Ang Mo Kio New Town

Ang Mo Kio New Town (Chinese: 宏茂桥新镇; Malay: "Bandar Baru Ang Mo Kio") is a public housing estate located in the North-East Region of Singapore within the Ang Mo Kio Planning Area. Its boundary runs along Ang Mo Kio Avenue 1, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 2, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5, Yio Chu Kang Road, Ang Mo Kio Street 66, Nanyang Polytechnic, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 8, Ang Mo Kio Industrial Park 2, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3, and the Central Expressway to the junction with Ang Mo Kio Avenue 1 and Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10. As the name implies, it is associated with the geographical entity Ang Mo Kio.

History

Ang Mo Kio New Town is the seventh New Town to be built in Singapore. The early stage of construction took place in 1973 by the Housing and Development Board under the Ministry of National Development. After over thirty years of existence, it is considered one of the matured housing estates with established markets, schools, institutions, community, residential, administrative centers, and even a community hospital and other important amenities for the housing residents.

Ang Mo Kio New Town is in a dynamically changing environment. Further improvements made to the town are still in process under the HDB and the Town Councils established in the various housing estates on the island. It has the overall preview of the Ministry of National Development. The administrators have successfully completed various phases. For example, they have upgraded programs in their strategic planning of the overall Island City of Singapore.

Town planning

The town has seven neighbourhoods, with Neighbourhood 1 to the west, and cycling in an anti-clockwise direction to Neighbourhood 6 to the north, and ending with Neighbourhood 7 for the town centre. The town centre is located in the heart of Ang Mo Kio and is sandwiched by two town gardens set on natural hillocks.

Residential

Following the norm from the seventies, most of the flats are organised in 12-storey long blocks or 25-storey point blocks. In recent years, certain parts of the estate have been rebuilt as part of the long process of renewal. As a result, segments of higher blocks clustered together can be seen interleaved with the older blocks.

One particular block, Block 524 at Ang Mo Kio Street 52, stands out for its many cleanliness and friendly neighbourhood awards won over the years. The residents there are known for being especially courteous and helpful towards one another - a trait often seen lacking in modern Singapore.Fact|date=February 2007

Commercial

The Town is comparatively quiet and nightlife hardly exists. It used to be a new town when first developed as a satellite town. There were once crowds all day and night, but they have dwindled to a few nowadays. It has recently moved the centre of attraction of the shopping complex cum bus terminal to another vicinity nearby (near the Ang Mo Kio library, so the crowd thinned out. In its plan to draw back the crowd, the town planners are getting to build a new town center to replace the old. AMK Hub opened in January 2007.

Aptly named AMK Hub, the new mall will rejunivate the town once again. The mall's key tenant is NTUC located at Basement 2, which has Fairprice's first hypermart, NTUC FairPrice Xtra, an NTUC Foodfare food court, and a pharmacy and medical clinic by NTUC Healthcare. Other key tenants include Cathay Cineplax, having an 8-screen cinema. There are also many other well-priced fashion outlets at Basement 2, attracting shoppers from all over the island. The mall houses an air-conditioned bus interchange too.

Transportation

The town's road system utilises a hierarchy of road sizes by design: the major roads are referred to as "Avenues", and the local-access roads referred to as "Streets". The town's avenues are arranged in a grid-like pattern, with the streets filtering traffic from the avenues to the individual blocks. The town itself is served by the Central Expressway, providing a rapid link from the town to the rest of the island on the expressway network.

The town's road numbering system has the avenues in odd numbers generally running in an east-west direction originating from the south, while the even numbers run in a north-south direction counting from the west. Hence, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 1 runs along the south edge of the town to Ang Mo Kio Avenue 9 in the north, while Ang Mo Kio Avenue 2 runs in a north-south direction to the west of the town, while Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10 is located in the east. Street numberings are in two digits, with the first number corresponding to the neighbourhood it belongs to, while the second digit runs in numerical sequence.

Ang Mo Kio New Town was the first town to introduce this road numbering system, and it has since been replicated in other towns such as Hougang New Town, Jurong West New Town and Woodlands New Town. The newer towns such as Sengkang New Town and Punggol New Town no longer follows this system, however.

The town is well served by a multi-modal public transport system. Two Mass Rapid Transit stations serve the town, with Ang Mo Kio MRT Station at the centre of town, and Yio Chu Kang MRT Station serving the town's northern area. The Ang Mo Kio Bus Interchange is directly linked to the Ang Mo Kio MRT Station via an underground pedestrian walkway, and provides feeder bus services from the MRT stations to each neighbourhood. Yio Chu Kang MRT Station is also served by bus services via the Yio Chu Kang Bus Terminal sited beside the station. Both the bus interchange and terminal offers trunk bus services to connect the town with the rest of the island, including a rapid connection to the city centre in the Central Area, as well as other financial and commercial districts in the central region of Singapore, including Shenton Way, Orchard Road, Marina Centre and Marine Parade.

Recreation

Ang Mo Kio recreation area is found mainly in the single park area where it is famous for its bird's park. It provides a variety of daily activities for everybody. There is a 4-5 kilometre roundabout track for runners and walkers, an exercise area where early birds can do their co-ordinate exercises and playground for children. The Ang Mo Kio Park is located on a hilly area surrounded by Avenues 4, 5, and 6 and alongside Mayflower estate.

Residents have no lack of recreation facilities since the large Bishan Parks along Ang Mo Kio Avenue 1 is frequented by people from both Ang Mo Kio and Bishan estates. There is a famous bicycle way which stretches all the way along the length of the Kallang River where cyclists can enjoy their rides away from the dangers on the vehicle roads. For others who prefer indoor comforts there are many community centers which host a variety of indoor recreation sports like badminton, basket ball courts etc.

ocial amenities

Most of the residents need healthcare, community welfare services, emergency services and crime prevention. These services are provided through both public and voluntary organisations. A government run Polyclinic located in the center of the Town is one of the oldest on the Island. It provides healthcare for outpatients and a variety of services for monitoring the health of expectant mothers. Many small family doctors operate in different parts of the estate. There are a few specialty clinics for women and other patients with special needs. The Ang Mo Kio Community Hospital is one the new setups where many patients go for their needs. It operates a follow up on elder patients and special therapy sessions for post-surgery patients.

The Ang Mo Kio Police headquarters is located along Avenue 9. It is a centralized area where both fire and emergencies vehicles are dispatched from for emergency calls on 999. Anyone who lives in the estate will find plenty of amenities, security and peace of mind. The Town Council is the general administrative centre which overviews the running of all services such as the essential services for the residents. A lift breakdown generally takes less than fifteen minutes for the service people to arrive and fix.

Anyone who calls the Town maintenance services will get a response within a reasonable time of less than twenty minutes. There are many residents' organisations where residents could join in and become members, and participate in their activities such as Karaoke singing sessions. Plus that, the Town has scattered voluntary family centres for counselling and helping those with family related problems.

Education

;Polytechnics
*Nanyang Polytechnic

;Junior Colleges
* Anderson Junior College

;Institutes of Technical Education (ITE)
* ITE College West

;Secondary Schools
* Anderson Secondary School
* Ang Mo Kio Secondary School
* Bishan Park Secondary School
* CHIJ Saint Nicholas Girls' School
* Chong Boon Secondary School
* Deyi Secondary School
* Mayflower Secondary School
* Pierce Seconday School
* Yio Chu Kang Secondary School

;Primary Schools
* Ang Mo Kio Primary School
* Da Qiao Primary School
* Jin Shan Primary School
* Mayflower Primary School
* Teck Ghee Primary School
* Townsville Primary School

Famous residents

Ang Mo Kio is also the home to world renowned financial pundit Michael Yeoh and many others. Fact|date=February 2007