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Author Tay
Kheng Soon
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1991 Public housing
in Singapore is tied to the political structure. As such, it is both a
political product and part of the political process. No discussion of
public housing in Singapore will be complete without referencing it to
the dynamics of power and the dominance of government. The ruling party
came into power on a mass line. The operating philosophy was that of maximisation
of the equality of opportunities and the even-handed distribution of benefits
to its mass base of support. This is an
inhibiting factor in producing radically- different and improved forms
of housing and housing environments because, by contrast, the existing
housing stock would depreciate in value. The basic design parameters for
the HDB housing estates has been based on the assumption that high-rise
equals high-density. High-density in the Singapore context means floor
space ratio of the current maximum of 2.8. Although these densities are
not unduly high, options in building form have not been explored because
of the above assumption. The seminal studies by Martin, March and Steadman of the Centre for Built-Form Studies at Cambridge, England have largely been ignored. The error in HDB studies on alternative heights was in assuming an unchanged block depth/unit type design. Accordingly, the erro-neous conclusion was that spacing between blocks would be untenable at low building heights. If building blocks are deepened, adequate spaces would be possible. Simulta-neously, the length of blocks was also not explored. Continuous convoluted blocks would have solved the problem, but this was not explored.
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