SINGAPORE – Pioneer urban planner Alan Choe, the first architect-planner of the Housing Board (HDB) and the founder of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), died on May 27 at the age of 93. Mr Choe made many contributions to Singapore while in public service. He was instrumental in laying the foundation for the country’s urban development and its heritage conservation programme, as well as turning Sentosa into a leisure and residential destination.
Colleagues and successors described Mr Choe as a visionary leader, the father of urban development in Singapore and a true urbane gentleman. Born on March 6, 1931, Mr Choe attended Pearl’s Hill School and Raffles Institution before he left for tertiary studies in Australia, where he read architecture, as well as town and regional planning. He worked for architectural firms in Australia and Singapore before he was recruited by HDB in 1960 – the year he turned 29.
In a 2014 interview with The Straits Times, Mr Choe said he was headhunted by HDB as its first architect-planner – a title created for him. “First thing they told me: ‘Finish Queenstown’,” said Mr Choe in the interview, adding that HDB had no other planners at the time. Queenstown – Singapore’s first satellite town – had its development initiated by the British Singapore Improvement Trust in the 1950s.
The town’s development was taken over by HDB, which was formed on Feb 1, 1960. Mr Choe said in a 1997 oral history interview that British archite.