It won even more handily in 2015, after land prices rose by 30 percent three years in a row and after the government’s migration-led population target of 6.9 million by 2030 — necessary to fill out the work force,<br />but also a strain on the island’s finite resources — kindled a public protest, a singular event in this country.<br />“If global temperatures continue to rise,” a government official said last year, “many parts of Singapore could eventually be submerged.”<br />The Jurong Rock Caverns are just one answer to a pair of intriguing questions: What does a tremendously rich<br />and ambitious country do when it is running out of land?<br />“Bigger countries have the luxury of not having to think about this,” said David Tan, the assistant chief executive<br />of a government agency called the Jurong Town Corporation, which built Jurong Island as well as the caverns.<br />Then again, even Singapore as it is — born a slum-ridden speck with no oil, no hinterland<br />and a volatile mix of ethnicities, raised with an authoritarian hand and transformed into one of the most prosperous, most politically meek nations on earth — even this Singapore tugs at the bounds of our credulity.<br />By contrast, the first phase of a single Singapore government project — L2 NIC, which clumsily stands for Land<br />and Liveability National Innovation Challenge — has $96 million to disburse to finance creative ideas.<br />Singapore has always held elections, but only one party — Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action<br />Party — has ever ruled the island, and only three men have ever been prime minister.
