Talk:Public housing in Singapore

Source of data

I noticed that Timothyhouse1 copied a large amount of text from my website (www.teoalida.com), beside copyright violation, you overloaded Wikipedia with too many architectural details, the page became non-sense because you did not copied the full article from my website, especially since I wrote it to be understandable only together with images shown on my website.

I provide a detailed study of evolution of public housing in Singapore from 1930s to present, Wikipedia readers may benefit of this, but please remove the copied text and add instead an external link to my website. I would like to do this myself but I get the warning of possible conflict of interest.

Secondly, I notice that Pricing section do not cite any references. I am personally interested in HDB prices along history, and I cannot find such info anywhere except in this article, which are unclear and most likely, WRONG. What is the source of these per-decade prices? Prices have varied from year to year, and in central area the prices are double than at city outskirts. You cannot provide 1970s prices, 1980s prices, etc.

Flat sizes in sqm are also wrong. During 1970s 3-room flats were 2 types: Improved 60 sqm and New Generation 67 sqm, same for 4-room flats: Improved 82 sqm, New Generation 92 sqm. During 1980s, 3-room flats were again 2 types: Simplified 64 sqm and Model A 75 sqm, same for 4-room flats: Simplified 84 sqm and Model A 104-108 sqm. NO 3-room flats were build from 1989 to 2002, so from where the 1990s 3-room prices came from? No Executive flats were built since 2004, so from where the 2010s Executive price came from? SBF? Prices offered in BTO (which will be completed in 3-4 years) are about 20% cheaper than the prices of repurchased flats (completed, ready to move) offered in SBF. Which of the prices are the ones shown in this article? Also the 5-Room flats were NEVER less than 117 sqm until 2000s reduction to 110 sqm. The number stated on this articles 95 sqm for 1970s 5-room flats are clearly WRONG, so I assume that prices are also WRONG.

I could fix myself the errors in flats sqm but how about the prices? I suggest removal of Pricing section to avoid misleading people providing wrong info, unless we can find reliable sources.

Teoalida (talk) 18:00, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Pricing

Something seems to be wrong with the pricing table. No way is an executive HDB just 55K in 2010. Where is this information coming from?

Orangewarning (talk) 08:25, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
agreed, pricing table looks totally wrong
-6eXo9

I have undid the vandalism. Please check. Mohann Jasturba (talk) 05:09, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Public housing in Singapore/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 10:31, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Will take this one, expect comments tonight or within the next couple of days. —Kusma (talk) 10:31, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Progress and general comments

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Overall a quite nice article about an important aspect of Singapore. It looks well researched and the sources seem reliable. Ref layout could be improved a little:

• Cheong 2016: could give OCLC number
• Chua 1991: use title case instead of ALL CAPS
• Some others (Kuah, Ooi) could have DOI or JSTOR ids added to the citation templates
• It is unclear which of the sources are cited with {{sfn}} and which are not. Consider converting all to {{sfn}}, especially Liu 1974, which is used twice.

Images appear freely licensed (many of them taken by Wikipedians that I remember from a long time ago; in the mid-2000s there was a highly active Singaporean Wikipedia community including several admins) and relevant to the article, with a nice spread of images from different eras.

I will go through the article section by section, making comments on what content (if any) I feel is missing or unclear, and whether prose improvements need to be made. I will comment on the lead section last, to clarify whether it summarises the article correctly. —Kusma (talk) 23:04, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Content and prose review

• History section: This is a bit lacking in background and motivation. Compare Public housing in Hong Kong, which motivates much better why public housing was needed.

I've added several statements describing why housing was first built by the SIT.

• The public housing built by the SIT was similar in terms of density and living space to British public housing projects of the time this is a great explanation for people who know the UK well enough to know these housing projects, but perhaps you could tell the others a little more about this.

Added a clause stating that the housing was of low densities.

• It is a bit confusing that SIT flats were at the same time too expensive and too much in demand. Or am I misunderstanding something?

I've changed the statement to state that the SIT were not building flats fast enough to cope with the increase in Singapore's population.

• emergency housing for displaced kampong dwellers why were they displaced, and by whom?

They were displaced by fires, added substantiation regarding why.

• I feel like I am lacking some background on the kampong story. I can guess that perhaps 1950s Singapore still had rural kampong areas but that the land was needed for other developments and so people were displaced and resettled elsewhere? Could you try to make the historical background a little more explicit for people like me who have never even been to Singapore? other squatters displaced by fires or development schemes is also a bit ominous – there were many such people and they turned to squatting? Where did they find properties to squat in?

I've added some background regarding the kampong situation of that era, and why it was deemed necessary to displace them. For the squatters term, these people are not described as such in the source, so I've changed it to "kampong residents".

• Something I'm not sure about is whether there should be some background/context about population of Singapore and other infrastructure (the MRT mostly). Perhaps not necessary for GA, so I shouldn't ask for it.

There's some discussion regarding population growth in the paragraph on the postwar kampongs, but for the infrastructure, I personaly don't see it as relevant to the scope of the article.

• Central Provident Fund: give a short gloss in the article (just mention that it is some sort of pensions account).

Done.

• Flats were built by the Jurong Town Corporation in Jurong and Sembawang between 1968 and 1982,[24] and the Housing and Urban Development Company (HUDC) was set up in 1974 to provide flats for middle-class residents. I don't see a good reason to combine the two statements to a single sentence.

Sentence split.

• The 1980s saw the introduction of larger executive flats[27] while the HDB, which took over the HUDC in 1982, stopped construction of HUDC flats because HUDC prices were approaching those of private property and the middle class was able to purchase HDB flats.[28] I'm not sure I understand. What are "HUDC flats" if not flats built by HUDC? What are "HDB flats"? I also don't fully understand the reasoning given.

I've changed it to show that the middle class that the HUDC flats were intended for were unable to purchase private housing and were ineligible for the HDB flats (lower-end flats, that is) when the HUDC was set up in the mid-1970s, and the flats are now described as "middle class flats built by the HUDC" to make it clearer.

• limit on Malay residents interesting. I assume this is a maximum percentage of Malay residents? the limits were extended to all races now I'm curious how many different races are recognised here and how belonging to a certain race is determined, but perhaps that leads too far from the topic of this article :)

I've added a link to Demographics of Singapore, and for the limit on Malay residents, yes, that is the case.

• Is the link of "Design and Build" to the rather generic Design–build appropriate?

It isn't, so I've removed the link (it seems to be a redirect).

• Physical organisation section: perhaps put into historical context (since when is the development in new towns?) Are further new towns still being constructed? (The 2010s/2020s information above would make me expect that no; in that case, perhaps some of this shouldn't be stated in present tense).

I've added a paragraph regarding the history of new town development, below the existing paragraph.

• Lead section: I think I am mostly happy with this. I'd write "down from a high", not "decreasing from a high" but then I'm not a native speaker ;)

Done.

Having read so far, I'm kind of wondering how happy Singaporeans are with the housing policies and schemes, and whether there is any significant criticism that should be mentioned. (Most of the changes seem to be based on economic demand more than anything else). Are/were there people opposed to pubic housing because it takes away some profit opportunities/takes away land that could be used for private developments? Are/were there people opposed to the architectural styles? (The answers could well be "no" but my knowledge of Singaporean culture is rather limited). Let me know your thoughts about my comments; I'll put the article on hold for the moment. —Kusma (talk) 21:46, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I've responded to some of the points, will follow up on the rest tomorrow. R22-3877 (talk) 14:51, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Have responded to the rest. R22-3877 (talk) 08:03, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Looks great (there's of course still room for improvement, but this is not an FA review). Congratulations on achieving another Good Article! —Kusma (talk) 09:49, 6 March 2022 (UTC)