Singapore's Age Is Showing in Its Latest Draft Masterplan — And That's a Good Thing

Hanging in the atrium and pasted on the glass walls of The URA Centre in Maxwell Road are portraits of people — members of the public, activists, architects, and others who call Singapore home.

- Ng Keng Gene

Some of them were among nearly 220,000 people who took part in a months-long exercise to put together a new blueprint that will chart the country's development for the next 10 to 15 years.

Unveiled by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on June 25, in Singapore's 60th year of independence, the Draft Master Plan 2025 and its accompanying exhibition show Singapore's age — and that is a good thing.

Initiatives under the blueprint demonstrate that Singapore is now old enough and eager to tell its story through its conservation programme or by other means of remembrance.

While Singapore's unlikely and rapid growth since independence has been well documented, the country's post-independence buildings have been under-represented in the more than 7,200 buildings and structures conserved thus far.

At the launch of the draft masterplan exhibition, URA announced a thematic framework that will improve the way it assesses buildings' significance, by considering how they contributed to Singapore's history under at least one of four themes — economy, housing, social, and defence.

On top of the architectural, historic, traditional, and aesthetic lenses through which buildings are considered for conservation, the thematic framework broadens the scope used to assess buildings, and considers what they mean in Singapore's story — and to Singaporeans.

The exhibition hints at the buildings and sites that the authorities have in mind.

URA cited Prima Flour Mill in Keppel Road, which started operations in 1963 as Singapore's first flour mill, as well as Selegie House, also completed in 1963 as the country's then tallest mixed-use development.

The hope is that as Singapore turns 60, this renewed emphasis on telling the nation's story, as well as a more holistic heritage framework, will prevent another nationally loved building — like the old National Library — from being lost to redevelopment.