When Singapore gained independence in 1965, its land area measured 581.5 square kilometers. By the end of 2025, that figure had reached 744.3 square kilometers, according to data from the Singapore Land Authority published through the Department of Statistics Singapore and last updated in June 2026.
The country added 162.8 square kilometers of land, equivalent to roughly 28 percent of its original size, entirely reclaimed from the sea.
This expansion was not a geographical accident but the result of a policy pursued continuously for nearly six decades. Reclaimed land now hosts Changi Airport, the Marina Bay financial district, and the Jurong Island petrochemical complex, which merged seven small islands into a single landmass.
However, does Singapore represent an unique case in this regard, or have other countries expanded their territory in a similar way?
Reclamation as a Survival Strategy
Singapore had a very practical reason for pursuing reclamation. In 1960, its population was under two million.
Today, that figure exceeds 5.5 million, while the country's natural land area remains among the most limited in the world. Land reclamation became the solution when vertical development alone was no longer sufficient to accommodate a rapidly growing population and expanding industrial base.
The methods have also evolved in response to resource constraints. For decades, Singapore relied on imported sand from neighboring countries, including sources in the waters of Indonesia and Malaysia.
As marine sand became increasingly scarce, Singapore began shifting in 2016 toward Dutch-style polder engineering. This approach involves enclosing an area with dikes and then pumping the water out, as seen in the 800-hectare development project on Pulau Tekong.
Bahrain and Macau: The Same Path, Different Scales
Singapore is certainly not the only country to have expanded its territory through land reclamation. Bahrain, an island kingdom in the Persian Gulf, has followed a similar trajectory.
Before its major reclamation projects, Bahrain's land area was approximately 620 square kilometers. However, the latest official survey by the Survey and Land Registration Bureau places Bahrain's total area at 787.79 square kilometers as of the end of 2025.
The driving forces were similar to those in Singapore: rapid population growth and increasing urbanization within a geographically constrained territory.
The most dramatic case in percentage terms, however, is Macau. The Chinese special administrative region expanded from 11.6 square kilometers in 1912 to roughly 33.3 square kilometers in 2025, nearly tripling in size.
Much of this new land, including the Cotai district now filled with resorts and casinos, was once part of the Pearl River estuary.
The Netherlands: The Pioneer That Did It Much Earlier
If the measure is the sheer volume of land reclaimed from water, the Netherlands occupies a league of its own.
The Zuiderzee Works converted nearly 1,979 square kilometers of water into polders by 1968, creating land that would later become the province of Flevoland.
Today, nearly one-third of the Netherlands lies below sea level as a result of land reclamation and land subsidence, protected by an extensive system of dikes and pumping stations.
The key difference lies in the motivation. The Netherlands primarily reclaimed land to protect itself from flooding and to create agricultural land, whereas Singapore, Bahrain, and Macau pursued reclamation to gain space for cities, ports, and industry.
