Having a place to call home is fundamental to the success of modern society. Yet a lack of affordable urban housing is a global problem affecting low-income populations in both developed and developing nations. Can Singapore’s model lead efforts to meet this growing global challenge?
When Singapore gained its independence in 1965, the nation faced a housing crisis of epic proportions. Many people were living in unhygienic slums and squatters’ camps, and new immigrants were adding to the strain. Yet in just 5 years, this situation had been turned around with 35% of the population successfully housed in decent affordable accommodation.
Fast forward and today 82% of Singapore’s 5.6 million residents can live, work, learn, and play in modern, self-contained towns; modern affordable developments, integrating residential, retail, commercial, and public areas within walking distance of each other and to public transportation.
Globally, it is a rare achievement. While Singapore has succeeded over the last 60 years, other cities across the developed and developing world have continued to struggle when it comes to providing decent housing for their populations.
New York City, for example, the city with the most billionaires in the world, is experiencing a chronic shortage of affordable housing due to limited access to land, unaffordability, a speculative real estate market. It is a similar story in Hong Kong and across the cities of Europe, Australia, and South-East Asia; all are failing to provide affordable accommodation for their population.
UN‑Habitat, whose mission is to promote sustainable settlements and adequate shelter, defines substandard housing as dwellings that do not meet any of five basic criteria: durability of structure, sufficient living space, access to safe water, access to sanitation, and security against eviction. Depending on location and context, the cost of a home, it says, should not consume more than 30 to 50 percent of disposable household income.
Providing this decent affordable housing for growing and increasingly urbanising populations is a huge challenge that faces governments around the world. More than half the global population already lives in cities, and the figure will be two-thirds by 2050. By 2025 it thought that at least 1.6 billion people will need affordable housing.
So, does Singapore provide a model that can be globally copied? Certainly, its experience over the last half century provides many lessons.
Singapore’s affordable housing model
The driver for Singapore’s programme was the realisation that, in one of the densest cities in the world, provision of affordable housing was critical to the sustainable economic success of the nation. It is a message that is now increasingly being understood in other major cities around the globe.
The model was simple. Singapore’s Housing Development Board was set up in 1960 as the sole independent government agency in charge of planning and executing the housing program. It quickly earned a good reputation for creating self-sustaining, high-rise town-planning designs, complete with social and commercial amenities and efficient public transport. It continues to be highly regarded for its innovative planning and design.
An important goal of the HDB was to push home ownership and, in 1964, the Home Ownership for the People Scheme was introduced to give citizens a greater stake in the country. For the program to succeed, land had to be acquired, homes had to be built at a reasonable cost, and people needed to be able to own them.
To solve the first problem—particularly acute in a land-scarce city-state like Singapore – the 1967 Land Acquisition Act empowered government to acquire private land at market prices.
The scheme was given a boost in 1968 when residents were permitted to use the Central Provident Fund (CPF) – a compulsory pension saving plan for every working Singaporean – as capital against which to borrow money to buy their homes. This helped tether Singaporeans to the dream of a more equitable future and was core to creating national pride and identity.
As a result, throughout the decades that followed, public and private investment has seen construction of vast new high density public housing communities, optimising scarce land resources and providing a total living environment with self-contained educational, social and community facilities.
Renewal programmes have followed, ensuring that the housing stock is well maintained, with social, commercial, transit, and recreational facilities readily available. So well, in fact, that, in 2010, Singapore’s Housing and Development Board (HDB) won the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Award for “providing one of Asia ‘s and the world’s greenest, cleanest, and most socially conscious housing programs.”
Defining decent affordable housing
There are many definitions of affordable housing. At its simplest, the term refers to housing units that anyone, with a household income below the median, can afford to rent or buy. Usually public sector driven, the affordable housing programme stimulates and usually acts to moderate the private housing market.
For example, the City of Vienna built a huge system of housing after World War I and provides 400 million euros annually to maintain it. The city owns nearly 25% of the housing stock and is actively involved in another 20%. The result is that, with so much of the city’s total housing stock is city-owned or subsidized, private landlords are forced to compete with social housing for the same tenants, and cannot afford to inflate rents.
To be classed as decent accommodation, dwellings should conform to a series of minimal standards – floor-area per person, basic amenities, adequate heating, plumbing, and electrical systems. Critically, it should also be free from damage or structural defects such as broken windows, leaks, or cracks, that could be harmful to the health of residents.
Ideally, centers of employment must be within reasonable commuting distance – usually a maximum of one hour away. School and health facilities also must be within short distance, which will vary according to location.
By fulfilling this basic human need for shelter, affordable housing contributes to the wellbeing of both parents and children. Studies show that children in stable housing do better in school and are less likely to experience disruption in their education due to unwanted moves.
Overall such decent accommodation and a stable home life reduces stress, toxins, infectious disease, and leads to improvement in both physical and mental health. Families’ tight budgets are freed up to spend on health care and food, with studies demonstrating how children whose parents receive housing assistance benefit from better nutrition.
Toa Payoh neighbourhood Park, Singapore
Affordable housing as the driver for global economy
Affordable housing is critical to the success of families, communities and is increasingly vital to the sustainability of local, regional, and national economies. Public investment to create and foster this community, bringing together residential, commercial, and social amenities, is critical to sustaining modern urban life and can also help to stimulate economic growth.
Helping to attract and retain employees to the community creates a selling point and competitive advantage for employers and enables the workforce to live close to their jobs. Shorter commutes allow workers to spend more time with their families, boosting productivity while the community benefits from reduction in traffic congestion, air pollution, and expenditures on roads.
Surbana Jurong has been at the heart of Singapore’s affordable housing programme since it was formed in 2003 by corporatizing the building and development arm of HDB. Together with HDB, it has helped implement 26 successful townships occupying some 25% of Singapore’s land. The developments are high rise urban living green, clean and organised, modern and integrated into the transport system.
It is a model that the firm’s experienced team of planners, project & development managers, architects, engineers, and quantity surveyors have exported beyond Singapore. A comprehensive one-stop housing solution has enabled both private developers and public housing authorities to create large scale housing projects in China, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Brunei.
In each case, these states have recognised that replicating this healthy mix of housing options, from market-rate and affordable rental housing, single-family homes, duplexes, and developments for seniors, ensures opportunities for all individuals to improve their economic situation and contribute to their communities.
Unlocking the global affordable housing opportunity
Clearly the issues and drivers surrounding the provision of affordable housing around the world are diverse. It is not always straightforward or even possible to transplant the Singapore model in many parts of the world. However, there are many common core issues on which to focus when seeking solutions.
Land Supply: Finding land in an appropriate location is the most critical step in developing successful affordable housing schemes. Indeed, if the decision about land is wrong, affordable housing projects cannot succeed, no matter how well construction, operations, and financing are managed. Land cost is often the single biggest factor in the economics of affordable housing development – it is not uncommon for land costs to exceed 40 percent of total property prices, and in some large cities, in highly land scarce urban areas, land can be as much as 80 percent of property cost. Where land is available at a lower price—on the far fringes of the city—housing projects may fail due to lack of infrastructure or excessive commute times.
Financing: Financing routes have a significant impact on the affordability of housing – both for home buyers and for developers. While access to finance for low-income households can be improved in advanced economies, it is a challenge in developing economies where financial systems are not as well developed and many low-income citizens are “unbanked” and work informally. As part of housing-finance policy, housing rentals should be considered as part of the housing solution.
Planning and design: Sustainable urban planning and design, with a combination of residential, commercial, educational, and civic space, is critical to fostering a sense of physical and social community. Getting it right provides connectivity and context that works with the community’s natural beauty, along with easy access to transportation and social infrastructure; minimizing the use of cars, maximising the sense security and privacy.
Construction: Most countries have been slow to improve construction productivity due to the lack of technical resources and low labour costs. However, ideas such as value engineering and efficient procurement, as well as adoption of industrial approaches such as use of prefabricated components. Together with modern construction management techniques, this can bring huge potential savings in cost, time and significantly improve the quality. Such ideas make the economics of affordable housing more attractive and encourage developers as well as builders to think beyond housing for mid- and high-income consumers.
Maintenance: Beyond construction of housing, good maintenance is required to avoid dilapidation and help preserve housing stock. Good maintenance starts during planning and design to incorporate material with good life-cycle value to designs which allows easy maintenance. Subsequently, resources need to be dedicated for maintenance. Legislation to provide for resource in the form of contributions to maintenance expense and to enforce maintenance work has been successfully implemented in Singapore. For example, HDB flats look presentable is that cyclic repainting works has been legislated. To maintain and extend the value of property, older developments and units should be periodically upgraded. Hence maintenance need to be incorporated into the overall housing strategy
Policy and management: Affordable housing programs will not succeed without clear governance and implementation for both the short and long terms. Furthermore, human capital is an important factor in housing management. The right legal, technological, research, and statistical expertise must be in place within the different departments and branches of the housing agency, with efficient and transparent policies that institutional support can implement, monitor, and assess.
Developing modern delivery models
While the Singapore housing model relies largely on public sector support, several other development models are available and utilised around the world:
Punggol Bayview, Singapore
Consumer-led delivery: Consumers arrange to construct their own homes, requiring individuals with little knowledge to navigate an opaque and fragmented construction industry. Yet this is a common way in which families obtain housing in many places. Government can improve the odds of success for consumers by providing benchmarking information and technical assistance – letting households know how much materials and labor should cost and providing advice on how to write and enforce contracts and manage timetables.
Incentivised private development: Private developers receive financial and non-financial incentives to build affordable housing, which is sold to consumers, purchased by the government for allocation to citizens, or operated as rental property. The government determines what incentives are appropriate and which land qualifies for such incentives. It also ensures that developers fulfil their commitments.
Public-private partnerships: The public sector is an active partner with the private developer, rather than a passive, regulatory actor. Private developers may be given public land to be developed. The finished units are sold directly to homeowners by the private developer or are allocated to buyers or renters by the government. The structure of the partnership is set up to allocate the risks along the affordable housing value chain to the most natural owner.
The future of affordable housing
Public housing in Singapore has entered a new phase of its evolution, with housing options are being developed to cater to different segments of society, lifestyle preferences and budgets. For example, studio apartments have been developed specifically to cater for an ageing population.
At the same time, it is now understood that designs must be sustainable to ensure that homes are fit to meet the needs of the future. The Treelodge@Punggol, HDB’s 1st eco-precinct, Punggol Waterfront Housing and Dawson projects are landmark developments that combine stylish designs with environmentally-friendly features.
Increasingly we are also seeing existing affordable housing estates being refurbished and regenerated to accommodate changing community needs as they strive to meet Singapore’s vision to become a nation of home owners. As is seen increasingly around the world, modern design and construction technology will be at the heart of Singapore’s future built environment; the use of Virtual Design Construction (VDC) for planning and design, Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction (PPVC) for construction, and smart sensor technologies to boost operational efficiencies of estates.
Precast façade Installation
Conclusion
The affordable housing model developed by Singapore is admired by many. However, it would be hard to simply replicate the ideas behind this success in all parts of the world.
For example, sizable public land in Singapore has been dedicated for public housing, which limits the income that the Singapore government can earn from land sales. By contrast, in Hong Kong, the government earns much revenue from land sales as a form of taxation making it very difficult to adopt Singapore’s model.
That said, many aspects of Singapore’s model, such as providing a total quality living environment, integrated towns, emphasis on sustainability, use of optimal construction technologies for quality and productivity can be replicated and adapted to the local social, economic, and environmental circumstances elsewhere around the world.
The key is to be pragmatic on what can be adopted. This would depend on what which can reasonably be controlled and what resources are available. That means first understanding the circumstances of the market, working out solutions and then decide on how to implement these solutions.
Perspectives, developed by SJ Academy, is our platform to explore new ways of tackling some of today’s most complex challenges. We draw on ideas and opinions from our staff associates and experts across different businesses. Click here to read more about Technology & Innovation, Infrastructure & Connectivity, and Design Leadership.
How built environment design and engineering will solve the global feeding problem
The Food Production Challenge
With the global population rising rapidly and expected to reach 9.7bn by 2050, governments around the world are increasingly asking the simple but critical question: how will we feed ourselves in future? The radical Food Tower vertical urban farming model could provide an answer.
Food, it seems, is all around us. In our homes; on our televisions; in our shops; on our streets. Yet, surprising though it may seem given this apparent proliferation, the question of how we continue to feed ourselves in future is set to become one of the biggest challenges facing the developed and developing world.
The combined impact of population growth, climate change and urbanisation, which in 30 years’ time could see some 70% of the global population living in cities, means that we are running out of available space and resources to grow crops in traditional ways.
In short, we need to come up with new ways to farm; new ways to manage food production and delivery; new ways to reduce pressure on resources and sustain our environment and lifestyles.
The food production challenge is already seen in cities such as Singapore. With almost no arable land, Singapore is heavily dependent on food imports and faces a potential food security problem. While past investment has enabled water self-sufficiency to be achieved, the need for a sustainable locally-grown supply of food is now becoming more important. The built environment designers must now adopt a radically different approach to city planning to include food production within their thinking.
The Food Tower
Enter the radical Food Tower vertical urban farming concept as an innovative solution to these challenges.
While Singapore may not have vast land area, it is blessed with an abundance of sunshine and rainfall. The Food Tower concept attempts to maximise this natural potential, and by stacking vegetable growing areas in an open, sunlight flooded high rise towers, sunlight can be captured boosting growing yields across the 1 hectare site to some 400 times that of traditional farming.
The Food tower concept takes a major step forward in large scale urban farming by using Aquaponics; vegetables are grown on towers using the water and nutrients from a system of tanks in which Red Talipa fish are reared. The vegetable towers are located on “wings” on higher floors that spiralling upwards to maximise sunlight exposure; the fish farms are located at the lower floors where there is more shade.
The Food Tower also features a closed loop energy system, with onsite photovoltaics generating power, rainwater harvesting to collect water and wetland reed beds to purify and recycle waste water on site. The wetlands act as part of a garden for the larger community.
It is estimated that a 100 storey food tower on a 1 hectare of land can provide sufficient meat and vegetables for just over 11,000 people per year.
Policy Support for the Food Tower
While the technology and design for high-rise farming in cities has been slowly maturing, there are a number of other factors which need to be addressed early so that Singapore can stay ahead of the curve and be ready to capitalise on the technology when it becomes viable.
This starts with the physical planning and zoning of suitable sites for urban farms, in particular, to ensure that the immediate setback of buildings around the site enables sunlight to reach the crops. Government agencies must be armed with well researched and clear policies, to ensure that this need is well understood and taken into account, and the tenure offered to the farmer or farming community for the land use must take into consideration the efforts put in to develop the farm.
Clearly, despite the predictability of the weather in Singapore, the availability of sunlight varies around and throughout the Tower. This must be matched to different types of crops to maximise yield. Land use zoning could designate that certain heights be developed as farms while lower floors are used for other commercial and retail use.
Yield per square meter would also need to be mandated to encourage developers to adopt best technology to maximise the efficiency of land use. For example, natural sunlight could be supplemented by artificial LED growing lights, powered by stored photovoltaic energy from panels on the structure – possibly creating 24 hour a day growing conditions in the tower and so maximising growing efficiency.
Creating a sustainable solution also means working with the community. Commercial farming revenue from towers could be supplemented by sharing the poorer growing space with other community and residential facilities. These might include an environmental research centre, restaurant and a school plus other facilities such as Community Parks and wetlands to boost interaction with the local community.
A new way of farming will need us to create a new breed of farmer; an urban-agriculturist. It is a role that currently does not exist, requiring knowledge of technology and the specific techniques needed to adapt modern intensive farming practice to a high-rise urban environment.
The farm workforce would also need a multitude of new skills to run the urban farm; understanding the internal drainage, water and electrical needs of a modern building, the external environment such as solar effects, winds flows plus the impact of dust and city pollutants on crops.
In the factory environment of a Food Tower, they would need to be thoroughly grounded in managing work flow and production process while also understanding and managing resource use and recycling of water, waste and energy so as to maximise productivity and output.
Conclusion
It is clear we must look globally at more sustainable ways of living. This means including food production in future planning policies as we define and design the increasingly urban, increasingly congested cities of the future.
Although the idea sets out to rethink mass food production, it also demonstrates that consumers can be supplied with fresher and safer food with a lower overall carbon footprint. The project has already shown that it has a viable commercial business model but it is also a model that can rejuvenate urban sites, engage the community in various levels and create local jobs.
However, the development of such projects will require major commitment and intervention by governments to cover the substantial start-up cost and to create the necessary governance to allow such high-density food production in urban areas.
Perspectives, developed by SJ Academy, is our platform to explore new ways of tackling some of today’s most complex challenges. We draw on ideas and opinions from our staff associates and experts across different businesses. Click here to read more about Technology & Innovation, Infrastructure & Connectivity, and Design Leadership.
How engineering and technical innovation can meet the challenge of feeding a growing global population
There are always plenty more fish in the sea, so the saying goes. Turns out it isn’t necessarily so true anymore.
Over-fishing, poor management of fish stocks and the impact of a changing climate means that we must now look increasingly for new ways of satisfying the global demand for fish as a sustainable source of food. The development of the Floating Ponds urban farm concept – a radical systems based design incorporating innovative engineering and technology – holds the potential to turn the dream of efficient, self-sustaining food production into a reality.
The global population is becoming rapidly urbanised, with the United Nations’ predicting that some two thirds of the global population – around 6 billion people and rising – will be jostling for space in the cities by 2050. Oceans and farmlands are falling short of meeting our food demands. Climate changes are fast rendering farming uneconomic and untenable; and those which still are, are being gobbled up by sprawling metropolitan areas for housing, infrastructure, or commercial needs.
Thus our ability to feed ourselves is and will be challenged by the need to provide for housing, infrastructure, transportation, employment, education and all other basic requirements in competing for the strained limited resources we have.
Sustaining a sustainable healthy food source for these dense urban areas is a vital challenge
Rethinking food production:
Surbana Jurong is rising to this challenge with the Floating Ponds high-intensity urban farming concept. The vertically stacked fish raceways help to multiply the production capacity of any available space, and not just land; whilst its inherent self-sustaining, closed-loop farming eco-system optimises the use of resources – water, nutrients and energy.
The result is an ecologically sustainable farming model which is modular, scalable and replicable.
Currently Singapore imports some 92% of the fish consumed locally. Rising concerns over the sourcing of fish has switched focus towards ways to improve local production and increase the sustainability and reliability of the food supply.
Land based fish farms are not in themselves a new idea. Landlocked regions or high-density urban development without access to conventional fish farming have been developing such food sources. However, these traditional facilities are resource hungry and consume enormous quantities of water, energy, and nutrients to produce quality fish products. The Floating Ponds model sets out to transform this existing model.
Systems Thinking to Close the Loop:
The vision for urban fish farming is founded on a comprehensive systems level integration of the three primary systems engaged by the farm – water, nutrients and energy. The design and architecture of the farm works towards enabling flows and exchanges amongst the three systems. The concept employs a vertical stacking of water raceways for fish farming which helps to relieve space for the environmental systems needed to create these systems flows and exchanges to ensure a closed loop ecosystem.
Water reuse:
The role of water is paramount to this project. Traditional fish farms consume large volumes of water in a linear flow set-up, rendering significant volume to be discharged into the sewers as waste. Together with it, vital residual nutrients are washed away as well.
In Floating Ponds, it is the planned flow of water which creates the medium for the systemic exchanges to take place.
Expunged waste water from the fish tanks is treated via a specially constructed wetland system to enable natural cleaning as bacteria and aquatic plants feed on the organic waste while the drainage actively captures rainwater. Treated water can be re-used for several non-potable uses or re-circulated back into the fish tanks. Alternatively, the nutrient-rich water from the fish farm can be fed into a hydroponic system to sustain the production of vast quantities of green leafy vegetables. Bio-swales enhance the water system by treating and capturing surface run-off thus reducing demand for clean potable water in the fish tanks.
Such concerted efforts can reduce the volume of water being discharged out from the site into the sewer system.
Nutrients:
In addition to the primary nutrient being nurtured in the form of fishes, the aquatic plants in the wetlands become an essential ancillary source of nutrients. They help to close the nutrient loop as a certain quantum of them is processed back to become feed for the fish.
Furthermore, micro-algae are cultivated using the nutrient laden waste water as feed for the fish. Algae are also used to condition the sea-water which is also used as a source of topping up.
Hydroponics further adds to the production capacity of green leafy vegetables by directly using the nutrient rich waste water from the fish raceways.
Energy:
The roof structures covering fish farming areas of the Floating Ponds provide a perfect platform for the use of photovoltaic panels capable of generating enough energy to offset significant portion of the consumption demands. Algae, grown in transparent tubes and pumped with waste water and a lot of CO2, is capable of producing bio-fuel in the presence of sunlight. This is a technology which requires more research and development but clearly holds future potential as demonstrated in projects across the world.
Besides the conscious design decisions to incorporate passive design features, the overall energy balance can be significantly enhanced by efficient and innovative technologies for spaces such as labs, offices, cold storage which inherently tend to consume more energy. Technologies such as passive displacement ventilation, radiant cooling, the use of heat recovery systems are being considered together with the use of fan assisted ventilation to improve thermal comfort at higher supply air and room temperature.
Creating a modular system that meets the needs of the community:
By rethinking the factory fish farm model, the team has developed an integrated, self-contained farming ecosystem, placing local food sufficiency and resilience for the local community at its heart. To be successful, it is imperative that the farming and food production process is visible and accessible to garner community interest and attract engagement.
As such the central space above and around the constructed wetlands attempts to create a space to anchor that community engagement – both spatially by drawing visitors in but also functionally by providing a useful and attractive recreation area. While by being modular and scalable, the Floating Ponds typology makes itself flexible and adaptable to any available urban space, ranging from a park space, to un-used roof space and to even community spaces within larger commercial developments.
In doing so, Floating Ponds can not only make a small pocket of urban space significantly productive by producing high-value food fish, but can also enhance the surrounding ecology and generate a vibrant community hub with farming activities.
A design that adds to the urban environment:
With this initiation in Singapore and in the face of the global challenges of urbanization and food production, high-tech, systems based and resource efficient facilities such as the Floating Ponds will soon start to transform food production around the world.
Fundamentally, the Floating Ponds concept will create a new urban typology; taking high-value food production out of isolated and secluded land-based farms and placing them into the heart of high-density urban cores, as inclusive elements of the social and economic function of the city.
Image caption: Systems Map
Image caption: Planning for a closed-loop vertical fish farm which allows for systemic flows and exchanges
Image caption: Functioning prototype built to test the vertical stacking and the water reticulation system
Image caption: Elevated visitor / community spaces suspended above the integral blue-green spaces
Singapore shows how an effective housing program can promote social and political stability
On every continent, there are pockets of political turmoil, driven in part by economic resentment. At the same time, the world is inexorably urbanizing. More than half the global population already lives in cities, and the figure will be two-thirds by 2050. To cope, and also to strengthen their own legitimacy, governments need to address their citizens’ concerns. Housing is at or near the top of the list in many places.
In this regard, the experience of Singapore is worth considering. Even before it became independent in 1965, Singapore considered housing a high priority. Many people were living in unhygienic slums and squatters’ camps and new immigrants were adding to the strain. On the basis that widespread home ownership would foster social stability, the government took concerted action to improve matters.
By any measure, it has succeeded. More than 90 percent of households own their residences, up from 59 percent in 1980, and they are well maintained, with social, commercial, transit, and recreational facilities readily available. In 2010, Singapore’s Housing and Development Board (HDB) won the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Award for “providing one of Asia’s and the world’s greenest, cleanest, and most socially conscious housing programs.” A survey of residents of HDB units in 2013 found that 91.6 percent were satisfied with their homes and 92 percent with their neighborhoods. The provision of quality affordable housing has tethered Singaporeans to the dream of a more equitable future; it is a core part of the country’s national pride and identity.
Every country and city is unique, but the basic issue is the same everywhere: to craft policies that enable housing projects to be developed and financed to suit the needs of all levels of society. In addressing that question, Singapore, in effect, turned the problem of housing inside out, recasting it as an opportunity to build both the economy and the society.
As the government saw it, the state would not only be building homes but also a sense of community and national identity. That was important for a new, multiethnic country. Economically, the public-housing program sought to make the home an asset, thus creating and managing a sustainable national housing market. Socially, the housing authorities envisaged building spaces that would encourage different ethnic groups to interact and to allow for multigenerational households.
In the early 1960s, Singapore was a developing country struggling to find its feet. In this context, providing every household with a decent home was a challenging goal. But by demonstrating its commitment to the population, the government hoped also to create a spirit of responsible citizenship and thereby contribute to political stability.
Making it work
For the program to succeed, land had to be acquired, homes had to be built at a reasonable cost, and people needed to be able to own them. To solve the first challenge—particularly acute in a land-scarce city-state like Singapore—in 1967, the Land Acquisition Act empowered the government to acquire private land at market prices.
With respect to building, HDB was set up in 1960 to be the sole independent agency in charge of planning and executing the housing program. Since its early days, HDB has earned a good reputation for creating self-sustaining, high-rise town-planning designs, complete with social and commercial amenities and efficient public transport. It continues to be highly regarded for its innovative planning and design. To give one example, as people’s expectations have risen, planners have worked to design each new township with a distinctive identity. For another, HDB uses the most modern construction techniques, such as precast and prefabricated volumetric construction. HDB has also embraced the concept of sustainable design, integrating highly efficient energy, water, and waste- management systems in its townships. The Treelodge@Punggol HDB project in northeast Singapore, designed by Surbana Jurong and completed in 2010, is an award-winning eco- development. Since 1960, the HDB has built more than a million units; these house more than 80 percent of Singapore’s citizens.
How was all this paid for? The Central Provident Fund (CPF) has been critical. Established in 1955 and revised several times since, this compulsory savings plan for every working Singaporean and permanent resident is funded by individuals and their employers and helps to pay for retirement, healthcare, and housing. Citizens can draw from their CPF at low interest rates and use the money to buy their homes. The CPF therefore actively supports home ownership and ensures that public housing is within reach of the population so that less than a quarter of a first-time buyer’s monthly household income is used to pay for his or her mortgage instalment.
Increasing urbanization and ageing, growing populations will test the ability of many societies to develop the housing and social amenities that future populations will both aspire to and be able to afford. Political and social environments vary considerably. Even so, it is clear that Singapore’s public-housing record is one that city planners and world leaders can learn from. Government policies and programs—specifically the creation of a single independent agency accountable for results, and the steady financial resources derived from the CPF—have been the basis of this success. Singapore has shown that the provision of affordable housing for all can be a force for stability. Given the turbulent times, that may be the most important lesson of all.
Perspectives, developed by SJ Academy, is our platform to explore new ways of tackling some of today’s most complex challenges. We draw on ideas and opinions from our staff associates and experts across different businesses. Click here to read more about Technology & Innovation, Infrastructure & Connectivity, and Design Leadership.
