Singapore moves to discourage shoebox apartments

Singapore will cap the number of homes that can be developed in suburban projects as it seeks to curb the increasing trend of so-called shoebox apartments.

The government plans to limit the number of homes for apartment projects outside the city’s central area to “discourage” shoebox units, the Urban Redevelopment Authoritysaid in a statement posted on its website today. The new rules will be implemented from Nov. 4.

The island state’s population growth, scarce land and surging property values have prompted developers to shrink housing space.

Residential prices surged to a record at the end of 2011 in a city that’s about half the size of Los Angeles, and the government said in May it’s concerned that shoebox apartments are mushrooming as private home sales surged to a three-year high with record purchases of units that are smaller than 50 square meters (538 square feet).

“The new guidelines will discourage new developments consisting predominantly of ‘shoebox’ units outside the central area, but at the same time give flexibility to developers to offer a range of homes of different sizes to cater to the needs of various demographic groups and lifestyles,” according to the statement.

Shoebox units will increase more than four-fold to about 11,000 units by the end of 2015 from 2,400 at the end of last year, the authority said.

‘Almost Inhuman’

Singapore should curb the trend of shoebox apartments because they are “almost inhuman,” said Liew Mun Leong, chief executive officer of CapitaLand Ltd. (CAPL), Southeast Asia’s biggest developer. The government should intervene because these projects are “wasting” the country’s scarce land resource, he said in the interview in May.

The smaller apartments helped boost sales, comprising 2,766 units or 42 percent of the sales in the first quarter, Li Hiaw Ho, executive director at CBRE Research, said in an e-mailed statement in July.

Home sales have climbed to 12,254 units this year through June 30, according to data from the authority. Suburban projects will be the “driving force” for developers in the second half of 2012, PropNex said.

The government’s guidelines are a “welcome move” amid concerns of smaller homes dominating the suburbs, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

Consumer Trends

“The policy itself is well thought through,” Jones Lang, a Chicago-based property brokerage, said in an e-mailed statement. “Central area, where land prices are high, is excluded thereby allowing market forces to continue to dictate the relevant housing form especially through the measures of financial affordability and equally that of consumers’ preferences and trends.”

The government doesn’t want shoebox units to form a “disproportionately large portion” of the housing supply in Singapore, the Urban Redevelopment Authority said today. Some new housing developments are made up mostly of these smaller units, sometimes as much as 80 percent of a project, it said.

A large concentration of such developments could add stress to the local road infrastructure with more units that the government had planned for, according to the statement.

By Pooja Thakur - Bloomberg

Related posts:
Singaporeans living in shoebox, the 'Mickey Mouse'
Singapore millionaires who don't feel rich

Eureka! God particle may exist!

 God particle is 'found': Scientists at Cern expected to announce on Wednesday Higgs boson particle has been discovered »

God particle is 'found': Scientists at Cern expected to announce on Wednesday Higgs boson particle has been discovered

• Scientists 'will say they are 99.99% certain' the particle has been found
• Leading physicists have been invited to event - sparking speculation that Higgs boson particle has been found
• 'God Particle' gives particles that make up atoms their mass
• Fermi Lab in Chicago also 'closing in' on proof of Higgs boson

By Rob Cooper

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2167188/God-particle-Scientists-Cern-expected-announce-Higgs-boson-particle-discovered-Wednesday.html#ixzz1ze6ukgpN

Eureka! Cern announces discovery of Higgs boson 'God particle' »

It was a breakthrough that took almost half a century of deep thought, more than 30 years of painstaking experimentation and a massive £2.6bn machine. Yesterday, scientists said they believed they had...

Physicists celebrate evidence of particle 

To cheers and standing ovations, scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher have claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle.

They say it's "consistent" with the long-sought Higgs boson that helps explain what gives all matter in the universe size and shape.

"We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics," Rolf Heuer, director of the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists.

He said the newly discovered subatomic particle is a boson, but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson itself - an extremely fine distinction.

"As a layman, I think we did it," he told the elated crowd.

"We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson."

The Higgs boson, which until now has been a theoretical particle, is seen as the key to understanding why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight.

The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton's discovery of it - gravity was there all the time before Newton explained it.

But now scientists have seen something very much like the Higgs boson and can put that knowledge to further use.

CERN's atom smasher, the $A10 billion Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss-French border, has been creating high-energy collisions of protons to investigate dark matter, antimatter and the creation of the universe, which many theorise occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang.

Two independent teams at CERN said on Wednesday they had both "observed" a new subatomic particle - a boson.

Heuer called it "most probably a Higgs boson but we have to find out what kind of Higgs boson it is".

Asked whether the find is a discovery, Heuer answered, "As a layman, I think we have it. But as a scientist, I have to say, '"What do we have?'"

The leaders of the two CERN teams - Joe Incandela, head of CMS with 2100 scientists, and Fabiola Gianotti, head of ATLAS with 3000 scientists - each presented in complicated scientific terms what was essentially extremely strong evidence of a new particle.

Incandela said it was too soon to say definitively whether it is the "standard model" Higgs that Scottish physicist Peter Higgs and others predicted in the 1960s - part of a standard model theory of physics involving an energy field where particles interact with a key particle, the Higgs boson.

"The" Higgs or "a" Higgs - that was the question on Wednesday.

"It is consistent with a Higgs boson as is needed for the standard model," Heuer said.

"We can only call it a Higgs boson - not the Higgs boson."

Higgs, who was invited to be in the audience, said he also could not yet say if it was part of the standard model.

But he told the audience the discovery appears to be very close to what he predicted.

"It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime," he said, calling it a huge achievement for the proton-smashing collider built in a 27-kilometre underground tunnel.

The stunning work elicited standing ovations and frequent applause at a packed auditorium in CERN as Gianotti and Incandela each took their turn.

Incandela called it "a Higgs-like particle" and said "we know it must be a boson and it's the heaviest boson ever found".

© 2012 AP

Video preludes Higgs boson announcement
http://newscri.be/link/1779202 - PHYS.ORG.COM

Newscribe : get free news in real time