Housing
issues and the associated research objectives/ questions: the public
housing theme
Article 1: Yung Yau. 2012. “Ruling
out trouble: Unacceptable behaviour and its control in Hong Kong’s
public housing” Habitat International 36 (2012) 11e19.
“The enjoyment of a quality living
environment is the desire of all residents. Yet, it is not guaranteed even if
housing is flawlessly designed and constructed because the
quality of living environment. In fact, apart from housing design and
construction, residents’ well-being is contingent also on housing
management (Yau, 2010). While non-participation or inactivity of residents has
been regarded as one of the major causes of poorly-managed housing, the impacts
of neighbourhood nuisances or residents’ unacceptable behaviour started
gaining growing attention from policy makers, housing authorities, residents
and academics in the western countries in recent years (e.g. Adderley, 2008;
Burney, 2005). Frequently reported nuisances or unacceptable behaviour include
deliberate littering in communal areas, using dwellings for illegal dealings,
creating disturbing noise, spraying graffiti and other vandalistic acts.
The seriousness of these problems has been vividly demonstrated by the increasing
number of complaints and residents’ dissatisfaction with their
neighbourhoods (e.g. Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland, 2008;
Scottish Government Social Research, 2007).”;
“In Hong Kong, neighbourhood problems did not
attract much social concern before 2003, and they were dealt with in a rather fragmented
manner. For example, noise nuisances were regulated by the Noise Control Ordinance whereas deliberate littering and spitting
were controlled by the Fixed Penalty (Public
Cleanliness Offences) Ordinance. An
integrated policy to crack these problems was absent. Nonetheless, a structured
control was institutionalised in 2003. As the aftermath of the outbreak of the
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in early 2003, the Government of the Hong
Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong Government) implemented the
Marking Scheme for Tenancy Enforcement in Public Housing Estates in August
2003, with a stated aim to improve the hygienic and living conditions in public
housing estates in the territory (Team Clean, 2003)”;
Research
objectives/ questions
“… it is worthwhile to study how the
residents perceive the neighbourhood problems in public housing. Also, it is
interesting to know what the causes of these problems are, who cannot tolerate
the problems and who support the implementation of the marking scheme in their
housing estates. These findings can help the community to justify
whether the marking scheme should be institutionalised or not”
“Opinions from public housing tenants were
collated through a self-administered face-to-face structured questionnaire
survey conducted between November 2009 and January 2010. This approach was used
with an eye to gaining the highest possible number of participants in the
survey. A questionnaire was devised to collect the information necessary for
the empirical study. Before the survey, the preset questionnaire had been
pretested and amended according to the testers’ feedbacks.
Interviews were discontinued if the respondents had not heard of the marking
scheme before. A total of 339 tenants living in two public rental housing (PRH)
estates and two Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS) estates was interviewed
eventually”
Article 2: PEGGY
TEO and SHIRLENA HUANG. 1996. “A Sense of Place in Public Housing: a Case Study
of Pasir Ris, Singapore” HABITAT
INTL. Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.
31)7-325, 1996.
“Singapore is well known for its public
housing programme, which currently houses 87% of the country's population, l
Beginning with the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), the colonial
administrative body set up in 1927 to deal with slum conditions within the city
centre, housing policy has matured under the auspices of the Housing and
Development Board (HDB) which was formed in 1960. Initially, the main objective
of the HDB was to provide shelter for Singapore's increasing population. 2
Since achieving this goal in 1975, 3 the HDB has become more concerned with the
type and quality of housing it is providing. In particular, HDB has
responded to its strongest criticism that its estates are uniform and
monotonous. 4 Critics have argued that this standardisation stems from post-war
urban planning, whereby the built environment was defined solely in utilitarian
terms along the lines of functionalism. 5 By the 1980s, Singapore came to be
described as "another modern metropolis ''6 -- international in style, but
also faceless and homogeneous and lacking in any sense of place”
“The reference to place is an important one. The interest in this concept
within geographical literature is longstanding and has been given diverse
treatment in definition and conceptualisation. For Tuan, s Relph 9 and Ley and
Samuels,l° the phenomenological and humanistic traditions aimed at uncovering
the meanings which an environment holds for individuals. More recent treatments
of humanistic geography are far more critical. For example, Philo and Kearns
and Squire raised much discussion on urban landscapes which are
"irreverent" to the realities of cultures, histories and localities,
especially in those landscapes created for the tourist. 11 This evaluative
approach is also apparent in Massey's 12 call for a "non-parochial"
treatment to the study of a sense of place, in which she argues for a
recognition of the global context in shaping the identity of a place. While the
structuralist school 13 ascribes man to a determined existence in his urban experience
who is subject to overarching structures, Agnew 14 counterargues that people
are also agencies who have a role to play in influencing the creation of landscapes.
For example, Jackson 15 and Jackson and Penrose 16 draw attention to place as
the mediator between state and society, as providing a context to contest or to
construct space. According to them, people who live and work in places are not
always free and able to shape meanings into these landscapes, because there are
others with authority and power to shape the context and constraints”
Research
objectives/ questions
“The purpose of this paper is to address the
extent to which the public housing landscape of Singapore reflects the
interaction between people as agencies and the political and economic
structures represented by the state”;
“This study focuses on the role of HDB in the
planning and design of public housing landscape”;
Article 3: Bon-Gang Hwang a, Xianbo Zhao a,*,
Si Yi Ngb. 2013. “Identifying the critical factors affecting schedule
performance of public housing Projects” Habitat International 38 (2013) 214e221.
“Public housing has been the rising issue in
Singapore in order to provide sufficient homes for all. The demand
for public housing flats is also increasing. To better meet the
demand, the Singapore government decided to reduce the waiting time of future
owners for HDB flats, which needs their completion on time and
thus poses more schedule pressures to parties involved in the construction of
HDB projects. Delay would lead to incapability of achieving the schedule objectives
of a project, and late completion and delivery tend to result in cost overruns,
client dissatisfaction, and other consequent problems. Assurance of project
schedule has been considered as an important indicator of project success, and
factors associated with project schedule have been recognized to be critical to
project success (Chua, Kog, & Loh, 1999; Ling, Low, Wang, & Lim, 2009)”;
Research
objectives/ questions
“…this study aims to fill
this knowledge gap by achieving the following objectives: (1) To identify
critical factors affecting schedule performance of public housing projects in
Singapore; (2) To compare the factors affecting schedule performance of public housing
projects and other building projects in Singapore; and (3) To provide recommendations
to respond to these critical factors. The findings from this study will
provide a better understanding of the critical factors and help practitioners
involving public housing projects to take measures to assure the achievement of
project schedule objectives”;
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