NEGOTIATING BOUNDARIES - TRANSGRESSIONAL ACTS OF SPATIAL APPROPRIATION ALONG THE OLD JURONG RAIL

Abstract

Singapore’s rapid growth over the past 5 decades has led by strong political dominance. This top-down planning approach inhibits the ability for citizens to participate in shaping the spaces around them. This de-personalization of public space ultimately affects their ability to make ‘place’. Acknowledging the necessity for change and development, it is essential to search for a new adaptive social space, - one which is not planned and imposed but re-written and transformed by the actors who inhabit it. The study searches for the potential contexts within local-level public spaces that allow individuals to negotiate boundaries between the existing built environment and individual identities. Recognizing guerilla gardening as a tolerated form of defiant spatial practice, this dissertation seeks to identify, document and understand potential contexts within which in which these informalities are able to emerge and sustain themselves within the planned environment. Through the examination of these acts of appropriation and its impact on the surrounding communities, we start to determine relevant attributes necessary in the extension of these boundaries of negotiation, and how these may have further implications on spatial planning.