The Social, Cultural, and Political Value of Play: Singapore’s Postcolonial Playground System

Abstract

In welfare-state urban renewal programs, playground systems are instruments used to advance social, educational, and political goals. However, literature focuses on playground’s implementation in western countries. Between the 1970s and 1990s, Singapore’s Housing and Development Board built a playground system in support of its vast postcolonial public housing program of new towns. While Singapore’s effort has not been placed in an historical perspective, in 2015 only sixteen “old Singapore playgrounds” were recorded on-site of the more than 1,160 originally built. Singaporean playgrounds were key elements of the ideology of building a new society. Their spatial tactics and aesthetics were strategized to redirect urban-social development. The article’s historical sequence reconstructs playground’s design and spatial planning as expressions of changing postcolonial political ideologies: tactical elements of urban planning, artworks, social tools, and pedagogical instruments, framing them within the broader western discourse that placed architectures of childhood at the center of welfare-state nationbuilding policies.