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History of Singapore | Tiong Bahru

Three students sit around open books and worksheets at a classroom table, reading, writing and discussing the work together.

History of Singapore | Tiong Bahru follows one of Singapore’s most distinctive neighbourhoods from Chinese burial grounds and farmland to Singapore Improvement Trust public housing, pre-war air-raid shelters, post-war flats, community institutions, market culture, conservation, gentrification and today’s careful renewal inside Bukit Merah.

Tiong Bahru is famous for curved flats, cafés and heritage walks. That modern image is real, but it is only the newest layer.

National Heritage Board’s Tiong Bahru Heritage Trail explains that the name combines the Hokkien word “tiong”, meaning grave, with the Malay “bahru” or “baru”, meaning new. The area was known as the “new cemetery” in contrast with older burial grounds nearer the General Hospital.

The housing story begins with the Singapore Improvement Trust. Tiong Bahru became one of SIT’s earliest major public-housing estates in the 1930s. HDB’s current Bukit Merah Town Design Guide treats Tiong Bahru as “Charming Streets”, where conserved pre-war flats and heritage post-war SIT blocks create a low-rise walkable identity that future development should respect.

This page sits inside the larger History of Singapore | Singapore Atlas, History of Singapore | Bukit Merah and How Singapore Works spine. Local eduKateSG routes include Things to do for Kids | Learning Tiong Bahru, Tutors | Tiong Bahru, Education and Tuition | Tiong Bahru and the local Additional Mathematics pages.

The main questions are:

  • Why is Tiong Bahru called “new cemetery”?
  • What was there before the flats?
  • Why did SIT build here?
  • What made the pre-war flats architecturally unusual?
  • Why was an air-raid shelter built into Block 78?
  • How did the Japanese Occupation affect the estate?
  • How did post-war SIT flats differ from pre-war blocks?
  • Why are the market, bird corner and community centre so important to local memory?
  • How did conservation and gentrification change the neighbourhood?
  • How is Tiong Bahru being renewed today without losing its low-rise character?

Before the Estate: Graves and Farmland

Before the early twentieth century, much of the land around modern Tiong Bahru was used for Chinese burial grounds and farming.

The area sat outside the most intensively developed parts of the city.

Low hills, graves, vegetable plots and tracks shaped the local landscape.

The neighbourhood’s modern density therefore replaced a very different social geography.


The Meaning of Tiong Bahru

Tiong means grave or tomb in Hokkien.

Bahru or baru means new in Malay.

The phrase distinguished newer cemetery land from older burial grounds closer to the General Hospital.

The name is a mixed-language place name, combining Chinese dialect and Malay in one phrase.


Burial Ground Road

Before the name Tiong Bahru Road became common, the road was known as Burial Ground Road.

The older name described what the route did: it led into an area dominated by cemeteries.

Road names often begin as functional descriptions before becoming formal identity.

The later name kept the burial meaning but in a less obvious form.


Old Cemetery and New Cemetery

The word “new” only makes sense because there was an older cemetery landscape nearby.

This reveals how residents understood the area relationally rather than as an isolated estate.

Tiong Bahru was part of a wider burial geography stretching toward Outram and the hospital district.

Modern planning boundaries hide that older relationship.


Tan Tock Seng’s Graves

The graves of Tan Tock Seng, Chua Seah Neo and Wuing Neo survive near Outram Road.

National Heritage Board includes them in the Tiong Bahru Heritage Trail.

The site shows how burial history continues physically at the neighbourhood edge even after most cemeteries disappeared.

Family memory, philanthropy and land ownership intersect here.


Farmland Beside the Cemeteries

Not all land was burial ground.

Small farms and gardens occupied parts of the area.

Residents grew food and used low-density land close to the city.

This mixed landscape of graves and agriculture was replaced gradually rather than in one instant.


Why the City Needed New Housing

By the 1920s and 1930s, central Singapore faced severe overcrowding and poor living conditions.

The Singapore Improvement Trust was tasked with urban improvement and housing work.

Tiong Bahru offered enough land close to the city to test planned residential development.

Its location made it attractive even though the terrain and cemetery history created constraints.


Singapore Improvement Trust

SIT was formed in 1920.

Its powers and resources were far more limited than those HDB would later receive.

Yet SIT established important precedents in planned housing, road layout and estate design.

Tiong Bahru became one of its most significant projects.


Clearing the Land

Building the estate required graves, informal housing and terrain to be dealt with.

Land preparation is the hidden first stage of public housing.

Roads, drains and building plots must be created before flats can rise.

The elegant finished estate hides a large amount of earlier engineering and social disruption.


1930s Public Housing

SIT began building low-rise flats and shophouses in Tiong Bahru during the 1930s.

The estate was designed partly to house residents displaced from overcrowded inner-city areas.

Its blocks were far more planned and sanitary than many existing urban dwellings.

Tiong Bahru therefore belongs to Singapore’s pre-HDB modernisation story.


Why the Flats Look Different

The pre-war blocks use rounded corners, horizontal bands and curved stairwells associated with Streamline Moderne and Art Deco influences.

The style reflected international fascination with speed, machines, ships and modern transport.

The forms looked futuristic in the 1930s.

Today, they look historic because modernity itself has aged.


Ships on Land

Residents and architectural writers often compare the curved balconies and staircases with ships.

That analogy helps explain the aesthetic even though the blocks were not literally designed as vessels.

Modern architectural language often borrowed from industrial technology.

Tiong Bahru turned those ideas into public housing.


Flat Roofs and Clean Lines

The estate’s flat roofs and strong horizontal lines distinguish it from pitched-roof colonial housing.

Simple façades made the blocks look modern and efficient.

The visual discipline also helped create a coherent streetscape across several blocks.

The neighbourhood works architecturally because the buildings relate to one another.


Low Rise, High Identity

Most pre-war Tiong Bahru flats are only a few storeys high.

That scale allows streets to feel intimate and walkable.

Residents can see activity at ground level rather than being separated by great height.

HDB’s current design guidance explicitly values this low-rise character.


The Horse-Shoe Block

Block 78 around Moh Guan Terrace and Guan Chuan Street was built between 1939 and 1940.

Its curved form creates a distinctive enclosure and is commonly known as the Horse-Shoe Block.

The geometry makes it one of the estate’s strongest landmarks.

Architecture gives the neighbourhood memory through shape.


The Air-Raid Shelter

A large civilian air-raid shelter was built below the Horse-Shoe Block in 1939.

National Heritage Board notes that it could accommodate up to about 1,600 people.

It was the only purpose-built public air-raid shelter incorporated into a public-housing project in Singapore.

War preparation entered the architecture before war reached the island.


Why Build a Shelter into Housing?

Air power changed civilian vulnerability.

A modern housing estate could no longer assume that war stayed at military bases.

Shelters reduced exposure to bombing and provided protected gathering space.

The shelter is therefore a direct link between global geopolitics and neighbourhood design.


The Second World War

When war reached Singapore in 1942, Tiong Bahru residents experienced air raids, shortages and occupation.

The estate itself was not one of the main bombing targets, but fear and disruption were island-wide.

The air-raid shelter became evidence that pre-war planners had anticipated aerial danger.

Ordinary domestic space had a wartime function waiting underneath it.


Occupation Changes Daily Life

Japanese rule changed food supply, movement, language and security.

Residents adapted to shortages and uncertainty.

Markets and neighbourhood relationships became even more important when formal supply systems were stressed.

Local history brings national occupation down to household scale.


Post-War SIT Housing

After the war, SIT built additional four-storey flats between 1948 and 1954.

These post-war blocks are simpler in appearance than the pre-war Streamline Moderne flats.

The estate therefore contains two distinct SIT architectural generations.

A short walk becomes a design timeline.


Pre-War and Post-War Comparison

Pre-war blocks use stronger curves and decorative modernist gestures.

Post-war blocks emphasise simpler façades and practical repetition.

The difference reflects changing budgets, materials and housing urgency.

Architecture records economic context as well as taste.


The Outram Edge

The eastern edge of Tiong Bahru links toward Outram and the old hospital district.

Roads and burial history connect the neighbourhood to Chinatown and the Singapore General Hospital area.

This edge is historically older than the modern idea of Tiong Bahru as a self-contained café neighbourhood.

Urban districts are always connected to wider systems.


Gongshang School

The hill near the graves of Tan Tock Seng also housed Gongshang School from 1930 to 1988.

The school brought daily student movement into a landscape associated with burial memory.

Education reused and reinterpreted the urban edge.

The site shows how institutions stack over older land meanings.


Qi Tian Gong

Tiong Bahru Qi Tian Gong, popularly known as the Monkey God Temple, began in 1920.

The temple grew from a small attap structure into a major community institution.

It preserved religious practice through the transformation from cemetery edge to public-housing estate.

Community institutions often outlast the land use that first surrounded them.


Hu Lu Temple

A former temple near the Seng Poh Road junction was remembered for a large red gourd-shaped incense burner.

The object made the site instantly recognisable.

Even after the temple disappeared, oral memory preserved its importance.

Small landmarks can be more socially memorable than large formal buildings.


Bird Corner

Across from the former temple, a bird corner became a famous social gathering point.

Bird owners brought caged songbirds while residents ate and talked nearby.

The corner connected hobby, food and community.

It became one of the neighbourhood’s most beloved ordinary institutions.


Why the Bird Corner Matters

The bird corner was not expensive infrastructure.

Its value came from repeated social use.

This is a powerful lesson for planners: community can form around simple spaces when people have reasons to return.

Not every successful public space needs monumental design.


Seng Poh Market

The market became the commercial heart of Tiong Bahru.

Residents bought fresh food and daily necessities there.

Hawkers served meals and built regular customer relationships.

The market made the estate self-sufficient in everyday life.


Tiong Bahru Market and Food Centre

The current market and food centre continues the older market role in a newer building.

Many visitors come specifically for hawker food, while residents still use the wet market.

The building serves neighbourhood and tourism at the same time.

Function provides continuity even when architecture changes.


Hawker Memory

Food stalls can survive through recipes, family succession and customer loyalty.

A stall may move within the market while retaining identity.

Food heritage is therefore portable.

The market preserves social continuity more than any single physical stall.


Tiong Bahru Community Centre

Tiong Bahru Community Centre was established in the late 1940s.

It is among the oldest community centres in Singapore.

The institution provided recreation, classes and gathering space.

Public housing became stronger when residents had places to organise community life.


Community Centres before Independence

Community organisation did not begin after independence.

Late-colonial neighbourhoods already experimented with local clubs and centres.

These institutions helped residents manage activities and social ties.

Post-independence community policy built on earlier experience.


Seng Poh Garden

Seng Poh Garden introduced landscaped recreation into the estate.

Green space helped balance the density of flats and roads.

A neighbourhood garden creates slower, social space beside more functional movement routes.

Landscape became part of the estate’s identity.


Dancing Girl Sculpture

The Dancing Girl sculpture by Lim Nang Seng became a local landmark in Seng Poh Garden.

Public art adds another layer of meaning to ordinary neighbourhood space.

The sculpture is not separate from housing history.

It shows how mature estates accumulate culture after basic needs are met.


The Estate after HDB

When HDB replaced SIT in 1960, Tiong Bahru did not disappear.

The older flats remained while new HDB development expanded elsewhere in Bukit Merah.

The neighbourhood became a living contrast between pre-HDB and HDB housing systems.

This is one reason the estate is unusually valuable historically.


Tiong Bahru Road

Tiong Bahru Road connects Redhill and central Bukit Merah to Outram.

The road continues the neighbourhood’s older role as a corridor.

Bus routes and later MRT access intensified movement.

The estate remained connected rather than becoming a preserved enclave.


Tiong Bahru MRT

Tiong Bahru MRT opened on the East–West Line in the late 1980s.

The station sits west of the conserved pre-war estate but serves the broader neighbourhood.

Rail greatly improved access to the city and Queenstown.

A heritage area became part of a modern rapid-transit network.


Tiong Bahru Plaza

Tiong Bahru Plaza introduced mall retail beside the MRT.

The commercial form differs sharply from the shophouses and market of the old estate.

Both systems continue to coexist.

Residents can move between traditional market, café shophouse and modern mall within one neighbourhood.


Conservation

The pre-war Tiong Bahru estate received conservation protection because of its architectural and historical importance.

Conservation helps retain block form, streetscape and distinctive details.

The aim is not to stop change completely.

It is to manage change so the neighbourhood remains recognisable.


Why Conserve Public Housing?

Heritage is often associated with temples, palaces or colonial monuments.

Tiong Bahru shows that ordinary housing can be equally important.

The flats record how people lived and how government approached urban problems.

Public housing is national history because most Singaporeans experience the city through housing.


Living Heritage

Conserved flats remain homes and shops.

Residents cook, sleep, renovate and age there.

Businesses change.

The estate is heritage precisely because it continues to function.


The Café Era

From the 2000s onward, cafés, boutiques and creative businesses increasingly moved into Tiong Bahru.

The low-rise architecture and central location attracted new visitors and residents.

The neighbourhood gained a fashionable reputation.

This produced both economic revival and tension.


Gentrification

Gentrification describes the process by which investment and higher-income demand change a neighbourhood’s businesses, rents and population.

In Tiong Bahru, cafés and boutiques increased attention to the estate.

Longtime residents sometimes experienced the changes differently from new visitors.

The process is neither purely positive nor purely negative.


Heritage Tourism

Visitors come to photograph architecture, eat at the market and explore heritage sites.

Tourism can support businesses and appreciation of history.

It can also increase crowding and commercial pressure.

A living neighbourhood has to balance visitor interest with resident life.


Bookshops and Creative Businesses

Independent bookshops and design-oriented businesses added a literary and creative identity to Tiong Bahru.

The architecture and scale of old shophouses suit small specialty enterprises.

This is another example of adaptive reuse supporting a new economy.

Old buildings become economically useful without losing their form.


The Value of Small Shops

Small retail units allow independent businesses to operate without needing mall-scale space.

Fine-grained property creates economic diversity.

This is one reason conserved shophouse streets can feel more varied than large retail complexes.

Urban form influences business ecology.


Property Value and Conservation

Conservation can make heritage areas more desirable.

Higher demand may increase property prices and rents.

This creates a paradox: protecting buildings can change the social composition around them.

Heritage policy therefore interacts with housing economics.


The Estate as a Walking Neighbourhood

Short blocks, low-rise buildings and connected streets make Tiong Bahru easy to explore on foot.

Ground-floor shops and markets reward walking.

The neighbourhood demonstrates why small-scale street networks support social life.

Walkability is partly inherited from the original plan.


Shade and Tropical Streets

Tree cover, building projections and narrow streets reduce heat exposure.

Walking comfort matters in Singapore’s climate.

The neighbourhood’s low-rise scale creates a different thermal and visual environment from high-rise estates.

Urban design can be felt before it is measured.


HDB’s Charming Streets Guidance

HDB’s Bukit Merah Town Design Guide calls Tiong Bahru “Charming Streets”.

The guidance emphasises protecting low-rise scale, historic character and walkable street fronts.

New development should therefore respond to the neighbourhood rather than overwhelm it.

Heritage is treated as a design constraint and an asset.


Remaking Our Heartland

Tiong Bahru sits inside Bukit Merah’s Remaking Our Heartland programme.

Neighbourhood centres, links, public spaces and ageing-friendly features are being upgraded across the town.

Renewal in Tiong Bahru requires extra care because the estate’s historic character is unusually strong.

Mature-town improvement must avoid making every neighbourhood look the same.


Senior-Friendly Renewal

Bukit Merah has a large older population.

HDB’s renewal plans include more seating, ramps, sheltered walkways and easier wayfinding.

These changes matter in Tiong Bahru, where older blocks and streets were not designed to modern accessibility standards.

Heritage and universal design have to work together.


Tiong Bahru Orchid

The broader Tiong Bahru area includes newer HDB estates such as Tiong Bahru Orchid.

This creates a useful contrast between conserved pre-war housing and contemporary public housing.

The neighbourhood is not frozen in the 1930s.

New layers continue to arrive around the historic core.


The Estate and Bukit Merah

Tiong Bahru should not be treated as separate from Bukit Merah.

Residents use Redhill, Bukit Ho Swee, Outram and other nearby areas for work, school and services.

The conserved estate is one sub-system inside a much larger mature town.

Internal links between history pages should reflect that hierarchy.


A Tiong Bahru Field Classroom

Tiong Bahru is one of Singapore’s easiest neighbourhoods for a walking lesson.

The market, Horse-Shoe Block, air-raid shelter, community centre, garden and conserved streets sit close together.

The eduKateSG Tiong Bahru learning guide provides a practical starting route.

Students can learn architecture, history, food and social geography in one compact area.


English from Tiong Bahru

Ask a student to describe the same street in 1939, 1955 and 2026.

The buildings may survive while vehicles, shops and residents change.

This teaches precise temporal description.

A place becomes a writing scaffold.


Mathematics from Tiong Bahru

Students can compare block footprints, curved geometry, walking distance and density.

The Horse-Shoe Block offers a real-world shape problem.

Older learners can compare low-rise density with newer high-rise HDB estates.

Architecture becomes measurable.


Science from Tiong Bahru

Ventilation, shading and tropical building design offer physical-science and environmental lessons.

Students can compare natural airflow in older flats with air-conditioned modern buildings.

The air-raid shelter adds materials and structural questions.

A heritage estate becomes a built-environment laboratory.


History from Tiong Bahru

The key historical thread is the transition from burial ground to public housing to conserved living estate.

Each stage assigns a different social purpose to the same land.

The estate’s current popularity makes sense only after the earlier layers are understood.

History explains why the architecture matters.


Geography from Tiong Bahru

The estate demonstrates how centrality changes land value.

A once-edge district became close to the modern city centre.

MRT, roads and nearby employment make the location highly accessible.

That accessibility contributes to both popularity and redevelopment pressure.


Tiong Bahru and the eduKateSG Knowledge Block

This page owns the historical formation of Tiong Bahru.

Things to do for Kids owns the field-learning route.

Tutors and Education and Tuition pages own learning navigation.

Bukit Merah owns the wider town-scale history.


Local Routes in the eduKateSG Ecosystem


A Compact Tiong Bahru Timeline

  • Nineteenth century: cemeteries and farmland occupy much of the area around modern Tiong Bahru.
  • 1913: Tiong Bahru Road appears by that name on maps; it had previously been known as Burial Ground Road.
  • 1920: the Singapore Improvement Trust is formed.
  • 1930s: SIT begins major public-housing development at Tiong Bahru.
  • 1939–40: the Horse-Shoe Block and integrated public air-raid shelter are completed.
  • 1942–45: war and Japanese Occupation disrupt neighbourhood life.
  • 1948–1954: SIT builds a second generation of simpler post-war flats.
  • Late 1940s: Tiong Bahru Community Centre is established.
  • 1950s–1970s: the market, bird corner, temples and local institutions deepen community identity.
  • 1960: HDB succeeds SIT while the older Tiong Bahru estate remains.
  • 1980s: Tiong Bahru MRT opens nearby, strengthening island-wide access.
  • 1990s–2000s: conservation protects the pre-war estate while cafés and creative businesses begin arriving.
  • 2010s–2020s: heritage tourism and gentrification intensify.
  • 2020s: Bukit Merah Remaking Our Heartland plans add accessibility, public-space and mature-town improvements while HDB design guidance protects Tiong Bahru’s charming low-rise streets.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Tiong Bahru mean?

It combines the Hokkien word “tiong”, meaning grave, with the Malay “bahru” or “baru”, meaning new. The name referred to a newer cemetery area.

What was there before the flats?

Much of the area consisted of Chinese burial grounds and farmland before public housing began.

Who built the first Tiong Bahru flats?

The Singapore Improvement Trust built the pre-war estate during the 1930s and added post-war flats from 1948 to 1954.

Why do the flats look so distinctive?

The pre-war blocks use Streamline Moderne and Art Deco-influenced curves, horizontal lines and rounded staircases.

Is there really an air-raid shelter?

Yes. A large shelter was built beneath Block 78 in 1939 and could accommodate around 1,600 people.

Why is Tiong Bahru Market important?

It continues the neighbourhood’s long role as the main place for groceries, hawker food and repeated community interaction.

Why is Tiong Bahru conserved?

The estate preserves important early public-housing architecture and an unusually coherent low-rise streetscape.

What is changing now?

Tiong Bahru is part of Bukit Merah’s mature-town renewal while HDB design guidance seeks to protect the estate’s low-rise character and walkability.

How does this page connect to tuition?

The history page owns the place story. Tutor, education, learning and subject pages own practical education routes.


Helpful Reading and Primary Routes


History of Singapore | Tiong Bahru

Tiong Bahru begins with graves.

Burial Ground Road leads into a landscape of cemeteries and farms.

SIT clears and reorganises that land into modern flats.

Streamline Moderne architecture makes public housing look futuristic.

An air-raid shelter prepares residents for war.

Post-war blocks add a simpler second generation.

The market, temple, bird corner and community centre turn housing into neighbourhood.

MRT makes the estate more accessible.

Conservation protects the streetscape.

Cafés and boutiques bring new economic life and new pressures.

HDB now treats Tiong Bahru as a place whose low-rise scale should remain legible even as Bukit Merah renews around it.

The estate is famous because several eras are still visible at once.

The buildings are the archive.


Tiong Bahru as a Lesson in Living Heritage

Tiong Bahru is useful because conservation did not remove residents and turn the estate into a museum.

People still cook, sleep, shop, quarrel, renovate and grow old inside the heritage buildings.

That ordinary use keeps the estate alive.

Living heritage is messier than a museum

Laundry appears.

Deliveries arrive.

Businesses change.

Cars need parking.

The district remains historically valuable precisely because it has to negotiate present-day life.


A Tiong Bahru Source Ladder

  • National Heritage Board for the heritage trail, architecture and community landmarks.
  • URA for conservation rules and built-form protection.
  • HDB and housing-history sources for the wider public-housing context.
  • National Archives and NLB for maps, oral histories and old photographs.
  • Resident memory for Bird Corner, market life and post-war community experience.

Using several source types prevents the neighbourhood from becoming only an architecture story.


A Research Project: Why Did SIT Choose Tiong Bahru?

Students can test several explanations.

  • It was close to the overcrowded city.
  • Land could be assembled and levelled.
  • Roads already connected toward Outram.
  • Modern flats could demonstrate a new housing model.

The conclusion should explain that housing decisions depend on land, finance, transport and public-health needs at the same time.


A Research Project: Pre-War versus Post-War Flats

Choose one pre-war block and one post-war block.

Compare curves, corridors, windows, stairs, shared space and visual style.

Then ask what changed in the economic and political conditions between their construction dates.

Architecture becomes evidence of pressure and priorities.


A Research Project: The Bird Corner as Social Infrastructure

The Bird Corner had no large civic building.

Its value came from routine gathering.

Students can ask what made the corner successful: shade, food, hobby, seating, familiarity or location.

Then compare it with a modern programmed public space.

The project shows that social infrastructure can be informal.


Gentrification as a Historical Process

Gentrification is often discussed only as a current issue.

In Tiong Bahru, it belongs inside the long history of changing users.

Cemetery land became public housing.

Public housing became conserved heritage.

Conserved heritage attracted new residents, visitors and businesses.

Each stage changes who can use the place and how much land is worth.

Change creates new heritage and new pressure

Today’s café may become tomorrow’s remembered landmark.

Today’s long-running stall may disappear.

History does not stop when conservation begins.


What Future Historians May Ask about Tiong Bahru

Future historians may ask whether the estate kept a meaningful resident community or became primarily a visitor destination.

They may study which traditional businesses survived, how conservation rules evolved and whether low-rise housing remained socially diverse.

They will use photographs of ordinary shopfronts and rental records as evidence.

The heritage debate itself will become part of the heritage.


What Tiong Bahru Teaches About Singapore

  • Cemetery geography can survive inside a modern place name.
  • Public housing began before HDB.
  • Architecture records both global style and local constraint.
  • War can become embedded inside ordinary residential buildings.
  • Markets and hobbies create community as strongly as formal institutions.
  • Conservation protects buildings but cannot freeze social life.
  • Gentrification can increase heritage attention while creating new affordability pressure.
  • A neighbourhood remains historically useful when old and new can still be compared in the same street.

Tiong Bahru in Master Plan 2025

Tiong Bahru sits inside the wider Central Region and Bukit Merah renewal story rather than having a separate large-scale URA redevelopment plan of its own.

That is appropriate for a neighbourhood whose value lies in small streets, conserved housing and mature community life.

The current planning challenge is therefore not to reinvent Tiong Bahru as a new district, but to improve access, greenery, public space and mature-town services around it while keeping the historic low-rise core legible.

Readers can place the neighbourhood inside the wider URA Master Plan 2025 Central Region framework, where new housing, heritage, green links and the Greater Southern Waterfront are reshaping the broader area.

Why a quiet planning strategy can be the right strategy

Not every valuable place needs a dramatic new master plan.

A conserved neighbourhood may benefit more from careful maintenance, accessible streets, compatible infill and stronger links to surrounding systems.

Tiong Bahru’s current planning story is therefore about continuity with improvement rather than transformation for its own sake.

Continue Learning with eduKateSG

Start with Things to do for Kids | Learning Tiong Bahru, then use Tutors | Tiong Bahru and the relevant subject pages for local education routes.

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