THE OUTCOMES OF RESIDENTIAL REDEVELOPMENT: GOVERNMENT- V.S. PRIVATE- DRIVEN APPROACHES

Abstract

Gentrification, a significant socioeconomic change in neighbourhoods as a result of residential redevelopment, is a pertinent issue in today’s urban planning. Most literature has focused on the definitions, consequences and indicators of gentrification, along with the role of the state in this process. However, no study has investigated how redevelopment outcomes and the degree of gentrification vary by the main players of the redevelopment process. Utilizing Singapore’s dual housing markets, this dissertation seeks to estimate the treatment effect of the private-driven redevelopment by comparing outcomes of Condo en-bloc projects (treatment group) with those of HDB SERS projects (comparison group). After identifying 49 SERS from 1995 to 2010, and matching 57 Condo en-bloc projects that are located within same planning areas as these SERS, a series of quantitative analyses were employed including an independent t-test and multiple linear regressions. Estimation results at the project-level suggest that Condo en-bloc projects have resulted in a much greater increase in housing prices compared to their counterpart SERS. The transaction-level results consistently demonstrate that after controlling for pre-redevelopment prices and other unit- and project-level attributes, the post-redevelopment price for units in Condo en-bloc projects is 87.5% higher than that for units in SERS. Finally, descriptive results present that changes in household income and other demographic attributes are also much more significant in planning areas concentrated with Condo en-bloc projects. These results provide important implications that government-driven redevelopment could effectively rejuvenate residential areas without causing huge gentrification and significant sociodemographic changes. Additionally, the research reports that some areas concentrated with SERS but located at the city fringe, such as Queenstown, may have experienced gentrification, and thus calls for more careful redevelopment approaches mitigating gentrification in such areas in the future.