A canal, a sultan’s quarter and a flood-prone plain
Rochor takes its name from the canal. Rochor Canal Road is said to come from the Malay rochoh, “to mark out with a pointed stick”; it was plain Canal Road until 1858, when it was renamed to avoid confusion with North and South Canal Roads.
Kampong Glam, one of the planning area’s ten subzones, was set aside in 1824 for Sultan Hussein Mohamed Shah and his family and laid out in 1831. The Sultan Mosque was rebuilt in 1924, and Kampong Glam was gazetted a conservation area on 7 July 1989. In July 1975 HDB launched a $24 million project to redevelop the flood-prone Rochor area, which produced Rochor Centre — four 14-storey blocks on three-storey podiums, with 212 shops.
What the planning area covers
URA’s Rochor planning area has ten subzones: Bencoolen, Farrer Park, Kampong Glam, Little India, Mackenzie, Mount Emily, Rochor Canal, Selegie, Sungei Road and Victoria. Sim Lim Square, Sunshine Plaza, Bugis+, Bugis Village and Tekka Centre fall inside it. Bugis Junction and the National Library across Victoria Street are in Downtown Core, and Mustafa Centre and City Square Mall are in Kallang. The list mixes homes on the slopes of Mount Emily with the commercial buildings of Bencoolen and Selegie.
New launches
- Orchard Sophia — DB2, 78 freehold units on Sophia Road, previewed in July 2023.
No Rochor site is on URA’s current Government Land Sales list.
Getting around
Rochor, Bencoolen and Jalan Besar on the Downtown Line and Farrer Park on the North East Line stand inside the boundary; Bugis and Little India are at its edges. St. Margaret’s School (Primary) on Mount Sophia is the primary school with a page here.
Who manages the buildings here
Newman SRE (5), Savills Property Management (5) manage the most developments inside the boundary. Nearly two in five of the developments here have no managing agent on record — many are small blocks run by their own council. Each building page lists its own office contact.
What to have ready
The management office will ask for the MCST number and your unit. Public carparks with live lot counts are on the carparks page; see also the District 7, District 8 and District 9 pages.
Sources: URA Master Plan 2019 planning area and subzone boundaries (data.gov.sg); NLB (Rochor Canal Road, 1978); NLB Infopedia (Kampong Glam); Roots.sg (Rochor Centre); EdgeProp (Orchard Sophia); URA (current GLS sites). Buildings are listed when their coordinate falls inside URA’s boundary for the planning area; prices are left out because they change.
