Singapore is famous for its rules. It certainly has a lot of them. I mentioned the no-gum rule in a previous post. There are also strict regulations for owning vehicles. Only a certain number of cars are allowed to be on the island at any given point. This keeps traffic low. But it also means that owning a car is expensive. Not only are automobile taxes expensive, but before purchasing a vehicle, one must acquire an expensive permit from the government to own and operate the vehicle. These permits are released every two weeks but only as many are released as old cars have come off the roads. Singapore also uses an Electronic Road Pricing system that assigns and charges tolls based on the amount of congestion on a particular road at any particular time. It was the first system of this kind in the world.

 

Singapore is the only island city-state in the world, and it is very densely populated. Real estate is as expensive as you’d expect for a densely populated island nation. Something like 90% of the people in the country live in government-subsidized apartments. If a person wants to live alone, he or she must be 35 years old. Housing density is such in Singapore that if a guy there asks you to move in, he’s essentially asking you to marry him so you two crazy kids can get a place of your own. Singapore has been working on expanding their land area by reclamation projects, and about 25% of the island’s land area has been reclaimed using imported sand at this point.

Most of the pictures in this post are street art I came upon on my wanderings in Singapore. Check back tomorrow for the first of my posts about the Jurong Bird Park.

Title quote: Jessica Zafra, Twisted Travels