The Housing and Development Board (HDB) will spruce up three more towns – Pasir Ris, Woodlands and Toa Payoh – under its Remaking Our Heartland (ROH) programme, revealed Senior Minister of State for National Development Lee Yi Shyan in parliament.
In Pasir Ris, the parks and neighbourhood centres will be upgraded to come with family-oriented facilities. Over at Woodlands, the entire waterfront area will be opened to the public and will get more recreational spaces.
For Toa Payoh, HDB intends to revamp the town park and town centre, as well as improve pedestrian access to the latter. The agency will also build more parks and HDB blocks in the vicinity of Caldecott MRT station after it has been upgraded into an interchange station along the upcoming Thomson-East Coast Line.
These areas form the third batch of towns to be revitalised under the scheme. But because the proposal is still at a preliminary stage, HDB will consult local residents in the next few months to fine-tune the plans.
The ROH scheme aims to breathe new life into young and mature estates. Since its inception in 2007, the government has identified six towns that will benefit from this programme – Yishun, Dawson, Punggol, Hougang, East Coast and Jurong Lake.
Meanwhile, Mr Lee announced that a new committee called the Revitalise Heartland Shops Committee will be set up to review the Revitalisation of Shops (ROS) Scheme.
This comes after Jurong GRC MP Ang Wei Neng noted that only a few neighbourhood centres have been able to take advantage of this scheme, which was unveiled in 2007 to increase the competitiveness of HDB shops.
Mr Lee also revealed that another area will be selected for the HDB Greenprint initiative after it was successfully tested at Yuhua estate in Jurong. The scheme’s objective is to promote eco-friendly and sustainable living in existing HDB towns.
Image: Aerial view of Toa Payoh estate.
Romesh Navaratnarajah, Singapore Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg
