Why is there land constraint?
- rising demand for land supply
The world population is increasing rapidly and when there are more people, more land is required. This is because of the rising demand for housing, growth of industries, agriculture, recreation and transport. When there are more people, more arable land is needed to grow more crops to supply the growing population with food to eat. Likewise, more people means more houses and the need for more transportation, recreation and jobs which will result in the building of more housing estates, roads and factories. Thus, the constant need for more land.
Land takes up about 30% of the Earth's surface, which is lesser as compared to water. A lot of land has already been used to meet the rising demands for land supply, thus, leaving very little land left to build even more houses, factories or roads if there is a need again eventually. In addition, there are areas such as swamps, coasts or deserts that are impossible to use due to their conditions. Also, there are land that were previously used for farming or mining that have been destroyed and some restoration work has to be done to it before it can be used once again. Thus, all the above factors contribute to an extremely limited land supply.
What are the responses to land contraints?
If costs of buying land is brought up to become even more expensive, this may deter developers from buying a certain piece of land to build houses, factories, shopping centres or recreational areas. Furthermore, if the developers go ahead with the costly expenses, such as building new housing estates on that land, to buy an apartment there will also mean it will be more expensive for people to afford.
Increasing land supply can be done by recycling old, unusable land in a few ways, namely deforestation, land reclamation and empoldering. Also, maximising land use for industrial and agriculture can help too. For example, for farming purposes, terracing, irrigation and high-tech farming. However, I feel that deforestation should be a last resort since it destroys nature though other methods may be tedious or expensive.
How does Singapore deal with land constraint?
Singapore has aeroponics and hydroponics farms. This method of high-tech farming may be more expensive than the usual traditional way of farming, but it does help to save land space since Singapore has a scarcity of land and this also maximises land use. Also, Singapore builds HDB flats as we are less earthquake-prone when compared to countries like USA where landed properties are common. HDB flats has many units and floors than a usual semi-detached or landed house. Because Singapore has less land, HDBs are less expensive than landed house, which requires more land space. This discourages Singaporeans to buy land property which means there will be an increasing demand for HDBs which cost less. In Singapore, we also have flyovers which allows more roads to be built, reducing use of land space.
Reflection:
I feel that the Singapore government is effective in resolving land constraint issues in our country. We make use of land space by building HDB flats, flyovers and high-tech farms. These solutions help to reduce unnecessary land wastage. However, we cannot constantly use these methods for the many years to come and have to come up with other better ways to improve the current situation of shortage of land. We also have to think of the future generations. If Singapore keeps encouraging higher birth rates and introduces successful policies that reap results, Singapore will have a rising demand for even more land due to population growth. However, I wonder what other things can be done after all available space has been exhausted.
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