Current Time in Jurong Town, Singapore

Jurong Town occupies the western part of Singapore, around fifteen kilometres from the central business district, stretching from inland lakes and residential neighbourhoods to the industrial coastline on the Strait of Johor and the western sea approaches. The area combines dense housing estates, landscaped gardens, reservoirs and one of the largest manufacturing zones in Asia. Like the rest of the island it has an equatorial climate, hot and humid throughout the year with frequent afternoon thunderstorms.

Several hundred thousand people live in the housing estates of Jurong East and Jurong West, making this one of the most populous parts of Singapore. Its importance to the national economy is enormous: this is where Singapore built its industrial base, and its shipyards, refineries, chemical plants, wafer fabrication facilities and logistics parks still generate a large share of the country's exports.

Until the 1960s Jurong was a landscape of mangrove swamp, fish ponds and rubber and pepper smallholdings on the western edge of the island. Shortly after self-government, the economist and minister Goh Keng Swee pushed through a bold plan to level the hills, fill the swamps and create an industrial estate to provide jobs for a rapidly growing population. Many doubted it and called the project a folly, but factories arrived, a town was built to house the workers, and the Jurong Town Corporation went on to develop industrial land across the island and to export its expertise abroad. Offshore, several small islands were merged by reclamation into Jurong Island, now a petrochemical complex of global significance.

Amid the industry the district has some of Singapore's most attractive public spaces. Jurong Lake Gardens, the newest national gardens, wrap around a freshwater lake and include the Chinese Garden with its pagoda and arched bridges and the tranquil Japanese Garden, together with boardwalks through restored swamp forest and one of the best playgrounds in the city. The Science Centre Singapore, with its hands-on exhibitions, observatory and cinema, has introduced generations of schoolchildren to science, and a snow chamber next door offers a novelty in the tropics. The Jurong East town centre has grown into a busy secondary hub with large shopping malls, offices, a hospital and a major transport interchange, and government plans envisage the surrounding area becoming a second downtown for the country.

Life in the housing estates follows the familiar Singaporean pattern, with hawker centres serving food from Chinese, Malay and Indian traditions at low prices, wet markets busy in the morning, community clubs offering classes and sports, and void decks used for weddings, funerals and neighbourhood gatherings.

Two mass rapid transit lines meet at Jurong East, a new regional line is under construction, and expressways link the district to the city and to the causeway to Malaysia. Nanyang Technological University, one of the leading universities in Asia, lies just to the west, along with polytechnics and technical institutes.

Jurong Town is significant as the engine room of Singapore's industrial success and as a green, well-planned place to live.