Singapore’s independence from the British didn’t arrive all at once, but rather in steps over a decade; from the first general election of certain officials in 1955 to full independence in 1965. For discussion of urban development, the operative year is 1961, which introduced Singapore’s first popularly-elected parliament. The colonial government’s Singapore Improvement Trust had developed a 1958 Master Plan, but in light of the postwar population and economic growth, the new parliament decided to request the assistance of the UN to update its plans.

The first UN representatives to work with parliament were 3 planners from the Technical Assistance Administration. They assessed the existing 1958 plan as being wholly inadequate, and suggested the government empower its Housing and Development Board [HDB] to approach development (and redevelopment) on an unprecedented scale. A few issues the UN planners identified were that the ’58 plan radically underestimated automobile adoption, had an untenable reliance on low-density housing, and displayed a “Euro-centric” predilection for preserving extant buildings.⁵

In 1966, the HDB created the Urban Renewal Department [URD] (the direct precursor to the present-day Urban Redevelopment Authority [URA]) specifically to plan and execute redevelopment projects. A much larger UN collaboration followed, with the formation of the Comprehensive Planning Programme in September of 1967. This group involved 7 UN planners and around 30 representatives from the URD and HDB, and was significantly broader in scope. The result of this 4-year programme was the adoption of a more formalized (and more flexible) system for city planning, and the 1971 Concept Plan.

This new system (which is still in use today)⁶ is comprised of a Concept Plan, which presents a broad conceptual direction for the next 40–50 years, and a Master Plan, which includes concrete, specific developments over the next 10–15 years. However, both of these include a crucial feature: they are reviewed and amended periodically (every 10 years for Concept Plans, and every 5 for Master Plans), using up-to-date data, input from the public and key stakeholders (business leaders, town councils, etc), and considerations regarding regional and international economic and political developments.

The 1961 UN-joint group was the first to suggest a “ring” plan for Singapore, based on similar development strategies in Holland. However, their original (retrospectively, somewhat fanciful) plan was to arrange the town centers on the coast, and split the mass transit between a central ring road and a robust ferry system. This was revised in the more realistic ’71 Concept Plan, by moving the town centers inland, circling around the central catchments… though it remains an interesting “what if?” scenario.

The annual journal of the newly-created Singapore Institute of Planners makes an excellent companion to the first concept plan. The first two issues feature lengthy articles by UN representatives from the Comprehensive Planning Programme detailing the philosophical direction of the planning strategies, and the studies and iterations which led to the the plan’s final configuration. Though necessarily abstract, the ‘71 Concept Plan is essentially the layout of Singapore as it exists today.

Guided by this organized-yet-flexible strategy, and fueled by a blossoming economy (carefully pruned and watered by the government’s technocratic-leaning economic policies expedited by its de facto one-party control), the pace of Singapore’s development has basically been set to a continuous headlong sprint ever since.

The Golden Shoe & The Hawker Market

Note: From here onward, I will use the title URA rather than URD. The official reorganization happened in 1974.

To enact these sweeping plans, Parliament made two key policy changes, and selected the district of downtown where Lau Pa Sat lies as the URA’s pilot redevelopment area. The press nicknamed it “The Golden Shoe” because its slipper-like shape housed the city’s all-important banking companies, and was expected to draw significant investment during this process. In the late ’60s, this 35ha area was filled mostly with rundown 3–5 story buildings of prewar construction, but the new URA envisioned this area as you see it today: tightly packed with towering skyscrapers.⁷

Present-day map layers via Open Street Map.

The first policy change was to overhaul the Control Of Rent Act, which had been put into place by the colonial administration in 1947.⁸ This law was intended to prevent tenants from bearing the brunt of skyrocketing postwar housing prices, but it permanently capped rents to their 1939 levels — an extreme undervaluation as Singapore’s economy and population were beginning to boom three decades later.

This rent cap had the unfortunate effect of de-incentivising landlords from redeveloping on their own — or even continuing with basic upkeep maintenance — leading to many dilapidated buildings with overcrowded, unsanitary tenement conditions in the city center. Americans might be familiar with a similar dynamic which occurred in New York City in the 1970s, though with different instigating factors.

The second policy change was to bring as much land as possible under state ownership, so that it could be re-parceled and re-zoned in accordance with the new plans. This was facilitated by the 1969 Control Premises (Special Provision) Act,⁹ and led to decades’ worth of land acquisitions and auctions by the URA, starting in the ’70s.

Once The Golden Shoe was selected, the URA drew up a series of criteria to establish whether or not landowners could independently redevelop their properties. These were related to the size of the landowner’s parcel and the extant buildings thereon, and any independent plans had to be first approved by the URA. In order to prioritize redevelopment, this law allowed landowners to evict their tenants — after providing them with legally stipulated compensation and resettlement fees. Disputes were taken before a URA board, whose decisions were final.

The landowners who met the URA’s criteria began work shortly; but many landowners’ parcels were too small (or they lacked enough funding) for URA-approved redevelopment. Most willingly sold to the URA (with their tenants compensated and resettled), and a small handful were able to bundle their parcels and budgets together to meet the criteria. Finally, the small number of landowners who had refused to sell or submit redevelopment plans went through a process of compulsory acquisition (i.e. eminent domain in the US).

As the Business Times reported in February of 1981, the legislation which set the compulsory acquisition price for land was pegged to 1973–74 prices, during a slight downturn in the real estate market. An analyst with Richard Ellis C.H. Williams estimated that the Central Business District parcels which were sold in the 8th URA sale (1979) were generally acquired for between $3,000 and $7,000 / Sq m (including the cost of tenant compensation), and the tenders† during the sale were as high as $35,000 / Sq m.¹⁰ This real estate was now some of the most valuable on the island.

During these upcoming waves of redevelopment, Lau Pa Sat was ensured its safety and permanence with the Preservation of Monuments act, passed in 1970. The Telok Ayer Market was one of the first 8 sites gazetted† under this act, in July of 1973.¹¹ It should be noted, however, that these 8 came from a proposed list of 50, and the board which brought these recommendations to parliament were described by the Business Times as lacking “the teeth and money to carry out many aspects of the work.”¹²

At the same time, the market underwent its first major renovation in almost a century. It was converted from a wet market† to a hawker center† — a change resulting from the area’s planned shift from mixed residential to primarily commercial. At a cost of $650,000, the new plan called for the installation of 144 hawker stalls, new electrical lighting, and a floor laid with decorative mosaic tile. The renovated market opened in October of 1973.¹³ The NLB has a copy of the Singapore Broadcasting Company’s “Singapore Historical Sites” on VHS, which includes film footage of the market from this period (and a groovy flute-and-bongo soundtrack).¹⁴

Excepting the minor hiccup of a leaky roof (repaired two weeks after the re-opening), the newspapers reported the market’s new incarnation as a Hawker center was well-received. The New Nation’s “Eating Out” columnist See Foon enthusiastically reported, “This food centre must be the (at the present moment) best organised, best planned location in Singapore with the wildest arrangement of stall food imaginable.”¹⁵

Owing to concerns over the growing footprint of roads and parking structures alongside increased car ownership, the government commissioned a series of studies in the 1970s into a large-scale transportation system. These studies resulted in differing recommendations and sparked significant public interest,¹⁶ but the end result was a 1982 plan for the installation of the MRT system in several decades-long stages. Construction began in October of 1983.

Planners anticipated that, due to its age, Lau Pa Sat might be damaged from the stresses of the approaching underground construction. As it was now gazetted as a monument, a somewhat radical plan was adopted: the market would be completely disassembled, put into storage, and rebuilt once the MRT was finished.

These worries were verified when Hawkers and diners began to notice cracks appearing in the floor in April of 1985. Although it was slightly ahead of schedule, the market was closed, and all 144 hawkers were re-located across the street to a former Port of Singapore Authority building which had been converted for the purpose by the Ministry of Environment (who oversees the regulation of hawkers).¹⁷

The Singapore Monitor reported, “The new place is cooler, less noisey, and the air is fresh — but the Old Market had history.”¹⁸ The hawkers endured slimmer crowds over the next month or so, but eventually the numbers leveled out as the regular customers adjusted to the new location.

Exhaustive surveys were taken of the existing structure to record its exact placement and layout, and the market’s 3,000 cast-iron parts were meticulously cataloged into an IBM database. And incredibly, as the Business Times reported, “Because of the delicate nature of the whole project, no heavy equipment will be used on the site as these may cause unnecessary vibrations and load on the building. The workers will use mainly small hand tools.” Particular care was taken with the clock tower, the restoration of which was outsourced to a specialist.¹⁹

Disassembly began in February 1986. Each part was inspected for structural stability, marked for welding repairs or re-casting if needed, carefully packed intro trucks, and taken to Jurong for long-term storage. Once the MRT construction was clear, the painstaking process of re-assembly began in July of 1988. A new foundation with extra steel supports was laid, and the entire reconstruction process took around a year.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment officially handed ownership of the building to the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board [STPB].²⁰ The STPB’s bold new vision for the new market included shopping, entertainment, and nightlife attractions in an attempt to draw tourists. They accepted two rounds of tenders for the private-sector renovation and operation of the market once reconstructed.

Tenders ranged from $330k to $2.2m for annual rent coupled with revenue shares between 12% and 40%, and offered several different visions both of interior layout and general operation. These proposals were detailed in the newspapers, which also noted reactions and suggestions from hawkers and the general public. Ten of the fifteen people interviewed by the Straits Times wanted aircon. Sales Executive Gerard Thomas (30) raised concerns over the site’s lack of parking. Technician Jimmy Lim (24) suggested an art gallery might provide some cultured lunchtime entertainment.²¹

In March of 1990, the STPB announced that retail giant Scotts had won the bid to renovate and run the market via its subsidiary Renaissance Properties, with an $8.3m budget for renovation and $651,250 in annual rent. Their vision for the market was based on London’s Coventry Garden, and was to feature a mix of food, entertainment, and shopping in an upscale atmosphere. Renovations began shortly after.²²

The Bells

And here is where we finally get to the bells — nestled among full-page advertisements for the Sony Walkman and stately IBM beige boxes in the October 10, 1991 issue of the Straits Times.

This carillon of 23 bronze bells was cast by the Royal Bell Foundry Petit & Fristen from the Netherlands (who have been doing this sort of work since the 1660s) at a cost of $140,000. An engineer from the company, mr. T.P.L. De Lesst, was sent to supervise their installation in the newly-reconstructed clock tower. The bells feature a 1.25 meter-high Jaquemart (bell-striking statue) styled after a colonial-era Chinese trader.

I learned from an email with Royal Eijsbouts (who has since taken over Petit & Fristen) that the bells run chromatically up from A2 to F4, with an extra F and G on the bottom. The entire carillon weighs approx. 890 kg, with the bells weighing individually from 112kg (F2) to 14.5kg (F4).²³

The striking of the bells is controlled by a digital system (the company hadn’t switched over to using MIDI yet), which fires a solenoid striker on the inside of each bell. Malay, Indian, and Chinese tunes were input “by keyboard” and stored on an EPROM.

After six months of delays stemming from permitting and construction issues, Scotts’ Festival Market was finally ready. A soft open for the press was set for February 7, 1992, followed by the official opening the next day, complete with a costumed parade down Boon Tat Street.

For the soft open, The Straits Times (charmingly) sent two Retirees, Mr. Paul Tay and Mr. Alan Buay — 62 and 76, respectively — to review the newly-designed market. “‘It’s quite unrecognizable, In fact, it looks luxurious,’ said Mr. Tay, ‘It’s clean, and the smell of raw meat is absent.’” The two “old-timers” thought the live entertainment would attract more tourists, but for locals just looking for a good meal, they found the loud music a bit distracting.²⁴

ST reported the cleaner, brighter decoration and upscale atmosphere were a welcome change… but the new food was only so-so. Quite unlike the current ring configuration, the Festival Market’s interior featured 14 hawker stands, six restaurants, and a pub, with most of the general seating in the center of the building. The market also housed retail shops selling a small menagerie of wares, from jewelry and tourist tchotchkes to designer handbags and leather goods. Small mezzanine terraces were built on top of retail space, providing seating for about 100 lucky second-storey diners. In the evening, 20 food carts were rolled out onto Boon Tat Street, operating until 3am.

But even these first reviews of the new market quickly found its Achilles’ heel: the poor ventilation. Though Renaissance had installed around 70 ceiling fans, this new arrangement of the interior simply didn’t permit enough airflow. The Business Times resignedly reported, “After all, what was Telok Ayer but a sweaty, tropical sort of place, right? And who can deny that its transformation has been a delicate balance between restoring the old, introducing the new, staying in the black, and being elegant about it.”²⁵

A standing-room-only crowd of 1,000 people showed up for the market’s official opening ceremony the next day. In fact, the outdoor food carts along Boon Tat Street in the evenings quickly proved to be so popular that they were forced to close for around two weeks to rework the logistics of serving 5,000 customers per night instead of the predicted 3,000. The cart hawkers were running out of food and the cleaning staff simply couldn’t keep up.²⁶

But the ventilation issues continued to hamstring the shops and restaurants in the Festival Market’s sweltering interior. Only four months later in April, ST reported a particularly dire scene: the patrons had slowed to a trickle. A hawker auntie selling curry puffs endured with a shrugged off “Bo pian” (No choice), and that “Only the Caucasians, injured by hours of masochistic sun-tanning, are in their element.” The Festival Market’s live entertainment (initially scheduled for six times daily) became less frequent as performers didn’t see the point in playing to an empty room. Renaissance repeatedly installed more fans and adjusted as best it could.²⁷

Part of the issue was that many of Telok Ayer’s original hawkers were unable to afford Scott’s significantly higher rents, and had instead elected to stay at the Transit Market (where they had been relocated during the MRT construction). And many of their regular customers — unable to stand the Festival Market’s stifling interior, or uninterested in the upscale atmosphere and higher prices — had likewise made the Transit Market their go-to spot.²⁸

Towards A Tropical City of Excellence

While Scotts was sweating it out with the Festival Market, the URA had continued to work at breakneck speed. Buoyed by a steady stream of revenue from land sales, the URA in the ’90s was on top of its game. As is still largely the case, international analysts looked on with a sort of awed bewilderment at the PAP government’s planning and development efficacy, and its unrestrained (largely net-positive) interventions into market dynamics.

The first major revision of the 1971 Concept Plan came in 1991. Here, the URA laid out plans in three stages: 2000, 2010, and “Year X” — when Singapore’s population would reach 4 million. This plan formally introduced the 5 main-island regions we know today (North, North-East, East, Central, and West) as a way to ease the overcrowding starting to appear once again in the newly-redeveloped Central Business District [CBD]. The plan was to build Regional Centers in each of the other 4 regions of the island: large developments, which would be split equally between business, and a mix of residential and commercial. Each of these Regional Centers would be connected to the CBD by MRT lines, with a smaller Subregional Center located halfway between the two.

1991 Concept Plan, via the URA. [29]

The 1991 plan was introduced to a general public in a glossy, full-color magazine with the totally rad title “Living The Next Lap: Towards A Tropical City Of Excellence.”²⁹ Here, the URA outlined the new plan with a mix of relevant stats and relatable off-the-cuff asides like “Imagine 13 new towns, all the size of Ang Mo Kio, rising out of the sea. Improbable? Well, presented like that, yes.”

Even in this sort of general-audience publication, discussion of land reclamation is woven throughout the entire document. From 1967 to 1988, the population of the island had grown by a third, and per-capita income had risen dramatically from $1,600 to $19,500. The economy showed no signs of slowing: the URA predicted 4–6% annual GDP growth through 2,000. All of these people and businesses (now enjoying a higher standard of living owing to the explosive uptick in their paychecks) had to go somewhere.

The magazine states, “The island measured 587 sq km in 1967 and 626 today (1991). By year X we expect Singapore to have increased its land mass by another 17% to 730 sq km.” The section “Development Directions” includes concept maps for 2000, 2010, and Year X, where the proposed new infill sites flow out from the edges of the island; an extra layer to the southwestern edge of Tuas; the seven islands off the southwest coast merge into a single entity: Jurong Island.

Finally, in Year X, a right-angled arm sprouts gloriously from the edge of the Queenstown district, the cluster of islands to the south merges into the singular Pulau Bukom, and Jurong Island extends its width by around a 3rd. To the east, Changi sprouts outwards with 3 new islands, and Pulau Tekong pushes southward into a point, like a guitar pick.

By September of 1993, Scotts holding reported a 1.4% drop in profit in an otherwise up year… resulting primarily from a $1.3m operating loss from Renaissance Properties’ restaurant division. These losses included the failure of two restaurants inside the festival market (a Mongolian hot plate, and steakhouse for those keeping score). The following years saw Renaissance continue to spiral, posting net losses of $1.63m in 93 and $1.9m for the financial year to June 30, 1994. By September of ’95, Scotts was ready to cut bait.²⁸

Scotts announced that it would sell the Festival market along with the remaining 26 years on the lease to Kopitiam† Investments for $8m (a $5m loss on the market’s $13m valuation). This sale only added insult to injury: after some questionable real estate sales in India the previous year, Renaissance was under investigation by the Commercial Affairs Division, a white-collar crime watchdog agency. Whoops!³⁰

In any event, Kopitiam’s M.O. of good food at a reasonable price seemed a perfect fit for bringing the market back to a standby lunch spot for office workers. They did, however, initially bat around some odd ideas, such as converting the market to a shopping center with professional clothing for the Downtown business women. Though this configuration was eventually abandoned, when the market re-opened it did have a handful of mobile carts with these sorts of wares.³¹

Kopitiam’s renovations totaled $4m, and introduced the “spoke and hub” layout — though originally this was configured as 8 unbroken “spokes” which ran all the way to the central ring. This configuration was selected to facilitate the installation of a greater number of smaller stalls and address the ventilation issues. The eight original airwells in the roof were also re-opened to assist airflow.³² The new market (now officially named “Lau Pa Sat”) opened on September 28, 1996.

A month after the reopening in early November, the Business Times reports a newly-invigorated scene: the market was once again swarming with locals on lunch break, gleefully queuing up for the next plate of fishball soup or kway teow at the “Mind-Boggling array of food stalls.”³³

Towards A Thriving World-Class City in the 21st Century

Fully embracing a gonzo proto-meme aesthetic, nary a layout escapes the 2001 Concept Plan without some sort of brightly-colored sans-serif text overlay like “City Living,” “Economically Vibrant,” or “High Value-Added Industries.” Smaller photos are overlaid on larger photos, all against full-bleed backdrops of unevenly resized and boldly colorized photos… the whole thing is just a glorious hot mess of a document.³⁴

The 2001 Concept Plan is amazing. via the URA [34]

But I digress. Excepting its slight over-reliance on buzzwords, The content of the plan (titled “Towards A Thriving World-Class City In The 21st Century”) is once again lucid and informally written. After a discussion of the new housing developments, the document assuages growing worries over urban fatigue by detailing some of the plans for the 4,500 ha scheduled to be reserved for green space. More parts of the central catchment were designated to be opened, and the 1991 plans for heavier development on Pulau Ubin and Lim Chu Kang were tabled in order to keep these locations rural (which they still largely are).

New arts and sports facilities are briefly introduced, before the plan goes Full Corporate: Pages littered with stock photos of hard-hatted petrochemical engineers, cleansuit-enrobed scientists, and successful executives overlaid with a graph jaggedly climbing up-and-to-the-right. Flowcharts! A section on cultural heritage preservation follows, addressing (still very relevant) concerns over how Singapore’s rapid modernization was effecting its 19th-century built environment.

Once again, discussion of land reclamation begins early and is mentioned often: “With only 660 square kilometers today, our main challenge in planning for Singapore is the scarcity of land. … Future reclamation can increase our existing land size by another 15 per cent. However, there is a limit to how much we can reclaim, as Singapore’s shoreline is not far from the boundaries of its neighbors.”

This sentiment turned out to be quite prescient, as the 2002 reclamation projects on the Northeastern island of Pulau Tekong and the western region of Tuas did in fact lead to international litigation with Malaysia. Malaysia claimed the reclamation projects “impinged on Malaysia’s territorial waters, caused pollution and other adverse harm to the marine environment in the Straits of Johor,” and invoked a provision from the UN’s 1982 Law of the Land And Sea. After a series of negotiations, the matter was settled in April of 2005 before going to trial in the Hague. The end result was a set of reasonably amicable stipulations relating to joint impact studies prior to further reclamation projects to the North of the island.³⁵

The most recent concept plan from 2011 is an inter-ministry collaboration, under the Ministry of National Development (including input from the URA and the National Population & Talent Division, among others).

The wild sugar rush of the 2001 plan is sanitized completely into a clean, no-nonsense look for the new 2013 report,³⁶ with only flat blue panels dividing sections and a single, staid sans-serif font used throughout. The text itself is likewise geared less towards casual readers, favoring a straightforward presentation of research over the fanciful analogies of yesteryear.

This latest document is far more comprehensive in detail than previous decades’, and (frankly) way less fun to read. From an academic standpoint, I appreciate the additional transparency — but from an a e s t h e t i c standpoint, it’s definitely a step in the wrong direction.

No News Is Good News

With Kopitiam’s more economical means of operation, the ventilation issues addressed, and a small army of thriving Hawker stalls, it was business as usual for Lau Pa Sat over the next two decades; only minor items pepper the news.

In July of 2001, Kopitam and Linksys teamed up to provide wireless access to the market — with the requisite of a $199 wireless LAN card.³⁷ During the 2003 Sars outbreak, The New Paper ran an item about Lau Pa Sat and the Adam Road hawker center. Though hawkers reported a dip in business and more customers ordering takeaway, both places were still packed at lunchtime. Businessman Raju KS commented, “I am not afraid of Sars. Life has to go on, we still have to eat.”³⁸

In July of 2005, a small fire accidentally broke out in a shared cooking area between two hawker stalls at 6:40pm. The SCDF sent 2 engines, and extinguished the blaze in about 5 minutes — before it could reach a nearby electrical room. Though the fire was quickly dealt with, the market’s interior remained closed and the gas shut off until around 9:00 — well after the typical dinner rush. Hawkers were thankful the fire didn’t spread and no one was injured, but some reported a few hundred dollars in lost income apiece.³⁹

The market closed for its most recent $4m renovation in September of 2013. The primary change was the removal of some interior stalls (from 90 down to 54) to create the inside “ring” walkway, allowing for lateral movement between the “spokes” without needing to walk all the way to the center. This also allowed for an increase in seating capacity, adding 460 more seats for a total of 2,500. The iron buttresses were repainted from white to their original green, and the tower clock (which had been broken for some time) was repaired. Six new restaurants with al fresco seating were added to the perimeter as well.⁴⁰

As seems to be the trend, the proposed 2-month renovation was repeatedly delayed due to “permitting issues” and inspection scheduling. Naturally, this caused problems for the hawkers, who found themselves needing to cover for several unanticipated months of lost income.⁴¹

The market finally reopened 9 months after its closure, on July 30, 2014. The re-opening ceremony was hosted by Gurmit Singh, along with live bands and a magic show. Kopitiam estimated around 20,000 people came to eat on the first full day of operation. Some regulars noted an increase in food prices, largely as a result of increased stall rents, from (on average) $3,700 to $4,700 a month.⁴²

None the less, diners were relieved to be able to visit their favorite stalls once again, and hawkers reported a slightly cooler environment, thanks to the interior reconfiguration and the addition of 8 overhead industrial fans.