Urban System Studies Built by Singapore From Slums to a Sustainable Built Environment

From a rural town of overcrowded squatters to a modern cosmopolitan city with world-class urban infrastructure, Singapore has undergone tremendous transformation over the past five decades. The early years of our nation building were largely focused on tackling the urgent housing shortage under the constraints of insufficient resources. In the late 1970s to early 1980s, asSingapore entered an era of intensive building activities of increased scale and complexity, the priority started to shift towards mechanisation and labour saving. Subsequently, as the city-state further prospered, greater emphasis was placed on ensuring the sustainability and inclusiveness of our built environment. This study reviews this development journey of Singapore’s construction sector, charts the evolution of priorities along the way, and provides an analysis of how the built environment has played a crucial part in the making of a modern city-state with rapidly changing needs and challenges.