‘THE future is underground, and I don’t mean the dead,’ these were the parting words of an old friend, Nik Ramly, a veteran town planner, as he shook my hand before leaving for KLIA.
He was in Kedah recently for a brief meeting with his clients in Alor Setar. As his flight home to Kuala Lumpur was late in the evening, I asked him to drop by at my place. I promised to send him to the airport at Kepala Batas in time for his flight.
We discussed the latest issues in urban planning, but I was especially interested to know about Singapore’s master plan for its underground development. He said that building underground for Singapore “was not an obsession, but a necessity”.
