BRINGING PEOPLE AND PUBLIC HOUSING CLOSER: A MORE PEOPLE INFLUENCED PUBLIC HOUSING SYSTEM

Abstract

Singapore, tiniest and yet, is the most established country in Southeast Asia despite its limited land area. Public housing in Singapore has been a successful model for its efficiency over the years. Meanwhile, there is general trend worldwide where people’s needs become more individualised. There are still shortcomings in Singapore’s public housing that make residents aspire for private housing with regards to the lack of individualisation. Based on the changing differentiation of lifestyle and social changes in Singapore, it seems that users are largely not satisfied due to their value system of a family. More intercultural marriages and different family settings are becoming very common. In Singapore, there is a growing unmarried residents, aging population and lesbian and gay community. The underused spaces in neighbourhood’s does ring a bell in our heads with those spaces were proposed or are still being proposed in new developments. Therefore, existing public housing needs to improve for the better to accommodate its changing population structure. Availability of choices for consumers are limited and constrained in Singapore. This paper aims to analyse the existing public housing stocks and study its effectiveness with regards to population structure and exploring solutions to eradicate the limitations and how solutions from other countries, especially from Netherlands, can be adapted.