Are Singapore’s new towns self-contained? An examination based on post-COVID-19 public transport smart card data

Self-containment is a major planning objective for new town development. This study assesses the self-containment levels of Singapore’s new towns and planned centers by analyzing the geography of commuting and non-commuting passenger flows among selected regional centers, sub-regional centers and town centers. Specifically, we utilize the public transport smart card data from the Land Transport Authority – Singapore’s transit authority – in 2021-2022, and explore two sets of questions: 1) are the service sheds of new towns/planned centers for commuting and non-commuting travel purposes locally confined or city-wide? 2) how does the spatial extent of new towns’/centers’ service sheds vary by the regional-, sub-regional- and town-center ranks? The findings imply whether and to what extent the new towns/centers in Singapore are “self-contained” or economically interdependent with each other, and provide insights for Singapore’s future transport and land use planning.