Singapore landscapes: the view up north

In a Singapore which becoming increasingly dominated by towering blocks of concrete, it a always refreshing to be able to take in landscapes such as the one in this photograph. Landscapes such as this take us back to a time when we were truly a city in a garden, well before our urban planners decided to use that phrase to describe the vision of the next phase in the greening of Singapore.  Such landscapes, are to me, escapes which provide a sense of space we now lack in a Singapore that has become too cluttered. They are unfortunately fast being replaced in an overcrowded city state caught not just in a frenzy of urbanisation, but also of urbanising open spaces.

The photograph was taken in an area where the natural undulations which shaped much of the terrain around it have until now been preserved by what became of the land around it. The area was at the turn of the last century, one of plantations. The plantations made way when the land was acquired for the development of the huge naval base along the northern coastline in the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s. While the part of the area seen in the photograph is not under immediate threat of development, it is one which does see many developments coming up around it, developments which will certainly alter an area still rich in charm and character. A huge change to it will possibly come when the nearby shipyard shuts its operations (as has been identified in the Ministry of National Development Land Use Plan issued earlier this year) freeing “new waterfront land” along the Sembawang coastline (see also A Final Frontier).