Geography

Singapore is a small, heavily urbanised, island city-state in Southeast Asia, located at the southern tip of the Malayan Peninsula between Malaysia and Indonesia. It has a total land area of 699 sq km (approximately the same size as Merseyside) and 193 km of coastline. It is separated from Indonesia by the Singapore Strait and from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor.

Singapore consists of 63 islands, including the main island itself. There are two connections to Johor - the man-made Johor-Singapore Causeway in the north, and the Tuas Second Link in the west. Jurong Island, Pulau Tekong, Pulau Ubin and Sentosa are the largest of Singapore's many smaller islands. The highest natural point of Singapore is Bukit Timah Hill (166 metres, 538 ft).

Singapore has an on-going land reclamation project with earth obtained from its own hills, the sea-bed, and neighbouring countries. As a result, Singapore's land area grew from 581.5 sq km (224.5 sq mi) in the 1960s to 699.3 sq km (269.1 sq mi) today, and may grow by another 100 square kilometres (38.6 sq mi) by 2030. Many of the smaller islands have been expanded and joined together through land reclamation in order to form larger, more functional islands, such as in the case of Jurong Island.

The urban area used to only be concentrated on the south of Singapore, around the mouth of the Singapore River and what is now the Downtown Core, while the rest of the land was undeveloped tropical rainforest or used for agriculture. Since the 1960s, the government has constructed new residential towns in outlying areas, resulting in an entirely built-up urban landscape. The Urban Redevelopment Authority is the government agency responsible for urban planning.

About 23% of Singapore's land area consists of forest and nature reserves. Urbanization has eliminated many areas of former primary rainforest, with the only remaining area of primary rainforest being Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. A variety of parks are maintained with human intervention, such as the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

Without natural freshwater rivers and lakes, the primary domestic source of water supply in Singapore is rainfall, collected in reservoirs or catchment areas. Rainfall supplies approximately 50% of Singapore's water; the remainder is imported from Malaysia or obtained from recycled water facilities and desalination plants. More NEWater and desalination plants are being built or proposed to reduce reliance on foreign supply.