UNVEILING THE BOND THAT BINDS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIABILITY IN HDB TOWNS

Abstract

This dissertation explores the sociability of Singapore’s HDB towns by analysing the accessibility between town amenities and HDB blocks. Our built environment and social capital are intricately linked, with proximate amenities as one of the major determinants for the frequency of use and effectiveness in fostering robust social interactions. Strong community ties are reported to be associated with a myriad of positive outcomes, including improved health and education, enhanced economic development, and increased civic engagement. The mounting concern over social isolation within our modern society underscores the importance of thoughtful planning and development in our built environment. Extensive research has focused on the role of each type of amenity and the intricacies of infrastructure design. However, there is a lack of spatial analysis on the locational attributes that influence utilisation. This paper seeks to bridge the gap by offering insights into the current distribution of social amenities, and employs this as a foundation for evaluating the accessibility of social amenities to residents. The analysis is done by gathering nation-wide GIS data on the locational attributes of all HDB towns and its social amenities. Results from the analysis show a trend of lower sociability in non-mature towns despite a high population density. Areas situated near industrial or special use sites, and those traversed by major expressways, consistently exhibited lower sociability scores. On the other hand, where there were pairings of Community Centres and Neighbourhood Centres in the same area, the sociability of each block is significantly higher.