Quality of Public Housing in Singapore: Spatial Properties of Dwellings and Domestic Lives

Abstract

Singapore’s public housing policies are widely known for their success in providing housing for over 80% of the residential population, with most owning homes. Extensive housing schemes generally offer a set of fixed housing layouts; yet, at the microscale of an individual dwelling, alterations to the units can be made by rearranging the floor plans to reflect the usage patterns of the household, thus adding diversity to the fixed configuration. The aim of this paper is to identify associations among a housing unit’s spatial properties by analysing fixed configurations and altered floor plans as well as determining the spatial preferences of the inhabitants. The research methodology applied in this paper has been divided into two parts: spatial network analysis and survey analysis. In the spatial network analysis, the configurations of individual housing units and altered units were compared by translating floor plans into graphs. The survey functions as a qualitative analysis to relate the lifestyle patterns of contemporary society to housing configurations.