Update
"Buy land," a wise man once said. "They're not making any more." Not so in Singapore.
These images show the physical growth of this tiny island city-nation just off the mainland of Southeast Asia. Between 1973 and 2000 you can see the island expanding where Singapore created new land for airports, shipping, and oil refineries. You can also see new cities, causeways, reservoirs, and golf courses. In all, the government of Singapore has planned to increase the island's original area by as much as 25 percent.
In these images plants show as red, deep clear water blue-black, and shallow or silty water a lighter blue. Bare soil and pavement look almost white, and cities are a grayish mottle. Singapore is so cloudy that these images with popcorn clouds are among the clearest in the archive.
A thriving port
Singapore was rainforest, fringed by mangrove swamps, with about 150 people when the British acquired it as a colony in 1819. It soon thrived as a trading city because it lay sheltered from storms, right at the bottleneck where ships passed from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, and then (after 1869) on to Europe through the Suez Canal. Singapore's population grew rapidly, especially from Chinese immigration.
Japan's capture of Singapore in the Second World War was a key moment in the fall of Europe's empires. British rule eased in the 1950s, and after a brief marriage with Malaysia, Singapore became independent in 1965.
In fact, Singapore had desired the union with Malaysia, and independence was a daunting challenge.1 Singapore in 1965 had almost 2 million people, crowded slums, negligible natural resources, and an economy dependent on shipping. But Singapore's one-party government used this sense of crisis to build a wealthy, modern city by using strict controls. They lowered the birth rate, moved nine of ten Singaporeans into new high-rise condominiums, and developed new banking and manufacturing business while expanding shipping even more. By the 1990s, Singapore had about 3.5 million people, and the highest living standard in Asia.2
The island changes
Even from hundreds of miles overhead, Landsats 1 through 7 could see many of these post-independence changes, starting with the city's growth. For one and a half centuries the city of Singapore remained tightly packed in the "five o'clock" corner of the island, but around the time of independence the city and island governments merged, and the population was spread out into a new metropolis spreading over the whole island. In the 1973 image the city looks tight and tan in the southeast, but by 1990 it forms a solid band all along the island's southern coast plus a patchy ring around its center.
As the city expanded, farmland shrank even faster. The Second World War taught Singapore how dependent it was on others for food, since it obviously had little room to grow its own. Since independence, farmland has shrunk from around a quarter of the island to about 5 percent. And the number of farms has fallen even faster; the many tiny Chinese-style family farms based on intensive labor were replaced by a few large production centers with greenhouses and hog confinements, based on intensive technology and investment. Some of these, such as hog confinements, had to be shut down for the pollution they caused.3
Amid all the building, the government saved tiny remnants of the pre-1819 tropical rainforest. Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, in only 185 acres, contains more tree species than all of North America. Forest patches stand out in the Landsat images (most clearly in 1990) as a darker red, surrounding and working with the central reservoirs to trap as much water as possible. The Japanese took Singapore partly by cutting off its water supply, and even with these central reservoirs Singapore still needs to import water from Malaysia. As an attempt to be more self-sufficient, coastline bays were also dammed to create freshwater reservoirs. You can see at least five of these impoundments in the 1990 image, from about 9 o'clock to 1 o'clock, appearing as thin lines capping bays which had been open, narrow streams in 1973.4
These new coastal reservoirs accelerated Singapore's loss of mangrove forest. Mangroves thrive in half-salty estuaries where streams meet the ocean. Before 1819 Singapore was fringed almost all around by mangrove swamps. Building and logging reduced them over the decades, and prawn ponds (like shrimp farms) replaced more during and following the Japanese occupation. But even more were filled in as Singapore expanded.5
The island grows
The British started the expansion of Singapore within days of landing in 1819. The expansion was begun by moving soil into small areas around the old port town that flooded at high tide. As Singapore became more important to Britain's economy and military, they invested more in the port, including more extensions of land. This activity peaked between the World Wars, when Britain built the port into its naval stronghold in East Asia, and it ended with the Second World War, after which development quieted. From the mid-1800s to 1960 the city's coastline had moved about 500 meters seaward.6
In the decades following self-government in 1959, Singaporeans have created much more land than the British did in 140 years. Around the city, the coastline changed beyond recognition. The 1973 and 1990 images show this transformation underway; white areas show new ground created either by flattening nearby hills or by scooping up underwater sand to deepen navigation channels. By 2000 you can identify the new recreation areas, stretching east along the coast and on southern Sentosa Island, by the red color of their vegetation, with golf fairways appearing as bright strips. The harbor channel is flanked by the gray areas of loading facilities. In the 2000 image you can see ships of different colors and sizes, which ships are moving, and in what direction.
The new shoreline extends east of the city all the way to the airport on the island's tip. In the mid-1970s the government decided to move the main international terminal from Paya Lebar to Changi, partly to allow more distance between the planes and new, higher skyscrapers downtown. In the 1990 image, on the east end of the island, you can see the old and new runways, parallel and a few miles apart. Planes now land where once was only water.7
The symbol of the new Singapore may be on the island's west end, the industrial New Town of Jurong. In 1962 the government began clearing the jungle and building docks by digging into the shore and by extending new land out into the sea. In the 1973 image you can see cleared and filled expanses still lying bare and bright. By 1990 you can see Jurong's streets and plantings filling in as it spreads inland. There are obvious land extensions, and the harbor is now busy with ships. The Tengeh River, in the upper left of the zoom-in images, has been diked, and by 2000 the new "Second Link" bridge connects to Malaysia.
Much of Jurong's shipping has been oil; by the 1990s only the Gulf Coast and Rotterdam refined more. By the late 1960s several plants were operating along the shore, and by 1973 you can see several more on the small islands offshore, squeezing out their forests and little fishing villages. By 1990 the islands are filled, and the oil companies have begun extending them. By 2000 the islands are gone, replaced by one large "chemical island" called Jurong Island, with its own new causeway to the mainland.8
In the course of this ambitious building, seas up to 15 meters deep have been filled with new land. The same quiet waters that shelter ships have been counted on to spare these soft new lands, but erosion and drifting have sometimes occurred, polluting the water and suffocating the offshore coral reefs. Some recent shorelines have included layers of textile and rock to prevent this erosion.9
Altogether, the government planned to increase Singapore's area by 25% between independence and "Year X." Year X was commonly interpreted as 2030, but many developments have pushed ahead of schedule. It appears that this extraordinary nation's future, like its newest land, is far from settled.
Update
We have added an image from 2002, when Landsat 7 happened to get a nearly cloud-free shot. It shows more new land, particularly in the west near Jurong, where the artificial island and peninsula both grew between 2000 and 2002.
Question
Not a very scientific one: Did you see the face? (See the answer below.)
Footnotes
1. Neena Vreeland and others, Area Handbook for Singapore (Washington: GPO, 1977), p. 54-55.
2. Murray Hiebert, "On the Offensive: Singapore's Rules May be Strict-- but they Do Curb Urban Blight," Far Eastern Economic Review 6 February 1997, p. 39.
3. D.E. Short, "Planning Agriculture's Last Stand in Singapore," Geography 73, no. 4 (1988), p. 358.
4. Chia Lin Sien and others, The Biophysical Environment of Singapore (Singapore University Press, 1991), p. 146. Vreeland, p. 14.
5. P. P. Wong, "Artificial Coastlines: The Example of Singapore" Zeitschrift fur Geomorphologie, Supplementband 57 (1985) p. 175-19.
6. R. Glaser, "Land Reclamation in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macau," Geojournal 24, no. 4 (August 1991), p. 366.
7. Wong, "Artificial Coastlines," p. 184.
8. Anne K. Rhodes, "Two of Singapore's Refiners Expand Despite Lack of Land," Oil and Gas Journal 14 August 1995, p. 39.
9. Martin Perry and others, Singapore: A Developmental City State (London: Wiley, 1997), p. 157. Glaser, "Land Reclamation," p. 367. Michael J. Hilton and Sarah S. Manning, "Conversion of Coastal Habitats in Singapore: Indications of Unsustainable Development," Environmental Conservation 22, no. 4 (Winter 1995), p. 313. "Geotextiles Secure Singapore Shore," Ground Engineering February 1998, p. 12.
C.M. Turnbull, A History of Singapore 1819-1988 2nd ed. (Singapore: Oxford U. Press, 1989).
LM1134059007329090 (Landsat 1 MSS, 17 October 1973)
LT4125059009010710 (Landsat 4 TM, 17 April 1990)
LE7125059000024750 (Landsat 7 ETM+, 3 September 2000)
LE71250592002284SGS00 (Landsat 7 ETM+, 11 October 2002)
Army Map Service,
Singapore
6th ed. (Washington, Army Corps of Engineers, 1965), International Map of the World NA-48, from 1953-1962 source data, scale 1:1,000,000.
"Singapore,"
in World Atlas 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1967), plate 133, scale 1:250,000.
All photographs were taken 18—20 April 1999 by Robb Campbell and Larissa McKenna. Mangrove photo #1: facing east toward Sungei Buloh Besar. Mangrove photo #2: northwest toward Sungei Bilabong Buloh. Downtown cityscape: from Elgin bridge.
Any easy way to conceptualize
the new metropolis
is as a head and an arm span, with an airport and a seaport for hands. The central forest catchment which provides the island its water also provides its "face." It looks old, its orifices blown out into wrinkles, looking west with New Towns crowding its cheek.
Campbell, Robert Wellman, ed. 2008. "Singapore: 1973, 1990, 2000, 2002." Earthshots: Satellite Images of Environmental Change. U.S. Geological Survey. http://earthshots.usgs.gov. This article was completed on 14 August 2001 and a new image added on 14 August 2008.
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