Abstract
High-rise living is part and parcel of urban life as it is a cost-effective solution to accommodate the ever-swelling tide of urban immigrants. But this often leads to overcrowded conditions, which inevitably leads to social withdrawal. Professionals are aware of these tradeoffs and have tried to promote neighborhood interaction through academic research and design solutions. However, these efforts often address neighborhood interaction at the large scale of a residential precinct, but neglect neighborhood interaction at the micro-scale level of residents living on the same floor. The latter in fact is key to developing intimate relationships between residents involving mutual help and social support. In the microscale neighborhood of high-rise housing, the common corridor is the primary focal point for daily interactions, but its social significance and potency have not been sufficiently explored. In addition, existing approaches to study neighborhood interaction overlook low-intensity contacts, which are essential to breaking down barriers to social interaction. This research seeks to address the question of how spatial designs (building topologies), especially corridor design, contribute to forming a cohesive micro-scale neighborhood community. To enable this, I have established a novel methodology, named territory network analysis, to represent and quantify neighborhood atmosphere based on observation of residents’ appropriation behavior in the common corridor. This is followed by a systematic and unbiased evaluation of different atmosphere types across different corridor topologies, with the method able to differentiate between desirable and undesirable neighborhood atmospheric qualities. Data was collected from Singapore’s Housing and Development Board (HDB) high-rise public housing, including a total of over 641 residential units on 64 residential floors in 5 precincts, and representing 18 different HDB housing topologies. From those, 213 interview responses were collected across 41 residential floors to validate my methodology. The results provide actionable insights for the design of public high-rise housing. To increase the likelihood of forming a close-knit community with high neighborhood vigilance and a strong community network, the building is suggested to be designed with spatial features such as a wider corridor, an increased proportion of larger flats, and a greater number of units per floor (long corridor). In addition, the results also provide guidance for building management rules on the appropriation behavior of residents. Recreational and housework objects can potentially promote daily interaction between residents and enhance residents’ sense of responsibility for maintenance of the common space, and thus should be tolerated/encouraged. However, there are good reasons to enforce the removal of storage clutter from the common corridor as apart from being a fire hazard, it is associated with lower sociality and vigilance in the neighborhood.