Imagine a HDB estate. Visualise its unadorned blocks, concrete corridors, faceless void decks, maze of car parks. Now scratch all that from your mind – because the public housing developer has stunned almost everyone with its ambitious plans for Tengah. Let’s just say it’s gonna be really green.
True to Singapore’s reputation as a ‘city in a garden’, the western neighbourhood about the size of Bishan is slated to be the island’s first ‘forest town’. That is to say: it’ll be seamlessly and sensitively integrated with the area’s flora and fauna, claims HDB. A 5-kilometre-long, 100-metre-wide rainforest corridor – with incorporated hiking trails, no less – will even connect Tengah to other pockets of green, namely the Western Water Catchment Area and the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. And the entire town will be ringed with an unbroken swathe of, you guessed it, more lush leaves.
Five themed districts, totalling 30,000 public and 12,000 private units, will wrap around a central park that’s billed as the jewel of Tengah. Linear ‘community farmways’ within the districts will let residents bond over urban farming, while dedicated walking and cycling networks will be built alongside every single road in the estate. Oh, and did we mention the Tengah Town Centre, itself set in a park, will be entirely car-free? Motorists will instead have to cruise underneath the town centre to get around.
Props where it’s due: this is looking like it’ll be Singapore’s most liveable housing estate, private ones included.
The first batch of flats in Tengah will launch in 2018.