Abstract
This paper explores how residents living in Housing and Development Board (HDB) estates conceptualise community in old and new estates, with a focus on how they utilise public spaces for everyday activities and routines. Our research also explores how public space design influences users’ behaviours and the types of social relations that emerge. Public spaces function as the connective spaces that enable social life to thrive in cities and these spaces have been acknowledged to be important in Singapore's land-scarce, high-rise, and high-density environment, where residents can socialise and negotiate differences. Premised on past studies and debates that indicate the need to evaluate new public space typologies and understand residents’ evolving aspirations and needs as town planning models evolve, we adopted a qualitative research approach where participant observations and semi-structured interviews were carried out in two locations in Queenstown that represented old and new public housing environments. With the largest collective Selective En Bloc Redevelopment Scheme taking place in Queenstown, we also sought to understand how urban redevelopment and relocation influenced residents’s sense of community.