Chua Beng Huat Housing and Legitimacy….

1) How does Chua Beng Huat describe the spatial organization of life in kampong?

Kampong has its own distinct physical, social, economic characteristics.
Living in kampong has its advantages and there are a lot of reasons for all the kampongers to dwell on staying in kampong.
• The villagers are very close neighbors
• Strong sense of security in the kampong.

The advantages of staying in kampong arises from the factors that the village’s physical environment is very highly differentiated, thus no one familiar with the village would get lost (unlike in neighborhoods today). Moreover, villagers know almost everyone that foreigners or intruders will not easily get in the kampong.

There are disadvantages too. Certain conditions like physical condition, public hygiene and other private amenities were undesirable. For example, there were no toilet within the house for most housing hence public hygiene and convenience certainly posed a problem. Moreover, the kampong houses are packed closed to each other, therefore fire may occur easily, resulting in not very safe environment.

2) How does he describe the spatial organization in new HDB flat?

Spatial organization of life in new HDB was different from life in villages as villagers now have moved from a small insular village to a new urban town. Most of the villagers experience difficulties in coming to terms with certain physical barriers which they saw as restricting their movements. For e.g. in the past, villagers would have the practice of keeping their front door open at all times. Whereas at HDB they now experience the inconvenience of having to open /shut and lock/unlock the front door since it’s a common practice at HDB. Other than that, problems which lie beyond the block started to surface as middle-aged and the elderly had to overcome the fears of taking lifts and many could not figure out the combination of vertical and horizontal movement within a block.

Biggest Benefited in kampong

The aged and middle-aged women, village-bound working women and working men and retied men tend to enjoy the benefit the most during the life in kampong

 Aged and middle-aged women

Big family living together in one kampong, however when they move to HDB, they may suffer from the prospect of family split-up because every sub family may located to different neighborhood.

 Village-bound women

They work and stay in the village, hence there is frequent casual interaction with neighbors that used to occur in village. However, after settlement their neighbors may not be their colleagues anymore. Their social network have become a work-based rather then residential-based.

 Working men

Low cost of living in the kampong. However after settlement they faced an increase of household cost, greater financial responsibilities to respective household cause them to speed up their lives that left them with little time or energy to do much beyond resting for the next day’s work. Therefore they tend to wrap up their day by watching TV at home, resulting their social life was drastically reduced to nominal exchanges with family and relatives.

 Retired man

There are many gathering places for the elderly in the kampong. However the settlement, old men have difficultly in finding suitable gathering places their new surroundings. Even though these men could gather at ground floor deck, they did not do so as the fear of police check and of being branded as “bad habits”. For example, retired men gambling in kampong may be a common sight in kampong, however under HDB, gambling acts is deemed as illegal. Now, obviously they can’t regain the same level of interaction with their neighboring friends.

Biggest benefited in HDB

The young married people enjoy the most benefits from life in HDB. Through HDB, they enjoys greater privacy, greater freedom of movement and in the scheduling of one’s daily routines, more control over the up-bringing of one’s own children and a greater cohesion within one small household.
Their status also radically elevated; from being one among many daughters-in-law in the village to being a mother in their own unclear family. They were also able to build up social ties with new, mainly immediate neighbors very quickly.