Singapore is currently divided into 55 urban planning areas by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, organised into five regions.[158906] A Development Guide Plan is then drawn up for each planning area, providing for detailed planning guidelines for every individual plot of land throughout the country.

The URA's planning areas were first introduced in the early 1990s after the release of the 1991 Concept Plan.[158907] Since the implementation of these boundaries, other governmental ministries and departments have also increasingly adopted these boundaries for their administrative purposes. For example, the Statistics Department of Singapore published its 2000 Census data based on planning area boundaries for the first time, compared to using postal district boundaries for previous exercises. The Singapore Police Force's Neighbourhood Police Centres have jurisdiction boundaries based on planning area boundaries when they were introduced in 1997, as opposed to electoral divisions under the previous Neighbourhood Police Post system.

The URA's relate to the DGP (Development Guide Plan) zones, which are further subdivided into subzones for statistical purposes.