The housing crisis and the tropes of improvement: estate blueprints of the Singapore Improvement Trust, 1927-1951

Abstract

Improvement, for the aversion of the crises of sanitation and housing was constitutionalized on July 1st, 1927 by the Singapore Improvement Ordinance which brought about the formal establishment of the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT). Throughout the SIT's 32 years of existence (1927-1959), many housing projects remained as formulations on paper - schemes submitted for approval which were put on hold or shelved. It was not until 1950 that an island-wide diagnostic survey was conducted and a Master Plan prepared. Nevertheless, the intense production of 'improvement schemes' evidenced in the numerous plans and artist renderings produced by the Architectural Department and accompanied by the piecemeal creation of back lanes and open spaces, and building of tenements and flats, firmly embedded the idea of improvement as a dominant housing tenet. The activity of public improvement or the improvement of the public spaces of the city was seen by the Trust as synonymous to the building of a civil society under an enlightened, benevolent colonial rule. By design, each scheme reinforced the positive image of improvement for the rehabilitation of those who lived in 'slumdom.' This paper examines, through the blueprints of unbuilt housing estates, the piecemeal urbanization of the city undertaken by a colonial authority alongside private enterprise. These palimpsests, together with the blocks and few housing estates that the Trust did build, underscore the idea of a city-state based on urban renewal par excellence under the rubric of 'a garden city,' recently updated to 'a city in a garden.'