THE POST-NEIGHBOURHOOD CONDITION: NEIGHBOURHOOD-DIRECTED PUBLIC SPACES IN A DIGITALLY CONNECTED SOCIETY

Abstract

Recognising its diverse population, social cohesion remains imperative in Singapore to ensure an internationally competitive workforce and a harmonious environment for its residents. Existing measures and strategies adopted by HDB in Singapore seem to be driven by underlying notions that residential integration and the provision of high quality built environments would mean achieving social cohesion. In light of the transformative technological advancements which allow for crucial shifts in ways of human communication and interaction, this paper hypothesises that Singapore faces a post-neighbourhood condition whereby the neighbourhood has lost its social function and its public spaces are emptying out, coupled with a predominant shift of communication and interaction taking place in the form of locale-independent virtual communities. As such, this paper seeks to access the current state of social cohesion within the neighbourhoods of Singapore and compare it to that of virtual communities. Correlations would then be drawn between social cohesion and its respective environments to study the proposed post-neighbourhood condition and find its possible causes.