Serious After 5 years, Tg Pagar Railway Station still abandoned in land starved S'por

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

I don't what kind of fucked urban planning this is. happy happy want to take back Tanjong Pagar railway station from the malaysians back in 2011, till now, what have they done. Nothing. Its still abandoned. Only opened to the public on holidays and special events. What the fuck? What a bloody waste of a big building and those railway platforms. After 5 years, they still have not done anything with it. I would have thought that concrete plans be made for it so that when its returned to singapore, they can straight put them into play. what are they waiting for? If they are not doing anything with it for 5 years, then why don't they use the facilities. How about renting it out for weddings? Swap meets? Restuarants or hawker centre? Small offices? There must be a thousand uses for it. Fuck lah, I would even support it if they pass a law requiring all maids to only congregate there on their days off. this is an efficient govt worthy of million dollars salaries? What is Tan Boon Khai doing, sleeping?

Abandoned train station signals community revival in Singapore


With its efficient urban planning, Singapore has long had a highly regulated approach to public space. Can community-focused projects like the redevelopment of the abandoned Tanjong Pagar station enliven the city-state?





It’s a public holiday in Singapore, and drizzling rain has given way to sticky, hot weather. But this hasn’t dissuaded visitors at Tanjong Pagar station. In the mid-morning sun, families and couples walk along the railway tracks. Young children are particularly eager to totter over the old steel slats. Almost everyone is taking photos – whether with a selfie stick or a DSLR.
Jenny Goh, a 57-year-old mother and entrepreneur, is among the early visitors, telling me: “If you don’t take photos then when it’s gone, it’s really gone.” She has brought her grown-up daughter with her to see the station from which, as a child, she used to take the train to Malaysia to see her relatives. When the service stopped running in 2011, Goh was among the crowds who witnessed the last train pulling out of the station. Malaysia’s Sultan of Johor was behind the wheel.
As Singapore looks back on its first 50 years of independence, heritage is increasingly part of the national conversation – and with its Art Deco and neoclassical architecture, Tanjong Pagar station is one of the city’s most distinctive buildings. But the station is also at the centre of a debate about the extent to which Singapore’s citizens should be involved in future planning decisions in this traditionally “top-down” city-state.
Plans are under way to redevelop the station as a multi-functional community space. The original architecture will be retained, but facilities such as an auditorium and art gallery (plus a state-of-the-art, underground MRT station) will be added. Furthermore, the 24km stretch of former railway line is envisaged to become a linear park: already dubbed the “Railway Corridor”, this park would be almost 10 times longer than New York’s High Line.




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Tanjong Pagar railway station was first opened in 1932 when Singapore was under British rule, and closed in 2011. Photograph: National Archives of Singapore Even before the plans for redevelopment were announced, Singaporeans were already making use of the old railway line in an unusually informal way for this city. After the majority of tracks had been returned to Malaysia, a long swathe of wilderness was left behind. Joggers, cyclists and nature enthusiasts started to explore; artists came to perform.
For Singaporeans, this exploration was a novelty in a city where most green spaces are manicured, and public space is highly regulated. “We don’t have a lot of green spaces and this is one of the few that’s not a polished, designed park. This is as ‘rural’ as you can get in central Singapore,” says Stella Gwee, co-founder of the placemaking consultancy firm Shophouse & Co.
“The Railway Corridor had lots of noise on the ground,” says her colleague Adib Jalal. “There was a lot of ground-up interest, with groups like the Nature Society and the Heritage Society involved. Just by the fact that the railway line passes through so many neighbourhoods, each one feels it has a little piece of ownership.”

Goh, however, has more mixed feelings: “You have to sacrifice some things for the future,” she says, pragmatically. She plans to pay more visits to the station before the end of this year. After December, the station will be closed for construction and will not open again until 2025.
‘A city that citizens love’

Singapore has long been known for its efficient urban planning and regulation of public space. It’s not a country where you see graffiti: a few years ago, a 26-year-old artist was sentenced to community service after she was caught stencilling roads and pasting stickers in public. All public protests must be held in the same, designated place: Hong Lim Park.




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A proposal for the front of the station to be turned from a car park into a green space. Photograph: MKPL/Turenscape But in recent years, the Singaporean government has begun to encourage community activities to “enliven” public spaces and get people interacting. The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) recently launched Our Favourite Place, a funding initiative for people to carry out creative projects in public spaces.
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“The ultimate goal of good urban planning is to create a city that citizens love,” says Tan See Nin, senior director of planning at URA. “The way to do this is obviously through community participation, so that people have a stake in what is planned and developed in the city and their neighbourhoods.”
But he adds: “In a city-state like Singapore, how much more to conserve is always a dilemma, and has to be balanced against the demand for land to meet the various needs of the nation.”
Inside the bright, high-ceilinged ticket hall of Tanjong Pagar station – which opened in 1932 when Singapore was part of British Malaya – the walls are adorned with the vintage letters FMSR: Federated Malay States Railway. There are also murals depicting the trade, commerce and agriculture on which Singapore’s founding wealth was built. “They are rubber tappers,” I overhear more than one parent explaining to their child, while pointing to a mural where workers toil among the trees.
To these children, such images of Singapore must seem fantastical. They were born into a modern city-state, complete with efficient public transport, clean streets, shiny malls and neighbourhoods tiled with high rises. The Federated Malay States no longer exist: instead, there are two neighbouring countries, with strictly controlled borders. In many ways, Singapore and Malaysia are now a world apart.




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The station a year before it was vacated in 2011. Photograph: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images Perhaps this is why Tanjong Pagar station – and its railway line – has taken on such resonance for Singaporeans. Currently opened only for public holidays and special events, crowds come in their thousands: an estimated 92,000 people have visited in the last two years alone.
To the government, the station is not just a beautiful heritage building; it is a point of national pride. Until 2011, this entire stretch of railway belonged to Malaysia – and since Tanjong Pagar is located in the south of the island, Singapore had to endure a strip of foreign land running right through it after becoming independent from Malaysia in 1965. This led to some kinks in the immigration system.

“As long as you were on the train, you were on Malaysian soil,” says Mahen Bala, a filmmaker and researcher who is documenting Malaysia’s railway history. “I remember waking up as the train went across the causeway [into Singapore] and you would see the queue of cars lining up for customs, while you could just go straight by.”

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Gwee recalls going to the station because it was a place you could still get Malaysian food: “People would go to the train station to eat because the food was good! It was one part of Singapore that did not feel like Singapore – you would feel like you were in Malaysia without going to Malaysia. The satay was one of the best.”
Down on the railway tracks at Tanjong Pagar station today, two blue signs have been erected: one over an old hydraulic buffer, the other next to an upright control lever. Each sign politely reads: “As these are important heritage artefacts, we appreciate if you refrain from touching. Thank you for your understanding.”

But it seems that Singaporeans are eager to engage fully with their heritage these days; visitors ignore the signs and reach for the lever, clasping it as they pose for photos. After all, this is their history too.
And, despite some reservations, most here seem optimistic about Singapore’s modernising approach to its heritage. “More and more people sense an energy and vibe, and that energy cannot be created from a top-down approach,” says Gwee. “It has to be sustained organically. To do that, you need to inspire people to be engaged with public spaces as well.”



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