PERCEPTION OF CROWDEDNESS IN HIGH-DENSITY HDB FLATS

Abstract

Singapore is experiencing rapid growth in terms of her population. By year 2000, she had already passed the 4 million mark. The Concept Plan 2001 has envisioned for 5.5 million people and has plans to meet these housing needs. One of the ways to tackle these housing needs is to go higher and denser. However, social pathology is often associated with high-density especially in the sense of crowdedness. However, many literatures purport that high-density is not a sufficient reason to feel crowded as there might be other factors at work. Thus, this study wishes to examine whether residents are feeling a sense of crowdedness in particular Housing and Development Board (HDB) high-density flats. After gaining an understanding of the perception of crowdedness in residents' minds, planners will have to know what are the major variables and important attributes that affect this sense of crowdedness. It has been found that space is an important variable in the two estates surveyed. Thus, to alleviate crowdedness, the planners can embark on physical space planning to modify the perception of space in peoples' minds. This can be done using color schemes, flat design, flat layout etc. The study has also deduced that density does affect the perception of crowdedness; however it is not through external density but personal space density as defined by Stokols (1972). However, the density attribute does not exert as much importance as the attribute of area as found out in the study.