Sembawang is a planning area and residential town located in the North Region of Singapore. Sembawang planning area is bordered by Simpang to the east, Mandai to the south, Yishun to the southeast, Woodlands to the west and the Straits of Johor to the north.
The Housing & Development Board, is a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development responsible for the public housing in Singapore. Established in 1960 as a result of efforts in the late 1950s to set up an authority to take over the Singapore Improvement Trust's (SIT) public housing responsibilities, the HDB focused on the construction of emergency housing and the resettlement of kampong residents into public housing in the first few years of its existence.
Clementi is a planning area and residential town located at the easternmost fringe of the West Region of Singapore. The town borders Bukit Batok to the north, Bukit Timah to the northeast, Queenstown to the east and Jurong East to the west.
Marsiling is a suburb of Woodlands, Singapore, extends from the north of Woodlands Square to the Woodlands Checkpoint, bordering Malaysia. It presents the older living patterns of Singapore; it is a quieter and much denser estate, often offering a reasonable and larger alternative to other housing options, and houses a large number of elderly and heavy-duty industries.
Queenstown is a planning area and satellite residential town situated on the south-westernmost fringe of the Central Region of Singapore. It borders Bukit Timah to the north, Tanglin to the northeast, Bukit Merah to the east and southeast, as well as Clementi to the northwest and west. Its southern and southwesternmost limits are bounded by the Pandan Strait.
The Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme, or SERS for short, is an urban redevelopment strategy employed by the Housing and Development Board in Singapore in maintaining and upgrading public housing flats in older estates in the city-state. Launched in August 1995, it involves a small selection of specific flats in older estates which undergo demolition and redevelopment to optimise land use, as opposed to upgrading of existing flats via the Main Upgrading and Interim Upgrading Programmes. To date, 82 SERS sites have been announced, of which 77 were completed. The implementation of SERS also depends on the availability of replacement sites and the Government's financial resources. It will be replaced by Voluntary Early Redevelopment Scheme (VERS) in 20 years time.
The Main Upgrading Programme, or MUP, was formally launched as the Singapore government’s pioneer housing upgrading programme in 1992, by then Prime Minister Mr Goh Chok Tong. Under the MUP, residents enjoyed an improved living environment without the need to move out from their familiar surroundings. The MUP has been brought to 128 precincts island-wide, benefitting 131,000 households.
Lim Kim San was a Singaporean businessman, civil servant, and politician who served as a Cabinet minister with a variety of portfolios between 1965 and 1981. Prior to his tenure as a member of parliament, Lim was appointed chairman of Singapore's newly created Housing & Development Board (HDB), and he would go on to be recognized for the HDB's success in its resolution of Singapore's housing shortage.
Sengkang is a planning area and residential town located in the North-East Region of Singapore. The town is the second most populous in the region, being home to 249,370 residents in 2020. Sengkang shares boundaries with Seletar and Punggol in the north, Pasir Ris and Paya Lebar in the east, Hougang and Serangoon to the south, as well as Yishun and Ang Mo Kio to the west.
Build to order (BTO) is a real estate development scheme enacted by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), a statutory board responsible for Singapore's public housing. First introduced in 2001, it consists of a flat allocation system that offers flexibility in timing and location for owners buying new public housing residences in the country.
Lift Upgrading Programme (LUP) is a Singapore Housing and Development Board (HDB) project which upgrades and improves the facilities of the lifts at HDB flats. This project is for housing blocks built before the year 1996, which were built with lifts that only serve some floors to meet privacy demands and to cut costs. A poll with a 75% majority in favor is needed for the upgrading to begin. The non-citizen residents who stay in the same HDB block have no polling rights.
Josephine Teo Li Min is a Singaporean politician who has been serving as Minister for Communications and Information, Minister-in-charge of the Cyber Security Agency and Smart Nation Initiative since 2021 and Second Minister for Home Affairs since 2017. A member of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), she has been the Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Kreta Ayer–Kim Seng division of Jalan Besar GRC since 2020.
Public housing in Singapore is subsidised, built, and managed by the Government of Singapore. Starting in the 1930s, the country's first public housing was built by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) in a similar fashion to contemporaneous British public housing projects, and housing for the resettlement of squatters was built from the late 1950s. In the 1960s under the SIT's successor, the Housing and Development Board (HDB), public housing consisting of small units with basic amenities was constructed as quickly and cheaply as possible at high densities and used for resettlement schemes. From the late 1960s, housing programmes focused more on quality, public housing was built in new towns, and a scheme allowing residents to lease their flats was introduced. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, more public housing options were provided for the middle class and efforts to increase community cohesion within housing estates were made. From the 1990s, the government began portraying public housing as an asset, introducing large-scale upgrading schemes and loosening regulations on the resale of public housing while additional housing programmes for the sandwich classes and elderly residents were introduced. Rising housing prices led to public housing being seen as an investment from the 2000s, and new technologies and eco-friendly features were incorporated into housing estates.
Singaporean communitarianism was founded by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1959 under the People's Action Party (PAP).
The new towns of Singapore are planned communities located across Singapore that are designed to be self contained. Designed to house up to 300,000 residents, these new towns contain areas zoned for housing, recreation and employment, and are composed of multiple neighbourhoods, each of which is further subdivided into multiple precincts. Amenities in these new towns are provided through a multi-tiered system, and based on Housing and Development Board (HDB) guidelines. As of 2022, the country has 24 new towns.
Chan Chun Sing is a Singaporean politician and former major-general who has been serving as Minister for Education since 2021 and Minister-in-charge of Public Service since 2018. A member of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Buona Vista division of Tanjong Pagar GRC since 2011.
Whampoa is a housing estate located in the subzone of Balestier, which is a part of Novena planning area in Singapore, as defined by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Within the context of the Housing and Development Board (HDB), however, Whampoa forms part of the Kallang/Whampoa New Town, together with the various housing precincts located in the adjacent Kallang planning area. This makes Kallang/Whampoa the only HDB new town that encompasses two planning areas, namely Novena and Kallang.
Dakota Crescent is one of Singapore’s oldest housing estates built by Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), the government development authority, in 1958.
Aline Wong is a Singaporean sociologist and former politician. She was one of the first women Parliament members in Singapore, elected in 1984. She went on to have a career in both politics and education. In 2001, she retired from politics, but continued to be active in the community and in education. In 2015, she became the first woman in Singapore to hold the position of chancellor, working at SIM University.
In Singapore, a town council (TC) is an entity formed by at least one elected Member of Parliament (MP) and appointed residents who are responsible for the day-to-day operations in managing the common property of the Housing and Development Board (HDB) residential flats and commercial property within the town. The sizes and structure of a town council can be changed due to political electoral changes. It is often considered a very limited form of local government that are strictly limited to estate management, and where their members have no separation of powers from the national government. As of November 2020, there are 17 town councils operating in Singapore.
