Box Story: Partnering with the Community to Re-Imagine the Rail Corridor

The Rail Corridor is a former railway line that stretches 24 km from north to south across Singapore. It was used for commuting and transporting goods between Singapore and the rest of the Malay Peninsula at the beginning of the 20th century. The return of the railway land to Singapore in 2011 sparked great public interest in its usage, with many people fearing the loss of the land to development.

The 24-km stretch of the Rail Corridor (Urban Redevelopment Authority)

While the train was operational, the railway acted as a barrier, dividing and isolating communities across the island. Threading through a diverse range of landscapes, including residential, commercial, industrial and recreational areas, the freed-up railway land held great potential in connecting communities.

Providing Impetus for Engagement

The announcement of the railway’s closure created significant public interest. The Nature Society of Singapore submitted a proposal to conserve the railway line as an uninterrupted green corridor, which received widespread support on social media.

Acknowledging this, the MND and URA initiated an extensive community engagement exercise to involve as many segments of the population as possible before formulating plans. The approach aimed to establish a shared vision and set of planning and design objectives to steer the future development of the Rail Corridor.

Working with the Public Towards a Shared Vision of the Corridor

In terms of outreach, scale and approach, the Rail Corridor project is one of the MND's and URA’s most extensive public engagement exercises to date. To create a shared vision for the Rail Corridor, the URA sought ideas from diverse segments of society, including interest groups, nature and heritage enthusiasts, sports associations and event organisers, as well as a wide spectrum of local residents, including the elderly, families and the physically challenged.

The engagement effort spanned five years, ranging from a national overview of how residents envisioned the Rail Corridor to detailed consultations with local communities living nearby as to how they could develop a sense of ownership and actively contribute to future activities along the Corridor. Breaking new ground, the URA engaged the public at a very early stage, so that they could truly co-create plans for the Corridor in close partnership with the community. The URA set three key objectives for the Rail Corridor’s public engagement process:

Foster a shared vision and ownership of the project through active community involvement and public participation in the planning process.

Raise public awareness and get community buy-in for fresh, bold ideas to optimise land use while transforming the Rail Corridor into an inclusive community space, with greenery and heritage as hallmarks of its unique identity.

Strengthen community bonding through meaningful participation in a project of significance to all residents.

Organised site visit to the Rail Corridor (Urban Redevelopment Authority)

Building Capacity for More Effective Community Engagement and Participation

The Rail Corridor project saw the URA engaging the public early in the planning process and ensuring that the engagement reached as many people as possible. The process reflected a desire to involve the community to co-create proposals from a clean slate, rather than merely engaging them to obtain buy-in for a preconceived plan. This signalled a change in the way government officials viewed lay knowledge—they recognised that people know their neighbourhoods best and it is crucial to invoke their ideas and passion to achieve more equitable planning outcomes.

The extensive engagement process brought on board not just professional bodies and advocacy groups, but also students, seniors and residents living in the vicinity of the Rail Corridor. This was a learning experience for advocacy groups as well, as it enabled them to work closely with the community to address their concerns in a holistic manner. Thus, trust and rapport were established more broadly, not just between advocacy groups and state agencies. The engagement drove changes based on public feedback, such as the improvement of safety and connectivity of two steel truss bridges near the conserved Bukit Timah Railway Station and the Rail Mall.

As part of the Draft Master Plan 2019 review, the URA conducted engagement efforts early to provide planners with sufficient time to fine-tune their plans and policies and manage ground expectations. For example, a series of public exhibitions were held between 2017 and 2018 to solicit views from the general public on the development of new growth areas and housing precincts, as well as ideas for the rejuvenation of mature areas. The feedback received was useful for the review of the plans for these areas. The Draft Master Plan was then exhibited from March to June 2019. Social media efforts before and after the launch helped to spread key messages and sustain public interest, while guided tours organised for key stakeholders including grassroots leaders, agency partners, developers and residents extended outreach efforts to the local community.

In 2017, when NParks took over the management of the Rail Corridor, the partnership that had formed among the stakeholders became known as the Friends of the Rail Corridor; it aimed to cultivate community stewardship towards the shared space, and spearhead ground-up initiatives and community-organised activities to activate spaces along the corridor. Where the railway line had once physically divided communities, the Rail Corridor now helps to connect neighbourhoods and link communities to a vibrant community space.

In recent years, Singapore’s engagement approach to planning has also broadened to involve building a more participatory local planning culture and cultivating a stronger sense of community ownership. The focus of public engagement for the Rail Corridor was co-creation—beyond its physical form as a linear green space, the Rail Corridor plays a unique role as a piece of social infrastructure with the potential to bring people together. It socialises the community by creating a common space for people to develop shared experiences and memories, and form relationships with one another.