This is an important area for roads to north, south, east, west also as MRT interchange. Shift away all the nature reserve, rich man graves, move all the rich man bunglow to North, South, East,West to let transport flows. Center is an important transport junction. Transport is an important part of planning a good design Singapore city.
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HDB or public housing were meant for citizens or wannabees…built like Honeycombs they were suppose to be for Bees but attracts more Flies & Insects
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No mrt ? Then good for opposition parties to field in their candidates.
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No wet markets?
Why?
Really,i think very few sgs want to be fish-mongers,butchers and vegetable stall-holders.
So,they cant garner enough vendors to take up market stalls.
Might as well,cash in on that and force the people to patroni$e NTUC FATPRICE N $HENG $IONG?
You happy,WE LAGI HAPPY.
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Punggol One Hub has opened its library which has think 5 levels.At this moment,only level 1 and 2 are opened to public from 12 pm onwards daily.Well,the Punggol library is indeed big and spacious .It make it a joke that Punggol is modernly built with so LRT and fully handicapped facilities,yet the resale price for five rooms is still suppressed down to so low.By now,it should be reclassified as mature estate status already.Should change out allthe Punggol MPs to wake them up! And that shameless woman MP Wan Ling is still wasting more public funds electing new printed expensive banners “wishing residents Happy Chinese New Year “!!!Don’t she know how to save resident money by posting her”Happy New Year” wishes to residents at those Lee Hsien Loong government white elephants projects of LCD panels located at ground lift level ?Basically ,all those white elephants LCD at lifts few people bother to see or read at all,a total waste of public funds to install and waste of unnecessary electricity to operate at least 12-18 hours per day !No wonder electricity prices need to go up too !
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