GE2025: Millennial town Bidadari is a new twist on an old plot

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SINGAPORE - New town Bidadari wears its history lightly.

The state-of-the-art park at its centre was, for the better part of the 20th century, a cemetery. Before that, a palace housing the second wife of the Johor sultan sat on the land.

Its Build-To-Order flats that provoked feverish oversubscription at launch are in the Potong Pasir constituency, once the longest-held opposition seat of Mr Chiam See Tong, the gentleman of the other side whose 27-year tenure there colours recent political history.

Now, 14 years after the PAP flipped the turf, do old bones still pull at new Bidadarians?

It is day seven of the hustings on April 29 and the first thing one notices in the township’s only mall is the profusion of children and child-centric shops. With the exception of a nail salon – because mothers need pampering too – the top floor of Woodleigh mall is all clinics advertising paediatric skill and enrichment centres.

Downstairs, upmarket cafes appeal to the yuppie-tinged palates of young parents in their 30s who take up a good chunk of the 8,872 flats that will be ready here.

One of them, Ms Rachel Lee, cuts to the chase: “Estate upgrading doesn’t trouble me during voting. National issues are more important than local.” Besides, she adds, the hardest part is already over.

“When we first moved in, the mall was not yet open. We had to go to Potong Pasir and Serangoon to get groceries. Now it’s really good,” she says, an assessment echoed by other residents.

There is evidence of intense development. Up and running after a three-year delay is

a spanking new bus interchange

, a hop away from the Woodleigh MRT station and bordering the latest entrant, an open-air hawker centre.

Granular changes are flying in fast, like a seafood stall serving whole steamed pomfrets at $10 that opened the day before and bus service 148 that since early April has connected Bidadari to Potong Pasir – depositing visitors such as a 78-year-old retiree who tells The Straits Times: “I’m here with my whole group!”

A resident concedes the infrastructure in Bidadari is “a little lacking” but says it is “really about waiting for the township to build up”. The 45-year-old father, who works in transport, says his vote is for the people of Singapore and the future of his children.

It is a sharp departure from the municipal battlelines of old. Opposition-held Potong Pasir had once defined a now-retired political playbook of “last in line” upgrades for constituencies not warm to the PAP. By the turn of the millennium, the estate resembled the shabby cousin of whiter precincts, the ski slope roofs of its flats that in 1984 had made the cover of the Housing Board’s annual report, darkened by potholes.

The then-PAP contender Sitoh Yih Pin would run three election campaigns pledging coveted works like covered walkways, brighter corridors and lifts that stopped on every floor. In 2006, he promised an $80 million masterplan if elected and five years later, secured his historic win.

Today, Bidadarians agree they lucked out. Mother-of-one Rachel Sim enjoys a view of

the roughly 13ha park

from her flat.

Inspired by Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood, the park has marshlands, thick groves, rolling hills and trails primed for spotting migratory birds that come from as far as Russia – shrikes, warblers and flycatchers. In the afternoon, the 31-year-old enjoys walking through the rooftop gardens of the Woodleigh Glen estate.

“They (the planning authorities) have done the living-among-nature thing quite well. There are a lot of nice places to chill, so I don’t feel like I’m living in a huge residential estate,” she says.

Its prime central location is another big sweetener, with some of the earliest completed BTO flats fetching over a million on the resale market. But Ms Sim, a scientist, is not thinking of selling. “It’s been very nice living here. We’re settling in,” she says.

Resident Marcus Tan is more explicit: “The cash is tempting but we don’t know anywhere else we would trade this for.” In the manner of old Potong Pasir, it seems Bidadarians cannot be bought.

Relationships – that solidifed the wins of, first, Mr Chiam, and then three-term MP Mr Sitoh – also tug at the hearts of millennial voters.

There will be a changing of the guard this election as Mr Sitoh retires and lawyer Alex Yeo takes over as the PAP hopeful. His rivals are the head of opposition coalition People’s Alliance For Reform Lim Tean, and Mr Williiamson Lee, of the Singapore People’s Party once led by Mr Chiam. It is a match-up with strains of a history now distant and diluted.

Ms Sim says her vote was decided after meeting the PAP and SPP candidates. The proximity of her flat to the new hawker centre meant she endured much construction noise, and road works are still ongoing, she says.

“Part of it is how the MP handles this, their responsiveness,” she says of her considerations at the ballot. “Mr Sitoh was quite on the ball with our questions about when the hawker centre will open and that was the consolation.”

Leaving this little Eden, one gets the sense that these growing pains will ease. Its denizens say the “stuff” will get built and share an optimism for greater neighbourly feeling as roots are laid down.

After all, the young homeowners know they are no longer last in line.