The Last Days of Quiet

The recent announcement about new housing developments in Pasir Ris has prompted an unexpected change in my daily routine: I've stopped wearing my AirPods when I walk around my neighbourhood. It's a small gesture, perhaps, but one loaded with intention and melancholy.

The numbers tell a story that feels personal. An 18-hectare site (roughly the size of 25 football fields) is earmarked for study near Sungei Loyang. Plots above the upcoming Elias MRT station, totalling another 18.8 hectares.

More developments near the MRT station where the old bus interchange once stood. When property analysts start calculating thousands of potential units, you know your quiet corner of Singapore is about to transform into something else entirely.

The Geography of Peace

For eight or nine years now, Pasir Ris has been home. A deliberate choice made after stints in Bedok Reservoir and Joo Chiat. When we moved here, we had options to stay near the interchange, closer to convenience and connectivity. I insisted on going further out, away from the pulse and press of urban density. Living in Bedok Reservoir, where buses roared past so loudly you couldn't hear yourself think, had taught me something important: peace and serenity aren't luxuries. They're necessities, and they grow more essential with age.

Now I wake to birdsong. Nothing else. The occasional ship horn in the distance because we're so close to the sea. It's a respite that feels increasingly rare in a city-state where even the fringe is no longer safe from development.

Right across the road from where I live stands that vast forest, the one earmarked for feasibility studies in the master plan. The reality is sinking in: this isn't speculation anymore. It's planning. The environmental study is underway. The boundaries are being drawn. What I imagined as a "mini-Tampines" isn't hyperbole; it's an underestimate.

The Tampines Test

Consider Tampines on a weekend. A place so packed that you can get in but can't get out, where it feels like the entire island has congregated for some invisible Olympics. It's exhausting in a way that has nothing to do with physical exertion.

Maybe it's an age thing, but I've reached a stage where the best moments aren't about juggling four shopping bags with two hands. The best moments are sitting somewhere sparse, watching the world go by.

This is what I seek when I travel now, and it's what I've found three minutes from my doorstep here in Pasir Ris. A beach. Space. Distance from the hustle and bustle of life.

But here's what the master plan reveals: Pasir Ris has one of the lowest supplies of public housing for a town its size. While places like Choa Chu Kang and Toa Payoh have over 44,000 flats each, Pasir Ris has only about 29,000 spread across 601 hectares. The government has noticed this gap. The developers have noticed this gap. And soon, thousands more residents will fill it.

The Inevitable March of Progress

The irony isn't lost on me. One of the reasons the fringe remains sparsely populated is that few people want to live here. City-loving Singaporeans cannot fathom driving thirty minutes to places like Pasir Ris or Sembawang, yet they'll happily fly three hours to Bangkok just to eat their favourite tom yam. The cognitive dissonance is striking.

But the analysts are already calling it: high demand is expected. The recent BTO projects (Costa Riviera I and II) were among the most popular by application rate. As one property researcher put it, the further development of Pasir Ris is "a double-edged sword." More homes and amenities for a growing population, yes, but "there is a risk that Pasir Ris could lose its rustic charm."

Risk? It's not a risk. It's a certainty. Build it and they shall come. The question is only when.

I used to think I had five or six years. Now, looking at the timelines - demolition of the old interchange by end-2025, the Cross Island Line extension by 2032, ongoing environmental studies. I'm recalculating. Maybe less. Maybe much less.

The Sound of Impermanence

This realisation has changed how I move through my neighbourhood. No AirPods. No curated playlists. Just the ambient soundtrack of a place that won't sound like this much longer: the sight of empty spaces, the sound of birds, the occasional siren. These are things that money cannot buy, not even a few years from now.

There's something bittersweet about consciously experiencing the last days of something. It transforms ordinary moments into acts of witnessing. Every walk becomes a form of documentation, every morning a meditation on impermanence.

I think about the old Pasir Ris Bus Interchange - that curious building with its Chinese, Malay, and Indian design elements, opened in 1989, half-demolished already for development, the rest awaiting its fate. No one knows if any part of that unique architecture will survive. Probably not. That's how it goes in Singapore. The old makes way for the new, and we're left with photographs and memories.

An Invitation to the Present

So here's what I'm hoping to encourage: Put down your phone. Look outside. Embrace what you have right now, right where you are. Things change with frightening speed in Singapore, where neighbourhoods come and go without much thought or deliberation. While it's still around, embrace it. Enjoy it. Submerge yourself in it.

Because in the time to come, everything will be gone.

This isn't nostalgia. Not yet. This is something more urgent: a recognition that we're living in the before times, that liminal space between what was and what will be. It's an invitation to practice presence while presence is still possible, to notice the specific texture of now before it becomes the vague memory of then.

Because very soon, the cranes will come. The contractors will arrive. The forest across the road will give way to blocks of flats. Potentially 4,400 condominium units or 3,000 HDB flats, according to one estimate. And with them will come the crowds, the traffic, the ambient hum of density that makes Tampines feel like the Olympics every weekend.

Pasir Ris will join the chorus of Singapore's endless transformation, that relentless urban song of progress and development and growth. The town will become more complete, more connected, more like everywhere else. It will lose what one analyst diplomatically called its "rustic charm". That quality of being relatively far from the city centre, of offering easy beach access, of being a place where you can still hear yourself think.

But not yet. Not today.

Today, there are still birds chirping. Today, there is still space to breathe. Today, I can still walk to the beach in three minutes and find something approaching solitude. Today, that forest across the road is still a forest.

So I'm taking off my AirPods. I'm listening while I still can.

The draft master plan will come into force later this year. After that, it's just a matter of time.

Adrian Tan
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