After the Second World War, the British sought to relocate a large part of the central city’s population through a programme of “forced suburbanisation” 1. This “master plan”, akin to their New Villages in mainland Malaya, aimed to disrupt the social base of anticolonial political organisation. 2 The forced resettlement of inhabitants from major Chinese and Indian settlements away from the city centre and into suburban satellite towns would break up concentrations of the working poor (generally the most fervently anticolonial subpopulation). The plan was to move them into estates which were more easily surveilled and controlled by security forces. For various reasons, however, the British lacked the wherewithal to carry out this programme. It would later be inherited and elaborated upon by the PAP.
The Contradictions of Public Housing in Singapore
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Picture of Thum Ping Tjin
Thum Ping Tjin
Thum Ping Tjin (“PJ”) is Founder and Managing Director of New Naratif. A Rhodes Scholar, Commonwealth Scholar, Olympic athlete, and the only Singaporean to swim the English Channel, his work centres on Southeast Asian governance and politics. His most recent work is "Nationalism and Decolonisation in Singapore: The Malayan Generation, 1953-63" (Routledge, 2024).
https://newnaratif.com/housing-in-si...by%20the%20PAP.
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