Kallang River: Kallang Riverside & the Sports Hub

Kallang Riverside Park or KLP is a riverside park located on the opposite bank of Marina Promenade that’s really popular with the water sport crowd. It extends across the river, covering both sides of it with a supposed beach, exercise corners and other sports facilities. Just a little down from the park is the Sports Hub with the National Stadium and the OCBC Aquatic Centre. There’s plenty of facilities here so I will just touch on the major ones.

KLP: Beach

If you look at the map above, you can see that there are supposed to be three beaches located in the area. But well, these beaches aren’t really the type beaches one typically pictures in their mind.

Well, it is not really a beach per say but more of a launching platform for boats as can be seen in the picture on the left

. So Kallang Riverside won’t really be our first choice for getting out for a beach day. But the good news is that the area is being earmarked to be developed into a sort of pseudo resort in the years to come.

Just look at the URA master plan. I don’t think anyone there today can truly imagine the place being developed into a waterside resort.

On the sustainability front this will really be a big game changer. Just imagine, we are literally going to change the natural ecosystem from an inland river to that of a manmade beach. It boggles the mind! It’s the very antithesis of sustainability which is about the endurance of systems. This raises several pertinent questions. First off, is a man-made beach like this sustainable? The creation of the beach would mean shaking up the biodiversity of the existing park to include more species native to beaches. At the same time, what are the potential effects of a beach on other communities further down the river? Typically a beach is exposed to the wider ocean but in this case, the beach is sited beside mouth of the river. So how does this affect the Marina Reservoir area that’s further downstream?

Kallang Riverside: Sports Hub

The Singapore Sports Hub is the newest development in the area now. It’s facilities occupy an entire bank of the Kallang Basin and has a dock along its side. The Sports Hub caters to a wide variety of water sports through this dock. I saw dragon boats, kayaks, canoes and sailing boats at its docks. There’s even those peddle boats you usually see in cheesy romance movies.

I think the Sports Hub is the surest indicator of the direction in which development in the area is going. The focus is surely to transform the Kallang River/Basin area into a recreational river park that caters to a wide variety of water-related activities. Most of the activities in the area now are low in pollution so we do not really see an impact on the river quality. But as the amount of activities in the area increases, then naturally the pressure on the ecosystem changes. Throw in a manmade beach and the dynamics change even further. 

References:

https://www.ura.gov.sg/uol/master-plan/View-Master-Plan/master-plan-2008/Growth-Area/Kallang-Riverside/Life-a-beach.aspx