EXPLORING THE EFFECTS OF RACIAL DIVERSITY ON RESIDENTIAL TURNOVER IN SINGAPOREAN NEIGHBOURHOODS

Abstract

Founded in an era of ethnic conflict and chaos, Singapore’s national development over the past decades have always considered fostering social cohesion between residents within their neighbourhood as a foremost priority. Even though the Ethnic Integration Program have enforced racial diversity across neighbourhoods in Singapore, its effectiveness remains obscure, all while degree of neighbourliness is surveyed to be dwindling. In this light, this research aims to explore if racial heterogeneity in neighbourhoods has a significant relationship with neighbourhood residential turnover, a measure well documented to be strongly correlated to social capital and social cohesion. The results yielded inconclusive results pertaining to the effects of race on residential turnover. However, statistical significance was identified in dwelling unit diversity which was included as an secondary exploratory variable. Lastly, in assessing the efficacy of the Ethnic Integration Program, a Python-based approach within the Geographical Information System environment was adopted, yielding statistically significant measures of ethnically constrained HDB public housing blocks in accordance to the CMIO framework.