Liveability In Singapore: Social And Behavioural Issues

Social and Behavioural Issues

David Chan

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9789814667890
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Cities and countries around the world are focused on enhancing their living conditions through ways that go beyond the brick and mortar of urban planning. Just like in other highly-urbanised cities, life and living in Singapore is highly dependent on many other dimensions such as health, access to various services, social interactions, inter-group relations and community bonds. Social and behavioural factors will need to be incorporated when designing and implementing policies and interventions to enhance liveability.

This invaluable book, based on the proceedings at the Behavioural Sciences Institute Conference 2014, documents an exchange of ideas among practitioners, academics and public intellectuals on liveability in Singapore. The book is organized into four parts. Part I provides an overview of liveability issues. Part II examines liveability from the perspectives of health and urban planning. Part III analyses the relationships linking quality of life to social class and social services. Part IV addresses specific questions on liveability in terms of public transport, cost of living, government's public communications, role of free market values in town planning, civil society, citizen well-being and whether there is a psychological gulf between government and people.

This book will provide the reader valuable perspectives, an increased understanding of issues related to the liveability in Singapore and many potential applications to reflect on.

Contents:

• Liveability Issues:
  • Is Singapore Liveable? (Laurence Lien)
  • Liveability Matters (David Chan)
  • Panel Discussion 1 (Laurence Lien, David Chan and Jeremy Lim)
• Health, Urban Planning and Liveability:
  • Health and Liveability (Jeremy Lim)
  • Urban Planning and Liveability (Heng Chye Kiang)
  • Panel Discussion 2 (Jeremy Lim, Heng Chye Kiang and Han Fook Kwang)
• Social Class, Social Services and Quality of Life:
  • Social Class and Quality of Life (Tan Ern Ser)
  • Social Services and Quality of Life (Ang Bee Lian)
  • Panel Discussion 3 (Tan Ern Ser, Ang Bee Lian and Sudha Nair)
• Liveability in Singapore:
  • Closing Panel Discussion (David Chan, Gerard Ee, Han Fook Kwang, Liu Thai Ker and Tommy Koh)

Readership: Academics, undergraduate and graduates students, professionals interested in the various critical social and behavioural issues on liveability in Singapore.
Key Features:

• Examining the various critical social and behavioural issues on liveability in Singapore
• Providing a state-of-the-art analysis, identifying critical unresolved issues and proposing innovative solutions to the problems identified by a distinguished team of authors
• The wealth and diversity of experience, reputation and influence of the authors will provide a very wide reach and multiplier effect in the readership market
• Written in an active and conversational style making it highly engaging for the reader

Part I:

LIVEABILITY ISSUES

Chapter 1

Is Singapore Liveable?

Laurence Lien

I am not an expert on liveability. I will present my groundup views on some social, community and behavioural aspects of liveability. I will start by taking a broader view and then narrow my discussion to social and community issues.

Singapore and Liveability

Is Singapore Liveable? To answer this, we need to ask the first question: For whom? This is because the answer is different for different people. For expatriates here, the answer is always different depending on the terms, and this is especially relevant when it has to do with the cost of living. For Singaporeans, the answer is different depending on who we ask — those from high-income, middle-income or low-income. The answer is yet again different if we ask a migrant worker.

Recently, I visited my friend’s place at Reflections at Keppel Bay. It has a large number of luxurious waterfront condominium units. It is an expatriate enclave. It oversees the marina at Keppel Bay. We walked on a boardwalk to Labrador Park. It was like paradise and there are parts of Singapore that are really so beautiful. But that is not the reality for most Singaporeans. So when I discuss liveability, I will see things through the eyes of the majority of ordinary Singaporeans, and not any specific niche groups.

The next question then is: On What? What aspects of liveability are we talking about? My organisation NVPC (National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre) published a Social Health Report last year. It has nine domains which are relevant to the discussion. The purpose of the report was to identify critical social trends, garner public interest towards social issues, mobilise greater civic and philanthropic action, and liveability includes each of these. Although the report looked more at outcome measures whereas the discussion on liveability examines living conditions, there are a few domains in the report such as civil and political participation that are noteworthy in discussing liveability.

I think individuals should be empowered to take collective action for positive transformation. Civil and political participation would include civic engagement, volunteerism, charity giving, how we deal with diversity of views and how much ground-up activity there is. Social connectedness and community cohesion — which I will elaborate later — means that there should be trust, openness, interaction among individuals regardless of their backgrounds, and constructive relationships in common spaces, public spaces, neighbourhoods, work spaces, and so on. Then there is the domain of individual well-being, which is about leading happy and fulfilling lives, and one’s level of life satisfaction whether at the workplace or at home. My focus is on the fact that many trends and challenges that were identified in the Social Health Report will require citizens to take responsibility for problem solving and creative work in community.

Of course, there are other issues of liveability. The Social Health Report does not cover areas such as business conditions, safety and crime, and environment and climate. These areas are important in liveability indices but not my focus here. In the emerging literature on liveability, there are also other niche issues which are not my focus, such as cities being smart, bio-diverse, sustainable, inclusive and resilient. My focus is on social and community issues.

The third question on liveability is: How do we fare? One way is to look at the global rankings by various agencies. Singapore is 22^nd on the rankings by EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit), which examined stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Monocle ranks Singapore 15^th and Mercer ranks Singapore 25^th. I would say that Singapore’s overall rating is very good. If you give an academic grade, it is probably a B+ or A−, but not A, because there are quite a number of cities ranked above Singapore. But these ranking surveys do not focus on all aspects of liveability sufficiently. The social and community issues do not feature much in these surveys.

In my view, there are some areas that Singapore does very well such as safety and crime. On physical infrastructure, we do a fabulous job. I would add food too.

Where can we do better? That is, we are not bad in these areas — we just can do better. I think we can do more on social connectedness, community cohesion, individual wellbeing and environment. Unfortunately, there is a large part of environment you cannot do anything about. One reason why we will never be number one in any liveability index is the weather and the humidity. I will focus on the areas of social connectedness and community cohesion.

Surveys show lower levels of generalised trust in Singapore as compared to places such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. When considered alongside attitudes towards diversity and foreigners, I think there are increasing signs of intolerance in Singapore.

In Singapore, there is a lot of focus on physical needs of people but an under-focus on meeting their social, emotional, cultural and spiritual needs. The Government takes cares of the physical and material aspects of liveability extremely well. That the other needs are under-catered is definitely not a failure of the Government because I do not think it is the Government’s job even to talk about catering for some of the social, emotional, cultural and spiritual needs. The community and citizens are best able to lead and cater for these needs, and my view is this is where the community and citizens quite often fail. Of course, government is big in Singapore, and it needs to give the space, to genuinely empower and to let go and let the community step up.

Two Case Studies

Let me make a massive detour and bring you on a journey to two communities in Singapore. I have picked two case studies which are two very normal neighbourhoods. At NVPC, we have been working with students from the Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Programme at NUS (National University of Singapore) to design community walks. These walks are made possible because of hundreds of hours of ethnographic studies. These studies involve observing but also conversing with all the residents and sometimes knocking on doors. It provides much insight on the realities and the social and community issues.

In Case Study 1, the analysis is from the perspective of what the issues are. There are a lot of opportunities here, with a lot of possibilities to improve if we engage the people on the ground.

Case Study 1 is a neighbourhood very close to the centre of town. It is fairly low-income, with many rental blocks. There are many seniors and there is a senior activity centre. There are quite a few provision shops at the void deck and there are amenity shops, preschool centres, playground and some sports facilities. It is pretty well-provided.

However, there are issues between the community-who live there and the very strong migrant community which comes and use the void deck. There are signs put up that say, in both English and Thai languages, “No sitting and loitering”, “Do not litter”, “Do not urinate” and so on. So the issue is what kind of ties are being formed and what sort of issues do we have in this community. We have a community issue here and who is helping to solve it?

There is this “Green Man Plus” at the pedestrian traffic lights. If you tap on it, it extends the time so that older or disabled people have more time, up to thirteen seconds, to cross the road. This looks like a great idea. But it turns out that, from conversations in the community, this does not get used much for several reasons. The elderly does not quite understand it, and they use their bus concession card to tap on the Green Man Plus. Bus concession cards are used for payment. So the elderly are thinking that they have to pay to extend the time to cross the road. Of course, there is no need to pay, but this example shows some of the social and behavioural issues involved.

There is a harmony park or harmony hub in this community for bringing together residents and the migrant workers. The purpose is to help with integration. This park is near the centre of town which is a very valuable piece of property. It is open for public use but it is only open on Sundays. It is fenced up and locked up. To use the park, one has to go to the community club to get the keys. However, the notice put up that says this is written only in the English language. So there are many missed opportunities when we are not engaging the ground enough to design, co-design and co-create. It could have been a very vibrant park.

There is this void deck, which has a pre-school behind it, and there are elderly people sitting at the void deck. The pre-school keeps the door shut, so there is no interaction between the children and the elderly people who are just sitting there. It is a pity. The elderly people have so many stories to tell but they are not involved in a community facility and not involved in interacting with the next generation.

Case Study 2 is in a very new neighbourhood and it is an award-winning new estate. Some of the residents actually underwent SERS (Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme) across the road and so they just moved across. The approach in this instance of SERS was quite well-done. The residents were allowed to move across the road and choose their new units first. So it did not break community ties because it was just moving across the road.

The new estate is an integrated development. It is beautiful with ten blocks linked by a huge rooftop garden on top of the car park. The services here are centralised at one end of the estate.

There are pros and cons of having a nexus of activity within the community. The end of the estate is somewhat far from some parts of the community. Previously, there were much bigger shops and a much better variety but the trade-off is this is the only point where there are chance interactions with other people in the community. The mom-and-pop shops had to go because of these larger players. The mom-and-pop shops are quite often the connectors because they know the residents and they are the assets of the community that we could have mobilised.

There is also a RC (Resident Committee) and a Senior Activity Centre, but there is not much space for people to gather. There are very nice stories from this neighbourhood because of the people who moved across the road with very strong ties built over 30 years. They continued developing those ties and including other people.

One nice story is this auntie who makes soon kueh (a traditional type of steamed dumpling) and distributes it to her friends and anybody who wants to come and eat soon kueh. There are actually only two benches for this entire complex. It is not conducive for community activity because the RC is only open on Tuesdays and no other days, and the open-deck is very hot in the daytime. So what do the residents do? They meet under a staircase because they could not get more chairs from the Town Council and the chairs they brought went missing. The auntie still brings her soon kueh and other food every Friday, and the group started to get bigger. These are very nice stories. But are we facilitating these community connections?

There is this very detailed map put up by a very enthusiastic planner. The map shows an integrated development which means you have rental to five-room flats. It is an experiment here to mix up the developments and to promote interactions among very diverse groups. But I have an issue with the map. If we are promoting integration, why is there a legend on the map that tells you exactly where all the rental flats, the two-room, the three-room, the four-room and the five-room flats are? All these information will reinforce the demarcation of spaces in people’s mind and reinforce the labelling of how people conceive others and in the language they use.

The demarcation is not just in people’s mindsets because it happens in reality. There is this beautiful but empty playground. This playground happens to be in front of the five-room blocks. The low-income kids do not come to this playground. This is the playground for five-room kids. Did anyone tell the kids it was so? No, and anyone is free to go anywhere. However, soon after this development was completed, there is a sign put up that says “No football”. The sign is not in any of the other playgrounds. The low-income kids love playing football. This sign serves to exclude a certain group. The kids take the indications here on whether they are welcome or not. So they go somewhere else. All these may be very subtle and people may be doing it almost unthinkingly. They do not purposely exclude but it just happens. These are social and behavioural issues on the ground and the question is what are we doing about them?

Liveability is affected by the people who share the common space with us. Communities are complex and we need to invest time to understand them and forge community bonds. Forging community bonds is not easy, especially when there is some much diversity in our culture and so much heterogeneity. But many opportunities are missed when things are done without the co-creation and involvement of the people. People need to be part of the solution and many more ground-up solutions are needed. We need to somehow spark the creativity and energies of every citizen and every generation to do their part. This links to what I said in Parliament at the Budget Debate last week — that every generation is a pioneer generation as each generation must see itself as the pioneer generation, with the same power of creativity and the same power to energise itself, generate progress and establish its own identity.

Social Fundamentals

I have spoken about getting our social fundamentals right. What is really relevant here is enhancing social trust and establishing a new social compact where citizens feel more involved. I also spoke about engendering a social renaissance and looking at new possibilities. These mean having a more positive narrative that is more grounded. There should be more optimism and trust in our people because people feel that they can be part of the action and do things that can further the community good.

Some may say that things in Singapore are pretty good. For example, volunteerism rate has increased from 9% in 2000 to 33% in 2012, which means more people are coming forward. Donation rate is also very high at 90%. But we can do better in some areas. There is still too much dependency on the Government to solve social problems and there is a lack of ownership by the community of social issues and problems. In addition, social sector organisations including charities can do a lot more and they need to grow more. My view is they are not performing to their potential, in the sense that they are not creating the public value and impact they are capable of. There are many opportunities, possibilities and needs on the ground that are not catered for. Many of our charities tend to be in maintenance mode or they maybe just growing a little. The environment is often not encouraging of new ideas and alternative delivery modes. However, this is changing and so we should ride on this change. The government is sometimes overly efficient and that can crowd out private initiatives. This is not a criticism of government. The government does what government is good at, and people need to step up and start doing little things first and start snowballing.

I have discussed possibilities. Possibilities can be like a block of marble. There is a beautiful sculpture in every block of marble, waiting for the sculptor to just chip away the excess. There is a good example in the book The Art of Possibility about a shoe company that sends two marketing scouts to Africa to look to expand its business. One comes back and says, “Situation hopeless, no one wears shoes!” The other, seeing the same thing, sends back a completely different message — “Glorious business opportunity, they have no shoes yet!” The two scouts see exactly the same thing, but the perspective is completely different. Can we apply this to what we see? In the neighbourhoods described in the two case studies, I would have seen nothing without the benefit of the students who did the fieldwork. The students had spent hundreds of hours talking to people on the ground and issues and possibilities started to emerge. But we, from outside the community, cannot go in and create a solution for them. We have to encourage the communities to see the issues and discover the solutions for themselves.

We need to build more horizontal relationships on the ground to develop social capital and social trust. We need to continue to invest in community builders and use community organising methodologies. We definitely need more social innovators and social entrepreneurs.

Lastly, we need to empower our people. But what if we empower and nothing happens? Or what if we empower and they fight? It is difficult, but we do not...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Contents
• Part I: Liveability Issues
• Part II: Health, Urban Planning and Liveability
• Part III: Social Class, Social Services and Quality of Life
• Part IV: Liveability in Singapore