Speech by Minister Lawrence Wong at the Topping Out Ceremony of Paya Lebar Quarter

Jan 15, 2018

I am very happy to join you this morning for the topping out ceremony of Paya Lebar Quarter.

Paya Lebar conjures different memories for Singaporeans. The older folks may think about the large swampy area which was close to the Kallang River. In fact, that is what the words Paya Lebar mean in Malay – wide swamp. Many others will remember the Kampung villages that were in Paya Lebar. Of course, there are many who stay in the precinct and would call this place home. 

Over the years, Paya Lebar has developed, along with the rest of Singapore. Where farms previously stood, now we have offices and an industrial estate. Where there were kampungs, now we have HDB blocks and private apartments. 

In a way, the development that we see in Paya Lebar mirrors that of Singapore. We are constantly rejuvenating and refreshing our city. From the 1960s, we started turning the whole of Jurong from swamp land into a manufacturing estate. In the 1970s, we started developing our downtown area and later extended it to today’s Marina Bay.

Why do we have this constant obsession to change and improve our city, some people may ask?  The answer is simple. This is to give ourselves the best chance to provide a good life for Singaporeans. With an attractive city, we will have a competitive business centre that can create good jobs and opportunities for our people. We can then provide the best possible living environment and a good home for Singaporean families.

That is our objective. It is not just to build for the sake of building, or to get ranked at the top of league tables. 

We may have a limited amount of land in Singapore.  But we are certainly not limited in our ideas or imagination.  With good ideas and careful long-term planning, we have no lack of opportunities to build an even better city for the future. 

One major opportunity is our aim to create new regional centres outside of the downtown area all over our little island. We already have Tampines in the East – that was our first regional centre. It has worked well, and companies have moved there. Today, about half of the people living in Tampines work in Tampines itself. Commuting times are shortened, and people can live, work and play, all in the same precinct.

Our next regional centre is Jurong Lake District in the West which is coming up. This will be anchored by the upcoming High Speed Rail that connects Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Our third regional centre is up in the north, in Woodlands, where we are developing a new centre with the Rapid Transit System Link (RTS Link) to connect Singapore and Johor. 

Close to the Downtown area, there will be yet another regional centre at Paya Lebar Central. This offers an exciting opportunity for us to create a new commercial centre. It has distinctive advantages, as this will be the most centrally located commercial centre outside of the downtown area. It has wonderful transport connectivity, at the interchange of the East-West and Circle MRT lines. It is an excellent site for quality office spaces, co-working spaces, residential and mixed-use developments. I have looked at the plans Lendlease has developed – these are exciting indeed, and offer tremendous potential for the area.

As we go about developing these regional centres, we are very mindful that it’s more than just getting the business infrastructure right. We’re not just going for the biggest or tallest buildings – the kinds you can see in any other global city.

In fact, when people describe a city they enjoy, they rarely ever talk about the buildings within the city. They often describe the intangible qualities of the place, such as the energy, the life, the warmth, the vibrancy, and the graciousness.  That’s what we aim to achieve in Singapore too. 

We want to build a modern city with strong culture, heritage and roots, with people at the centre. We want to be a global city that is distinctively Singaporean, a place that we can all call home.

There is potential to do all of these here in Paya Lebar. We can have a modern commercial node, and at the same time, a neighbourhood that is rich with culture and heritage. The popular Geylang Serai Market is nearby. We also have the Wisma Geylang Serai Civic Centre, which will open later this year. 

To capture the unique characteristics and charm of Paya Lebar, we must make this a people-friendly precinct. I am happy to see that the plans for the development of Paya Lebar Central and Paya Lebar Quarter include a comprehensive network of walking and cycling paths, that are integrated with our park connector network. There is a wide range of public spaces for people to interact and come together.

More importantly, we need active place-making to inject ‘life’, programming and activities into these spaces. I will call on the developers and businesses at Paya Lebar Central to consider taking the lead to coordinate place-making efforts for the precinct. 

We have recently put in place a national framework for Business Improvement District (BID). We are piloting this for a start, but also contemplating legislation for this in future. I hope you will consider forming a BID here. You can then start thinking about the programming, and how there can be a good mix of activities to engage the working crowd, the resident population, and visitors to this precinct. 

With the right programming, the existing good urban infrastructure, coupled with its distinctive cultural and heritage offerings, Paya Lebar Central will be an attractive destination to both Singaporeans and tourists. 

These are exciting times for urban development in Singapore. We have just passed a major milestone in nation-building when we celebrated SG50 in 2015. Now, we are entering a new phase – to build our future city. 

We have significant investments in the pipeline – for infrastructure, for our airports in Changi and sea ports to be consolidated in the West, both of which will be doubled in capacity; for the different regional centres in Jurong and Woodlands, anchored by exciting projects like the HSR and RTS Link respectively. All of these will be ready in the next 10 years, up till 2030.  

We have also worked out plans for the post-2030 timeframe, including the movement of Paya Lebar Air Base to Changi and Tengah, which will free up 800 hectares of land, more than Ang Mo Kio or Bishan Town. Also, we will be able to further expand our Downtown area once our sea ports have moved out – the space to be freed up will be about three times of the current space of our existing Marina Bay. There are significant plans for us to continue building a better Singapore.

Paya Lebar Central is one part of our overall urban masterplan, and an important part of our urban transformation. I look forward to the completion of Paya Lebar Quarter, and to working with all our partners here to build an even better Singapore for the future.

Thank you very much, and have a good day ahead.