REDISCOVERING THE COMMUNITY BOND: A CASE STUDY OF THE RELEVANCE OF TRADITIONAL WET MARKET IN PROMOTING SPONTANEOUS COMMUNITY BONDING IN CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT AND THE FUTURE DIRECTION OF THIS COMMUNAL SPACE

Abstract

The role of public spaces in the development of public housing has emerged as a significant area of emphasis in recent years, especially much hype over keeping the traditional wet markets by bringing in more activities and function to make it a less time dictated communal space. Main emphasis was on ‘realizing, rejuvenating and regenerating Singapore’s heartlands’.

Traditional wet market serve as a microcosm of Singapore’s multi-cultural society since independence of Singapore. It brings residents of different social and cultural backgrounds together and initiate community bonding in an estate. Yet, this is ironic that many traditional wet markets have been vanishing over the years. Wet markets become obligatory yet inconsequential objects that are often divorced from the site due to its short and inflexible opening hours. There is currently a lack of studies being done on investigating this phenomenon that’s happening in Singapore. There is a need to investigate and improve on current spaces in and around the wet market in HDB dwelling, in order to enhance a better environment for interaction to take place among the residents. This paper will thus investigate the importance and relevance of traditional wet market in public housing estates in promoting community bonding, and the factors that contributed to its disappearance and if we should keep the traditional wet market, which is a dying trade, in future housing estates.

Traditional wet market is thus investigated as a commercial space that provides communal interaction which are usually evident only in communal spaces through investigating its usage and potential in providing a platform for active involuntary interactions, by studying its developments and comparing the success of different case studies in different development periods. The intention is to eventually use this research to understand resident’s perceptions, usage habits and user satisfaction together with their motive and experience in using this space for interactions, together with seller’s perspectives to provide a more holistic approach of design and planning guideline for planners and architects to design the wet markets both in the newer estates or upgrading of the existing wet markets.

Qualitative and Quantitative methods would be applied in analysing various local case studies to investigate the relevance and the architectural design that contributes to the success of traditional wet market in the public housing estates in Singapore.