The government of Singapore faced severe urban overcrowding and a slum problem in the decades following World War II. In order to address these problems, the government needed a way to obtain land for urban development at a reasonable cost. Existing legislation did not provide the government with the necessary tools to acquire the land it needed. Therefore, the land ordinance was amended in April 1955 to allow acquired land to be comprehensively redeveloped into new towns. This amendment also stabilized the cost of land for public purposes by awarding compensation based on land prices for the succeeding five years. After the amendment was passed, several land ordinances were also put into place to facilitate the process of land acquisition for the government.
The Foreshores Act was passed in 1963 to allow the government to acquire seafront land (for reclamation use, for instance), without taking into consideration the value of its seafront nature for compensation purposes. This enabled the construction of large-scale public housing such as the Marine Parade on prime, reclaimed seafront land that, in many other countries, would have been exclusively owned by the wealthy.
The most significant land legislation was the Land Acquisition Act of 1966, which had several provisions that enabled the process of land acquisition to proceed in a highly effective manner. Land owners, for example, had no right to challenge the government’s right to acquire their land and could only appeal to the appeals board regarding the compensation amount offered. Compensation for the acquired land was also limited to the value before the government-led development in the area (Centre for Liveable Cities 2014). The lower than market rate compensation provided for financially sustainable land acquisition exercises by the government and greatly facilitated publicly led developments.a Acquired land was used mostly for public development; however, in some cases, it was reassembled and parceled for sale to the private sector for economic development.
The most important, immediate effect of the Land Acquisition Act was that the new government gained the legal authority to acquire large tracts of private land quickly for the development of new towns and industrial facilities. Early acquisitions, after the formation of the Housing and Development Board in February 1960, were primarily used for public housing.
While these measures worked well for some time, land fragmentation was still a problem in cases of private landowners who were not able to reach agreement on land amalgamation. To speed up the redevelopment process, the government started selling small, uneconomical parcels in 1975. A total of 4,000 square feet was used as a guide for assessing parcel sizes, below which independent redevelopment was deemed unviable (Singapore Parliamentary Debates 1966). In what was to be the largest land acquisition exercise to date in Singapore, a total of 215 lots amounting to 31,700 square meters were advertised for acquisition. The government would only pay lower than market rate compensation to the owners. Hence, some owners appealed to the government, presenting plans for amalgamation and redevelopment. Three of the appeals were approved and the land was returned to the owners for redevelopment. The acquired land was cleared, assembled, and reparceled for sale to the private sector developers (see chapter 10).
a The compensation rate for land acquisition was eventually revised to market rates in 2007.
