Remaking Singapore's heartland: sustaining public housing through home and neighbourhood upgrade programmes

Abstract

Singapore's public housing system is regarded as a model of modernisation and efficiency. By 1990, over 80% of the country's citizens lived in towns and estates created by the Housing Development Board (HDB) to overcome problems of land scarcity and poor planning. The HDB faces ongoing challenges to ensure the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of the ageing public housing supply in new towns. This paper describes three programmes designed to sustain public housing in Singapore since 1990. The Main Upgrading Program, Neighborhood Renewal Program (NRP), and Remaking our Heartland programmes intend to ensure the viability of Singapore's public housing and offer a template for other maturing housing systems. After reviewing the programmes, we provide case examples where neighbourhood upgrading has occurred. Whereas Singapore's specific policy environment makes wholesale transfer of these programmes difficult, certain strategic and tactical elements of the urban renewal programmes can provide tools for other housing authorities to adopt.

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