JTC Wants Workshops Above Flats. It Picked the Town With 506 Million-Dollar Flats.

The spaces JTC has in mind are deliberately modest: small-scale assembly and prototyping, 3D printing, maker spaces, design studios, dry labs, workshops for small and medium enterprises. Not factories. The kind of work that makes noise but not smoke.

In a joint statement to The Straits Times, JTC and the Singapore Institute of Architects said bringing uses closer together "could give residents more convenient access to quality jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities and spaces to pursue their hobbies and interests". Lighter industrial activities could sit alongside offices, shops, community facilities and homes in one development — with, they specified, "sufficient separation between living, working and making spaces so that homes remain conducive and attractive places to live".

That qualifier is the whole engineering problem, and to their credit they led with it.

Professor Heng Chye Kiang of NUS' College of Design and Engineering told the paper co-location "can create more diverse, lively and resilient neighbourhoods", supporting small businesses, start-ups, urban manufacturing, repair services and even intensive urban farming. It is a real vision of a polycentric city — several working hubs instead of one central business district.

This is not a thought experiment on paper. The architects have two real sites:

Site details as reported by The Straits Times.

JTC and the institute said Toa Payoh was chosen because it houses "a diverse, multi-generational community of seniors, young families and working professionals", and because residential and industrial developments already sit in the same neighbourhood — on separate plots — with several JTC-owned industrial sites available. That makes it, in their words, a realistic case study.

The realism is the point and the risk. These are not empty plots on the edge of town. One faces existing and future HDB blocks across a road. The other adjoins a primary school.

Because of what a flat there is now worth. From our own HDB resale records, comparing four-room flats like-for-like across towns in the latest complete half-year, 2026 H1:

Toa Payoh's median four-room flat sells for exactly $1.00 million — the third dearest of the 25 towns we can rank, and 59 per cent above the national median of $630,000.

And at the top of the market it leads the country outright. Counting HDB resales at $1,000,000 or above since January 2025:

506 million-dollar resales, more than any town in Singapore.

None of that makes the idea wrong. It does mean the pilot is being designed for residents with the most invested in their homes and, generally, the most capacity to object. A design that merely works will not be enough here; it has to be good enough that nobody in a million-dollar flat across the road feels their home got worse. That is a much higher bar than a technical brief usually has to clear, and clearing it in Toa Payoh would be the strongest possible proof of the concept.

For context, million-dollar flats remain the tail rather than the market — 6.4 per cent of all HDB resales in 2025, up from 1.8 per cent in 2023. They just cluster, and Toa Payoh is where they cluster hardest.

The most useful voice in the reporting was the most cautious one.

Thomas Schroepfer, professor of architecture and sustainable design at SUTD, named the problem precisely: industrial activities generate noise, vibration, odour, emissions and delivery traffic, while homes require high standards of health, safety, privacy and amenity. He also flagged conflicts "between pedestrian environments and logistics operations, and between the operating hours of businesses and the daily rhythms of residents".

Then the sentence the whole study should be judged against: "These issues are not necessarily reasons to avoid integration, but they mean that compatibility has to be designed rather than assumed."

His proposed safeguards are concrete — careful selection of which light industrial uses qualify, spatial separation and buffering, acoustic treatment, and management of operating hours.

The operator's view was the same from the other side. Dalmia Adithya, whose 3D printing firm would be exactly the kind of tenant envisaged, was enthusiastic about the commute and candid about the catch: his operations generate noise and waste during painting and sanding, which "could disrupt residents if the work is taking place one level above homes". With a clear buffer, he said, it could work.

Both men are saying the same thing. The concept is sound; the detailing decides it.

More than a design. Heng pointed out that Singapore's land zoning generally assigns residential and industrial uses to different plots, with separate development rules, environmental requirements and tenure arrangements — and that existing building, fire safety, environmental and traffic regulations may themselves be written on the assumption that the uses stay apart.

His proposed fix is structural: a more flexible zoning category or a special planning framework for integrated developments, governed by performance-based criteria on noise, emissions, vibration, traffic and safety — rules that specify outcomes rather than separation.

JTC and the institute acknowledged as much, saying planning regulations will likely need tweaking and that innovation is required in building design, logistics, ventilation, acoustics and operations.

Schroepfer also noted that overseas precedents exist — he cited NovaCity I in Brussels, which combines housing, workshops and offices — but argued the JTC study stands out for its "ambition to bring these ideas together at the building scale and within Singapore's much denser urban context". He would treat the international examples as references rather than models to copy, leaving Singapore to develop its own typology.

Both academics landed on a public-private pilot as the way through: the public sector to coordinate land use, regulation, infrastructure and agencies, with architects, developers, operators and industrial users involved from the start so the typology works economically as well as conceptually.

There is one obstacle the reporting on this study does not dwell on, and it turned up in the same week's coverage of a different subject.

Writing about commercial buildings being redeveloped into mixed-use projects, Alan Cheong of Savills Singapore said centrally located JTC estates could be the first to benefit from a live-work-play model — and then named the blocker: industrial properties come with 30-year leases, and for a residential component to be saleable that has to extend to 99 years. Otherwise, he said, the homes have to be leased rather than sold, and developers may need further incentives to accept that.

Apply that to two JTC industrial plots in Toa Payoh and the question sharpens considerably. If the homes in an industrial-residential building cannot be sold, they are rental housing — a different product, a different resident, a different economic case, and a different political conversation in a town where the median flat is worth a million dollars.

Nothing in the reporting says which way this goes, and it may be exactly what the study is for. But the tenure question looks likelier to decide the outcome than the acoustics do.

Worth being clear about what has and has not happened.

Nothing is being built. This is a four-stage study. Stage one, in which teams submitted an overall vision, ended in July. Three teams are shortlisted for stage two: one from CPG Consultants, one from RSP Architects Planners & Engineers, and one led by Roy Pang of Architects Studio. One team will be picked per site for the final stages, producing a schematic design and guidelines for replicating it elsewhere.

It ends in the first half of 2027, after which JTC and the institute will review submissions to identify viable ideas for further study. Promising concepts could then be assessed for implementation at suitable sites — which, in their own words, "would need to be studied with the relevant agencies to determine what is feasible and what safeguards would be required".

So: a study, producing designs, that may lead to further study, that may lead to a pilot. No site is committed, no homes are promised, and nobody should make a property decision on the strength of it.

And on our own numbers. The town medians are a dated half-year snapshot using four-room flats only, so towns compare like-for-like; a specific block, storey or remaining lease can sit well away from the median. The million-dollar counts are a tail rather than the market, cluster in mature and central towns, and the current year is partial and under-lodged. They describe Toa Payoh as it is today — not what any future building would do to it, which nobody can tell you.

On the reported timeline, not for a long time. The study itself runs to the first half of 2027. After that, JTC and the Singapore Institute of Architects will review the submissions to identify ideas worth studying further, and any move towards implementation would have to be worked through with the relevant agencies to establish feasibility and safeguards.

Given that zoning, fire safety, environmental and traffic rules may all need rewriting first — and that both academics quoted recommend a public-private pilot before wider rollout — a completed building is several regulatory steps beyond anything announced so far.

The nearer-term output is a schematic design plus replication guidelines, intended to be adaptable to sites elsewhere in Singapore.

Not stated, and it is one of the most consequential open questions.

The sites in the study are JTC industrial land, and JTC is Singapore's industrial landlord rather than a housing agency. Nothing in the reporting says who would build, own or sell the residential component, or under what scheme.

The tenure point above is why it matters. If industrial land's shorter lease cannot be extended for the residential portion, the homes would need to be rented rather than sold, which points away from a conventional flat-ownership model regardless of who builds them.

Until JTC says otherwise, treat the housing type, tenure and ownership as entirely undecided. This is general commentary, not advice, and nobody should plan around an unannounced scheme.

The study is not ours. The nature of the JTC and Singapore Institute of Architects collaboration, the types of industrial space envisaged, both site locations and their 2.3ha and 2.4ha areas, Jackson Square, the neighbouring Kim Keat Ripples, Kim Keat Crest and Keng Cheng School, the four-stage structure, the July stage-one completion, the three shortlisted teams, the first-half-2027 end date, the NovaCity I reference, and every quoted view — from Heng Chye Kiang, Thomas Schroepfer and Dalmia Adithya — comes from the reporting linked below. Alan Cheong's lease observation comes from separate Straits Times reporting on commercial redevelopment, also linked. All are attributed, not claimed as our findings.

The housing figures are ours. The median four-room HDB resale prices by town are our own medians over HDB resale records for 2026 H1, the latest complete half-year, restricted to four-room flats so that towns compare like-for-like. The million-dollar counts by town are our own counts of HDB resales at $1,000,000 or above since 1 January 2025, and the yearly shares are over all HDB resales in each year.

The caveats: town medians are a dated half-year snapshot, towns with fewer than ten four-room resales are omitted, and a particular flat varies with its block, storey, size and remaining lease. Million-dollar flats are the tail, not the market — they cluster in mature and central towns and in larger, newer or recently-MOP flats — and the current year is a partial, under-lodged window that must not be annualised. All prices are gross of any resale levy, agent commission or legal fees.

The news:

• The Straits Times — Industrial spaces and homes under one roof: JTC explores idea with architects, 6 September 2026, including comment from Professor Heng Chye Kiang of NUS, Professor Thomas Schroepfer of SUTD, and Dalmia Adithya of Additive Inn.
• The Straits Times — More than retail: why Singapore commercial spaces are redeveloping to add homes and offices, 4 September 2026, for Alan Cheong of Savills Singapore on industrial lease tenure.

The data:

• PropKaki median four-room HDB resale prices by town, 2026 H1, 25 towns with at least ten four-room resales.
• PropKaki counts of HDB resale transactions at $1,000,000 or above, by town and year, since 1 January 2025.

This is commentary written by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by The Straits Times. The account of the study and the views of the academics and operator quoted belong to that newsroom; the housing analysis, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information — not financial, legal or property advice. No industrial-residential building has been approved, sited, priced or scheduled, no housing type or tenure has been announced, and the study itself does not conclude until 2027. Nothing here should be read as a prediction of what will be built or of any effect on any town's prices.

Published 8 September 2026.