It won even more handily in 2015, after land prices rose by 30 percent three years in a row and after the government’s migration-led population target of 6.9 million by 2030 — necessary to fill out the work force,
but also a strain on the island’s finite resources — kindled a public protest, a singular event in this country.
“If global temperatures continue to rise,” a government official said last year, “many parts of Singapore could eventually be submerged.”
The Jurong Rock Caverns are just one answer to a pair of intriguing questions: What does a tremendously rich
and ambitious country do when it is running out of land?
“Bigger countries have the luxury of not having to think about this,” said David Tan, the assistant chief executive
of a government agency called the Jurong Town Corporation, which built Jurong Island as well as the caverns.
Then again, even Singapore as it is — born a slum-ridden speck with no oil, no hinterland
and a volatile mix of ethnicities, raised with an authoritarian hand and transformed into one of the most prosperous, most politically meek nations on earth — even this Singapore tugs at the bounds of our credulity.
By contrast, the first phase of a single Singapore government project — L2 NIC, which clumsily stands for Land
and Liveability National Innovation Challenge — has $96 million to disburse to finance creative ideas.
Singapore has always held elections, but only one party — Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action
Party — has ever ruled the island, and only three men have ever been prime minister.