What do Housing Board flats should do with shophouses? Or with ang ku kueh moulds?
Greater than I might have thought, because it seems. On a current native strolling tour, I additionally uncover that spending a few hours ambling across the heartland could be extra attention-grabbing than I might have imagined. (Sure, even when the brand new cooling measures could also be squelching the property market.)
It’s in all probability not a tour I might have thought-about signing up for, to be sincere. The “Evolution of Public Housing – An Structure and Historical past Tour via the Everton, Cantonment and Pinnacle Housing Estates” sounds very very like an academic tour, one thing that solely vacationers and architectural or historical past college students could be interested by.
Certainly, many of the company becoming a member of tour information Yeo Pei Shyuan on the stroll have tended to be expatriates, college students and locals who haven’t lived in a HDB flat. (“Loopy Wealthy Asians,” we joke.)
However in case you are searching for one thing a bit of totally different from the “common” exploration of historic and heritage areas round Singapore – and a method to make use of up your SingapoRediscover Vouchers, which you will have to redeem by the top of December – this could be value contemplating.
Whereas greater than 80 per cent of Singaporeans reside in HDB flats, many might not know a lot concerning the story behind them or the evolution that they’ve gone via since HDB was arrange in 1960 to offer houses for the majority of the inhabitants.
Ms Yeo herself finds Singapore-style public housing intriguing. “I’ve lived abroad for some years and seen public housing elsewhere. There’s nothing like this on earth,” she enthuses.
She grew up in Tiong Bahru – the place the primary public houses have been constructed by the pre-war Singapore Enchancment Belief – and now lives round Cantonment Street, the location of our two-hour strolling tour.
This space, as she proceeds to point out us, homes HDB flats from three eras.
The slab blocks in Everton Park mirror the ethos of early post-Independence years of public housing, when the precedence was to construct as many flats as attainable.
“They have been all standardised in order that they might be constructed rapidly, similar to this,” notes Ms Yeo, holding aloft the ang ku kueh mould.
On the identical time, HDB was already giving some thought to constructing communities, and never simply houses. Lots of the blocks round Everton Park characteristic retailers and occasional retailers on the bottom flooring. “They’re modelled after shophouses,” she factors out.