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Singapore Population Distribution and Housing Policies
In the early 1950s, some 75 percent of the population
lived in
very crowded tenements and neighborhoods; these were
usually
occupied by a single ethnic group in the built-up
municipality on
the island's southern shore. The remaining 25 percent
lived in the
northern "rural" areas in settlements strung along the
roads or in
compact villages, known by the Malay term kampong,
and
usually inhabited by members of a single ethnic group.
Many
kampongs were squatter settlements housing wage laborers
and urban
peddlers. Low-cost public housing was a major goal of the
ruling
People's Action Party
(
PAP--see Glossary). Vigorous
efforts at slum
clearance and resettlement of squatters had begun with the
establishment in 1960 of the Housing and Development
Board, which
was granted wide powers of compulsory purchase and forced
resettlement. By 1988, Housing and Development Board
apartments
were occupied by 88 percent of the population and 455,000
of these
apartments (74 percent of all built) had been sold to
tenants, who
could use their pension savings from the compulsory
Central
Provident Fund for the downpayment
(see Forced Savings and Capital Formation
, ch. 3). The balance was paid over twenty years
with
variable rate mortgage loans, the interest rate in 1987
being 3.4
percent. The government envisaged a society of homeowners
and
throughout the 1980s introduced various measures such as
reduced
downpayments and extended loan periods to permit
low-income
families to purchase apartments.
The massive rehousing program had many social effects.
In
almost every case, families regarded the move to a Housing
and
Development Board apartment as an improvement in their
standard of
living. Although high-rise apartment complexes usually are
regarded
as examples of crowded, high-density housing, in Singapore
the
apartments were much less crowded than the subdivided
shophouses
(combined business and residence) or squatter shacks they
had
replaced. Between 1954 and 1970 the average number of
rooms per
household increased from 0.76 to 2.15, and the average
number of
persons per room decreased from 4.84 to 2.52. Movement to
a public
housing apartment was associated with (although not the
cause of)
a family structure in which husband and wife jointly made
important
decisions, as well as with a family's perception of itself
as
middle class rather than working class. The government
used the
resettlement program to break up the ethnically exclusive
communities and sought to ensure that the ethnic
composition of
every apartment block mirrored that of the country as a
whole.
Malays, Indians, and Chinese of various speech groups
lived next
door to each other, shared stairwells, community centers,
and
swimming pools, patronized the same shops, and waited for
buses
together.
Although the earliest public housing complexes built in
the
1960s were intended to shelter low-income families as
quickly and
cheaply as possible, the emphasis soon shifted to creating
new
communities with a range of income levels and public
services. The
new complexes included schools, shops, and recreation
centers,
along with sites on which residents could use their own
resources
to construct mosques, temples, or churches. The revised
master plan
for land use called for the creation of housing estates at
the
junctions of the expressways and the mass transit railroad
that
were to channel urban expansion out from the old city
center
(see Land
, ch. 3). New towns of up to 200,000 inhabitants were
to be
largely self-contained and thoroughly planned communities,
subdivided into neighborhoods of 4,000 to 6,000 dwelling
units. In
theory, the new towns would be complete communities
providing
employment for most residents and containing a mixture of
income
levels. In practice, they did not provide sufficient
employment,
and many residents commuted to work either in the central
business
district or in the heavy industrial area of Jurong in the
southwestern quadrant of the island. Public transportation
made the
journey to the central business district short enough that
many
residents preferred to shop and dine there rather than at
the more
limited establishments in their housing estates. Thus, as
in other
countries that have attempted to build new towns,
Singapore's new
towns and housing estates have served largely as suburban
residences and commuter settlements, the center of life
only for
the very young and the very old.
Throughout the 1980s, the government and the Housing
and
Development Board made great efforts to foster a sense of
community
in the housing estate complexes by sponsoring education
and
recreation programs at community centers and setting up a
range of
residents' committees and town councils. The apartment
complexes
generally were peaceful and orderly, and the relations
between
residents were marked by civility and mutual tolerance.
But social
surveys found that few tenants regarded their apartment
blocks as
communities in any very meaningful sense. Residents'
primary social
ties were with relatives, old classmates, fellow-workers,
and
others of the same ethnic group, who often lived in
housing
complexes some distance away. In the late 1980s, families
who had
paid off their mortgages were free to sell their
apartments, and a
housing market began to develop. There were also
administrative
mechanisms for exchanging apartments of equivalent size
and value.
Residents used sales, purchases, and apartment exchanges
to move
closer to kin and friends who belonged to the same ethnic
group.
The result was a tendency toward the recreation of the
ethnic
communities that had been deliberately broken up in the
initial
resettlement.
The government criticized the tendency toward ethnic
clustering
as contrary to its policy of multiracialism and in March
1989
announced measures to halt it. Although no family would be
forced
to move from its apartment, new rules prohibited the sale
or
exchange of apartments to members of other ethnic groups.
Although
the tendency toward ethnic resegregation apparently
stemmed more
from personal and pragmatic motivations than from
conscious
antagonism toward other ethnic groups, the government
effort to
halt it and to enforce ethnic quotas for apartment blocks
demonstrated the continued significance of ethnicity in
Singapore's
society.
Data as of December 1989
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