Where's the Kampong Spirit?

The more appropriate and correct question to ask is: Where is the kampong? The kampong spirit like the kampong chicken here has gone extinct due to habitat loss. A problem Mr Khaw's ministry under his predecessor has in no small part caused and whose policies in this area, he is continuing without change.

Community spirit can only exist through community interaction on a daily basis as a part of their daily routine. This interaction has to occur in communal spaces outside of the private space of homes. However, as a result of limited land resources (as we are continuously told), communal spaces have shrunk.

Urban planners (at the HDB/Ministry of National Development) are doubtless high-fiving and clapping each other on their backs, congratulating themselves on their 'genius' at packing more people into smaller spaces. In reality, they could not have done a better job at killing community spirit by stealth than if they had engaged Ms Temple Grandin to design it into their building plans.

Common corridors and lift/staircase landings are the ONLY places where incidental communal interaction can take place, have been shrinking and almost eliminated in some designs. Once someone steps across the threshold into their own units, they are in their private space and any potential communal interaction ends. Even staircases which used to allow at least two adults to walk side by side have now shrunk down to permit only one person at a time!

Apartment blocks are being built ever higher and ever closer together. Worse, transparent glass has increasingly replaced concrete and bricks. If the intention is to shove more people closer together and to let them see into each other's private spaces is an attempt to foster closer community spirit, it is not working. When your private and personal space is being intruded upon, you pull back (to protect what little privacy you have left) instead of opening up and interacting more.

The answer to this? Typical of government remedies: Holding a once or twice yearly get together event where the MP is the guest of honour. You expect this to bring together people who likely do not even recognise their next door neighbour? These get togethers (and any other planned activity for that matter) are not part of daily living and will be viewed as too much 'work', ignored by the majority and thus fail miserably.

Ideally, public housing should not be more than 4 stories high and well spaced out. Beyond that tipping point, there are just too many people for that sense of community to take effective hold. Community spirit is an emergent property of the living environment where less is indeed more. But with the government still bent on importing yet more people (despite repeatedly telling us we are running out of space), I don't think low density housing will happen anytime soon. Absent that, community disintegration: yet another unintended consequence of government policy.