The illusion of easy choices in Singapore’s land-use debate
A younger, more vocal environmental lobby increasingly casts development choices as moral binaries. But in land-scarce Singapore, trade-offs cannot be wished away.
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Attendees holding signs and placards at the Maju For The People rally at Hong Lim Park on Aug 16. Wishing away land-use trade-offs is no substitute for rigorous debate, the writer says.
ST PHOTO: JASON QUAH
Singapore’s latest land-use debate over proposed public housing developments in Maju Forest and Gillman Barracks, alongside plans to reclaim land for a new “western island”, are not new in substance.
In fact, such jousting is almost inevitable in a compact city-state where friction between development and preservation is a permanent state of affairs. Whether over the reclamation of Jurong Island in the 1990s, the graves at Bukit Brown in the early 2010s, or more recently Dover Forest and Tengah, the tensions have run along familiar lines.
