Current Time in Tampines New Town, Singapore

Tampines New Town lies in the eastern region of Singapore, between the Pan Island Expressway and the coast, a short drive from Changi Airport. With well over two hundred thousand residents it is one of the largest and most populous of the island's planned new towns, and it functions as the commercial and civic capital of the east.

The name comes from the tempinis, a hardwood tree that once grew in the forests here. Before development the area was covered with rubber and coconut plantations and then with sand quarries, whose pits supplied material for Singapore's construction boom and later became reservoirs and parks. The Housing and Development Board began building the town in the late 1970s, and its design proved influential enough to win a United Nations World Habitat Award in 1992, recognised for the way housing blocks, schools, shops, parks and transport were arranged into walkable neighbourhoods around a central town centre.

That centre is unusually busy for a residential town. Three large shopping malls stand within a few minutes of one another beside the bus interchange and the mass rapid transit station, surrounded by offices where several banks and insurers have located back-office operations, part of a national policy of decentralising jobs away from the downtown core. Tampines was the first area designated a regional centre in Singapore's long-term planning, and it remains the model for that idea.

Its most striking building is Our Tampines Hub, opened in 2017 and described as Singapore's largest integrated community and lifestyle complex. Under one roof and around a football stadium it gathers a public library, hawker centre, swimming pools, gym, community club, medical centre, supermarket and rooftop farm, and it is constantly full of families, students and older residents.

Green space is generous. Tampines Eco Green is a deliberately naturalistic park with wetlands and birdlife, Sun Plaza Park and Tampines Central Park serve the neighbourhoods, and the disused quarry lakes at Bedok Reservoir and Tampines Quarry offer water sports and running routes. The town was chosen as Singapore's first cycling town, with a dedicated network of paths linking housing blocks to the station and the parks, and cycling remains a normal way to get around.

The population reflects Singapore's ethnic mix, with Chinese, Malay, Indian and other communities living in the same blocks under the national housing policy. One of the country's largest mosques stands here, alongside churches and temples, and the hawker centres and wet markets serve food from across the region.

Two rail lines, a major bus interchange and three expressways connect Tampines to the city centre, the airport and Changi Business Park, while Temasek Polytechnic, an institute of technical education campus and an international school give the town a strong educational profile.

Tampines shows Singapore's approach to urban living at its most complete and self-contained.