Relocation of Paya Lebar Airbase can make space for 150,000 new units
"We can completely reimagine the Eastern part of Singapore"
A new town with some 150,000 new homes can be built on the land where the Paya Lebar Airbase now sits, says Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the National Day Rally on Aug 21.
This number of units is equivalent to the size of Punggol and Sengkang estates today.
The relocation of the airbase will take place in the 2030s and was already announced years earlier. The airbase was where Singapore’s international airport, Paya Lebar was sited, before Changi was built.
At his speech on Aug 21, Lee says the airbase’s 3.8-km-long runway can be repurposed as the newly-built town’s “central spine” and be turned into a “green connector” or community space extending from one end of town to the other.
“It will be a distinctive and attractive heritage feature, unique to Paya Lebar,” says Lee.
The runway is aligned along the direction of prevailing winds, for aircraft to avoid crosswinds as they take off and land.
According to Lee, the future town can be oriented this way too, parallel to the runway. “That should make the town naturally breezy.”
The shift of the air base away from the existing site can allow massive redevelopment of surrounding regions of Marine Parade, Hougang and Punggol.
For one, with height restrictions lifted, buildings under or near the flight path in and out of the airbase will no longer be subjected to height requirements.
The redevelopment will take not take place overnight. “But over decades, we can completely reimagine the Eastern part of Singapore,” says Lee.
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