Singapore is a city-state, where the whole country is part of the capital of the same name. The metropolitan area used to be concentrated in the southern part of the country, while the rest of the country was rainforest or used for agriculture. Since the 1960s, however, the government in the country has built new cities in outlying areas, resulting in a metropolitan area covering the entire country, although the Central Area in the south – which is the country’s original center – is still the most densely populated. The city planning authority in Singapore has published a development plan that shows in detail which areas belong to which of the 55 metropolitan areas.
Singapore is being developed into the water with the help of land taken from its own hills, seabed and neighboring countries. As a result, Singapore grew from 581.5 square kilometers in the 1960s to 697.2 square kilometers today, and may grow another 100 square kilometers by 2030. About 23 percent of Singapore’s land area, despite the large urbanization, consists of forests and nature reserve.