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Bedok
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| English | Bedok |
| Chinese | 勿洛 |
| (Pinyin | Wùluò) |
| Malay | Bedok |
| Tamil | fill in |
Bedok is a neighbourhood in the eastern part of Singapore. Bedok New Town is the fifth Housing and Development Board (HDB) new town; its development started in April 1973 and continued over some 15 years.
The Bedok Planning Area, an urban planning zone under the Urban Redevelopment Authority, encompasses the Bedok New Town itself, the low-rise private residential areas along Upper East Coast Road, and in the districts of Kembangan, Siglap and Telok Kurau, and the high-rise private condominium developments in the eastern part of Marine Parade.
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Bedok seems to be a very old place name. In the 1604 E.G. de Eredia's map of Singapore, there is a reference to the Bedok River called sune bodo (Sungei Bedok).
Bedok is one of the early native place names in existence around the time of Sir Stamford Raffles. In the first comprehensive map of Singapore Island completed by Frankin and Jackson and reproduced in John Crawfurd's 1828 book, the place name appears on the south east coast of the island as a river, Badok S. (Sungei Bedok), around the "small red cliff", a part of present Tanah Merah.
The Malay word bedoh refers to a type of slit drum made from a large hollowed log for calling people to a mosque for prayers or to sound the alarm in the days before loudspeakers. There was a prominent mosque in the 1950s at Jalan Bilal that still used the drum about five times a day. The "h" in the word bedoh is pronounced as a "k".
A less popular version refers to an equally uncommon Malay term of biduk, a small fishing boat like the sampan, or more likely, a dugout canoe, as the east coast was dotted with many fishing villages.
Bedok New Town covers a land area close to 9.4 km² with some 42% occupied for residential use. It was formerly a hilly region and hence the focal point of orientation of the town is the special landscaped park and sports complex built on the higher ground of the town. The residential blocks as well as the industrial area are planned based on the neighbourhood concept.
There are some 58,000 units of flats built by the HDB in Bedok New Town. As one of the older towns, the majority of the flats are 3-room or 4-room. There are also some 2,700 and 583 units of executive and Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDC) flats. It provides housing for some 200,000 residents.
- Victor R Savage, Brenda S A Yeoh (2003), Toponymics - A Study of Singapore Street Names, Eastern Universities Press, ISBN 981-210-205-1