It’s hard to believe that Jurong was one of Singapore’s best places to harvest prawns only 70 years ago, in the 1950s. The marshy land near the old Sungei Jurong and Sungei Pandan was so good that it supported whole kampongs. From the 1970s on, the people in these kampongs grew fruits and vegetables and raised animals.
In the middle of this marshy agricultural growth, Singapore’s first finance minister, Dr. Goh Keng Swee, chose Jurong to be the first industrial town in Singapore, which had just become self-governing. Many of the first efforts to get investors to Jurong didn’t work, and it became known as “Goh’s Folly.” But once Singapore became independent in the late 1960s, Jurong started to expand quickly into an industrial park.
After the Draft Master Plan 2025 was made public, Jurong will take another big step ahead. It will become Singapore’s “Western Gateway,” with the Jurong Lake District as its base. This is the country’s biggest commercial node outside the Central Business District (CBD).
The New Jurong Lake District
The Jurong Lake District wants to create a lively mixed-use area that encourages people to work in different places. People who work in Jurong and the neighboring suburbs won’t have to go to the CBD for work since there will be enough development and infrastructural developments in the West.
The Jurong Gateway Hub, which is an integrated transit hub, will be the main point of the Jurong Lake District. This will not only link a bus stop to the Jurong East MRT station, as many other integrated transport hubs do, but it will also link the new Jurong Region Line to the North-South Line and East-West Line that are currently there.
The Jurong Region Line will link the new community of Tengah and, by 2029, it will also link the industrial sectors around Jurong Island with Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
In the late 2030s and early 2040s, the Jurong Region Line will be expanded to link to the Circle Line and the Cross Island Line.
Tengah Town
Tengah is Singapore’s newest town, and since 2023, it has welcomed 12,000 new homes. The community is planned to have more than 42,000 additional residences when it is finished. HDB flats will make up more than 70% of these residences.
It was supposed to be a green, lush town with smart technological elements that make it easy to live there for a long time. For example, it has a centralized cooling system that is meant to be a more environmentally friendly alternative to regular air conditioners.
There were some problems with the early centralized cooling systems, but it seems like Keppel’s later designs have learned from SP Group’s mistakes and done things a bit differently.
A new hospital called the Tengah General and Community Hospital will also be built in Tengah Town. It is projected to be finished by the early 2030s. It will be a component of the National University Health System (NUHS) public healthcare group. The new Tengah hospital will work with existing NUHS facilities in the West, such as the National University Hospital in Kent Ridge and the Ng Teng Fong General Hospital in Jurong East.
The Jurong Innovation District
The West will also be looking ahead to the future with the building of the Jurong Innovation District (JID). The JID is projected to link Jurong West and Tengah towns by an 11-kilometer-long sky corridor that lets walkers, bicycles, and self-driving shuttles circulate freely inside the area.
The new industrial estate will be a center for sophisticated manufacturing, with businesses working on things like precision engineering, self-driving cars, and clean technology. This creates a community of manufacturers, technology suppliers, and researchers and teachers from Nanyang Technological University.
Companies including ASTAR, Hyundai Motor Group, Shimano, and Surbana Jurong already have offices in the Jurong Innovation District. In Cleantech Park, two ASTAR research institutions and Surbana Jurong’s new global headquarters have opened in the last two years.
More New Amenities and Developments in the West
It’s easy to forget about the other regions of the West while everyone is talking about the Jurong Lake District and the Jurong Innovation District. For example, new and improved amenities will be added to Choa Chu Kang, Yew Tee, and Clementi.
Upcoming new industrial Skye @ Tuas and LY Connection set to captialize on this transformation in the western region of Singapore. These developments set to launch in end of 2025 or early 2026 and will be ideal for business owners and investors.
The Central Manpower Base (CMPB) in Hillview just opened. It features a lot of public spaces and amenities, such as a football field, a fitness station, an outdoor running route, and a food court.
The Heart of Yew Tee is a planned development that will be finished by 2027. It will be Singapore’s second “vertical kampung” and will include a hawker center, a community club, a polyclinic, stores, and 68 apartments for seniors.
Finally, by 2030, Clementi Stadium and the site of the old West Coast Recreation Center next door will be rebuilt. The new stadium will include grounds for softball and baseball, a running track, and other sports amenities for the community.
