Up to 20,000 homes, including public housing, planned for new Turf City estate in Bukit Timah
The 176-ha plot sits among some of Singapore’s most prime residential real estate, facing multi-million dollar houses in the GCB areas of Swiss Club Road and Binjai Park. This will be the first time in almost 40 years where public housing is planned in Bukit Timah. Most analysts expect four-room BTO flats in the new estate, likely to be classed as Prime flats, to range from $500,000 to $700,000 if launched in the near-term.
Turf City was a popular horse racing venue between 1993 and 1999, before the Singapore Turf Club relocated to Kranji to ease traffic congestion in the area. Plans to close the club were announced in 2023 to make way for more housing in Kranji, and the Turf Club will run its last race in October 2024.
Since 1998, the Turf City site in Bukit Timah has been largely zoned under the URA Master Plan for residential use to cater to future housing needs. It was leased out to tenants including childcare providers, motor vehicle dealers, food and beverage outlets and sports facilities until the end of 2023.
Holland-Bukit Timah GRC MP Sim Ann, whose Bukit Timah ward includes the former Turf City site, said at the exhibition launch that while the plans to develop the area are not a surprise to the residents, the addition of public housing may draw mixed reactions among them. “Some would welcome it because they would see it as an opportunity for more affordable housing options,” she said, adding this could allow younger residents to live near their parents. Others, she said, may “need time to digest this change, because it is after all a change in the neighbourhood”.
With the planned injection of high-density public housing, residents can look forward to publicly funded amenities that would otherwise not be available in less densely populated areas, she said.
More Public Housing To Come in Landed Housing Enclaves?
In the first half of this year alone, we have seen the government announced public housing in 3 predominantly landed property enclaves such as Kembangan, Mount Sinai and now Bukit Timah.
For Kembangan, it is set to be the first HDB project in over 30 years for the estate. With a higher populated area, there will be more amenities planned in the area but yet the current residents prefer that the plot of land remain untouched. They have even started a petition to protest against the new development.
Granted the Mount Sinai redevelopment site is actually just across the road to the Ghim Moh HDB neighbourhood, it may not come as a big surprise to the residents in the landed estates. However the Mount Sinai Road is only served by two single lane roads and may cause traffic congestion in the future with the increase in the number of high rise flats. Further this is considered to be in Prime District 10, the Core Central Region in Singapore.
Last but not least, the familiar private residential estate of Bukit Timah where most of us associate the area as where the affluent lives in for the past 40 years. With the change in demographics, would this bring about a change in perception? And the area is already choking with traffic during peak and off-peak hours.
Perhaps in future we would have public housing sprout up in the Thomson, Newton, Novena, Opera Estate, Goodman and Orchard landed property areas. This is also a reminder that Singapore is looking to increase housing capacity and that it is willing to make tough decisions to achieve that.
However Singapore should also be mindful to maintain an exclusive area for the affluent especially when we are competing with bigger nations to attract top foreign talent into the city-state. As much as we want social inclusiveness, it may not be wise to “break” the character of a neighbourhood that Singaporeans used to know, otherwise there would not be any special attributes in any particular neighbourhood. Perhaps this is the “give-and-take” for owning freehold land that the State can’t “touch” during peacetime.
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