Housing in Southeast Asian Capital Cities 9789812307002

Citation preview

Reproduced from Housing in Southeast Asian Capital Cities, by Ooi Giok Ling (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg>

Chapter 1

Housing in Southeast Asian Capital Cities

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publications, an established academic press, has issued more than 1,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publications works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world. The Southeast Asia Background Series is a major component of the Public Outreach objective of ISEAS in promoting a better awareness among the general public about trends and developments in Southeast Asia. The books published in the Southeast Asia Background Series are made possible by a generous grant from the K S Sandhu Memorial Fund.

Southeast Asia Background Series No. 4

Housing in Southeast Asian Capital Cities

Ooi OoiGiok GiokLing Ling INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES Singapore

First published in Singapore in 2005 by ISEAS Publications Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Pasir Panjang Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected]

• Website: bookshop.iseas.edu.sg

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. © 2005 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the author and her interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the publisher or its supporters.

ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Ooi, Giok Ling. Housing in Southeast Asian capital cities. (Southeast Asia background series) 1. Housing—Asia, Southeastern. 2. Housing policy—Asia, Southeastern. I. Title. II. Series HD7362 A3O61 2005 ISBN 981-230-265-4 (hard cover) Typeset by International Typesetters Pte Ltd. Printed in Singapore by Utopia Press Pte Ltd.

Contents About the Author

vi

1

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

1

2

Bangkok Metropolitan Area: Housing in a Primate City

14

Housing in Jakarta: Contrasts between the Wealthy and the Poor

29

4

Multi-ethnicity and Housing in Kuala Lumpur

42

5

Housing and Urban Segregation in Metro-Manila

55

6

Housing and Nationhood in Singapore

66

7

The Housing Question in Southeast Asian Cities

81

References

89

3

About the Author Ooi Giok Ling is Associate Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. She works on urban and environmental studies, ethnic relations as well as state-society relations. Among her recent book publications are Beyond the Port City — Development and Identity in 21st Century Singapore (Pearson Education) which she co-authored, and the Future of Space — Planning, Space and Society (Eastern Universities Press/Marshall Cavendish).

vi

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

1

Chapter 1

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region Debating Urban Housing Needs Some one in two people in the world now live in cities and the projection of the population living in cities in Southeast Asia in 2025 is expected to multiply equally rapidly. Furthermore, the population forecasts of the distribution of this urban population is that the majority will be concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas or regions. A 2001–2002 survey released by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions informs us that as many as 7 million persons living in 60 countries were forcibly evicted from their homes. Similarly some 6 million and more people were living under the threat of forced eviction in 38 countries. Housing remains a major issue particularly in the developing world. The resistance that is mounted against forced eviction is often met by brutal reprisal. People who are being removed from their homes are fighting against not only the devastation of their neighbourhoods and communities but also the destruction of their livelihoods. These livelihoods depend on key social ties and networks that are extremely place-bound. Odd-job contract workers on construction sites or other urban 1

2

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

businesses require a network of persons who know where to contact them. The fragility of these networks is such that, once the people move away, contact can be broken and never re-established. Hence forced evictions can cause havoc to the economic and social well-being of urban poor families. Rapid population growth and the phenomenon of inmigration — rural–urban, circular, or temporary — have been major contributory forces in explaining the heady pace of urbanization in Southeast Asia. Such rapid urban growth has often been held accountable for the abject housing and general living conditions in the major cities of the region — Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, and Ho Chi Minh City. Squatter and slum communities have been featured almost as regularly as the pre1997 economic boom in the countries in which these cities are located. There are reports that in the metropolitan centres in the Philippines, squatting has become a serious problem, especially in the capital and largest city, Metro-Manila. According to reports, the degree of overcrowding and squalor of the slums with their unsanitary and often life-threatening conditions defy description. In many countries, the old problems have persisted. Estimates by the World Bank are that, for every unit of permanent housing built in low-income developing countries, nine new households are being formed. In Thailand, the National Housing Authority could build only some 6,000 to 7,000 units annually against an estimated demand for some 300,000 urban housing units. Land development issues regarding land-use planning and control remain largely unaddressed. Many cities have master plans in place which prescribe directions for future urban growth but these, by and large, languish in metropolitan offices. The degree of government intervention in urban land development has varied among countries in Southeast Asia.

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

3

In cities like Bangkok and Metro-Manila, there appear to have been virtually no effective measures taken to either influence or control urban land development whereas in Singapore, urban land development decision-making has been highly centralized. Rapid urbanization and industrialization have exacerbated the housing issues already facing many Southeast Asian cities. This book focuses on housing issues and implications for cities and urban development in the metropolises of Southeast Asia. The discussion will include urban development, land development planning, and the implications of government intervention strategies.

The Political and Economic Context The very habitual nature of housing in cities often masks its intense ideological role in society. This was evident even during the colonial period through which many of the countries in Southeast Asia have come — where large numbers of the labouring classes were housed as cheaply as possible. Housing forms that emerged — the shophouse, barrack, chawl, closed compound and coolie line, reflect the objectives of economy, convenience for the employers, and control. A study of housing in the cities of Southeast Asia therefore provides an opportunity to understand how far beyond the housing agendas of the colonial regimes the governments of the modern nation–states in the region have gone. In a discussion on a comparison of the public housing programme in Hong Kong and Singapore, for example, the differences could be partly explained by the differences in social processes and hence, the politics involved in housing provision. Hong Kong’s postwar public housing programme was supervised by a colonial state for its colonial subjects whereas in Singapore,

4

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

it was a programme provided by the modern nation–state for its citizenry. Housing studies have in the past been criticized for their narrow focus and scope. Some of this criticism concerns the focus on the provision of homes. This is because focusing on the home has been found to limit research on housing. Housing comprises such a major aspect of the organization of daily existence that it very naturally acts as a focus for the study of a large number of social issues, and particularly those relating to comparative social structures (Kemeny 1992, p. 9). These social issues include access to urban transport for different types of housing estates and the implications for sociability; uses of public and private space, as well as the differential access in terms of the age, gender and income or occupation of the urban dwellers. Housing studies have argued that housing advantage is a major determinant of social inequality while other studies have used theories of power focused on elitism and pluralism in housing as well as relations between the central and local state. The role of the state in housing provision also preoccupied housing studies in the 1980s. While studies focused on the role of the state have been criticized for portraying the state as being a passive tool of wider societal interests, one critic has argued for analysis of public policy in terms of the interaction between the interests of powerful social groups or classes and organizations and the interests and power of those responsible for the political and legal institutions of the state. More contemporary concerns about the role of the state in an age of globalization can be found in the argument that global and globalizing cities are contesting and perhaps even seeking secession from the territorial power of nation– states. Since cities are the major centres through which

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

5

global flows of information, wealth and capital are mediated, their growth short-circuits and disempowers the nation–state. There are however others who counter that the city can also serve as the crucible for a re-organization of the nation–state project and its production of nationalism in an age of globalization. Urban issues such as housing can be greatly affected by class, ethnicity, gender, identity and placemaking or what has been considered as the local urban ecology. This concerns the rise of middle-class consumers in many Southeast Asian cities who live in luxury and liberty, in gated communities — sometimes juxtaposed with poor slum and squatter settlements. The gates are clearly meant to keep out the neighbouring poor, urban crime and indeed, the social issues of the city. These new towns or gated communities to be found from Bangkok to Manila and Jakarta have been represented as academies in consumerism for the new middle class. Finally, an understanding of the contrasts in housing provision within and among Southeast Asian cities can be enriched by considering the role and place of technological innovation in these cities. The private or corporate sector housing developers in many Southeast Asian cities offer more efficient and reliable infrastructure than generally available. Privately developed gated communities provide a level of communications facilities, sewerage, water, solid waste disposal, security as well as a range of estate services that are modelled more on global best practices rather than the immediate surroundings. In these elite communities, there are efforts at zone planning, provision of green belts, traffic management and support for community living with recreation and shopping, health care and education, on a scale and level of effectiveness not evident in most Southeast Asian cities.

6

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

In brief, the study of housing in Southeast Asian cities provides insight into more social issues than the provision of shelter alone.

Housing and Urbanization in Southeast Asia The postcolonial cities of Southeast Asia have been the focus of development studies. Severe problems mostly related to urban unemployment or underemployment, such as poor housing conditions in squatter settlements, led many to question the very basis of urbanization. In spite of the lack of industrialization, many colonial cities in the region — ports and capitals — grew extremely large in terms of population size because of in-migration from China and India as well as rural–urban migration. In the post-independence period, many of these former colonial centres have had to secure new economic roles. There has been attendant impact on social development like housing.

Politics and Housing Policies in Southeast Asia The assumption that economic growth alone guarantees social development has been found to be flawed: sound public policies appear to be crucial. The Weberian concept of the state as strong and autonomous because of the state bureaucracy’s rationality and manipulative power does not consider the social origin of this power and cannot sufficiently explain differences in state intervention among rapidly industrializing countries. Indeed, Marxists have argued that state intervention is critical to housing development in capitalist economies because it is fundamental to reproducing capitalist social relations and capital accumulation. Yet the role that the state has played in housing provision even in capitalist economies has varied considerably

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

7

and is contingent on the relations between state and society or social actors. The state in many industrializing countries of Asia has generally emphasized economic growth and development projects. The priority accorded to housing issues varies among policy regimes. For instance, the linkages between housing, urban development and economic growth in Hong Kong and Singapore has not been able to account for the socio-political basis of successful state intervention in housing. Such linkages, while successfully applied in the context of Hong Kong and Singapore to provide public housing, do not appear to be equally effective elsewhere in Asia.

Housing Issues in Southeast Asian Cities Implementation or, at least, effective translation of housing development plans into programmes and action, has often been delayed either by politics, or bureaucracies that have been unable to coordinate across sectors. Landownership issues remain unaddressed in most cities. Furthermore, the degree of government intervention in housing provision has also varied. In many cities in developing countries, housing segregates urban households in terms of incomes and consumption patterns as well as political and other forms of participation. Furthermore, in countries such as Singapore where the government has successfully intervened, housing policies have contributed considerably to economic growth by lowering or containing housing and hence, labour costs. If built to good quality and standards, urban housing can reinforce improvements in health and education. Coupled with industrial change, adequate housing can assist in changing and modernizing attitudes towards work and even everyday living.

8

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

The rapid pace of urbanization places tremendous pressure on the ability and capacity of cities and city governments to cope. This is particularly since resources available to the local state to address development issues have remained relatively static while housing and other urban needs have spiralled. Urbanization rates in Philippines, for instance, have been among the highest in the world and much of the rate of growth remains concentrated in the largest city, Metro-Manila. Work that was done by Fraser (1952) and cited by Abrams (1977, p. 298), highlight the dismal conditions of squatter settlements during the early 1960s in cities such as Singapore. In Singapore, 130,000 people live in squalid and insanitary attap kampungs throughout the municipal areas. They have standpipe water and the most primitive sanitation. It is a physical impossibility to eject these people; they have nowhere else to go. Although the municipality does excellent work trying to keep these areas properly drained and free from disease, nevertheless they constitute a menace to the general health of the whole city (Fraser 1952). Singapore squatters demand fantastic prices for possession; a parcel of land free of squatters is three times as expensive as land that is squatter-occupied. When a fire ousted 16,000 persons from a squatter area, the government acquired the land for a housing project. Because it would have to pay the value of the land as a cleared site, it passed a law fixing the prices at one third of the value. When acquiring squatter-occupied land, it often compensates the squatter for his “rights”. Part of the blame for the intense squatter traffic in Singapore is ascribed to speculators who are aware of the physical difficulties obstructing demolition. The Land Inspectors are intimidated in the execution of their duties and enforcement of instructions becomes a dangerous process. The effort to enforce orders by constables has proved insufficient to prevent a disturbance of the peace…

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

9

Rural–urban migration appears to have sparked off an urban housing process in Southeast Asian cities that continues to pose challenges to city governments till today. Indeed, if overpopulation growth in developing countries was a major challenge in the 1970s, the distribution of population and of its mobility are likely to be major issues of the 21st century. The nature of urbanization has also changed dramatically compared to that seen in the colonial period and immediately following the gaining of self-rule by many Southeast Asian countries. Cities in countries more recently emerging from socialism and in transition to capitalist economic development, like those in Vietnam, have to grapple with both attracting global investment and the social development needs of burgeoning urban populations. Some housing issues have persisted since the early days of self-rule when the modern nation–states of Southeast Asia were emerging from colonialism. Given the rapidity of urban population growth through in-migration and even the regional migration of labour, city governments throughout Southeast Asia face the dilemma of managing social development needs with the demands of economic development.

Housing Policies and Provision in Southeast Asian Cities Much of the intractability of the housing problems faced by Southeast Asian cities has been attributed to questions of landownership and tenure status as well as the availability of urban land for housing development. The problem of meeting urban housing needs in Southeast Asian cities is reflected in the proportion of the population still living in slums as well as squatter settlements. In the Philippines, the numerous slum and squatter settlements of Metro-Manila are highly visible symptoms

10

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

of a housing shortage. Metro-Manila has reputedly the highest proportion of slum dwellers and squatters among cities in the region. In the span of less than a decade in the 1980s, the proportion of such slum dwellers and urban squatters had practically doubled. Rapid industrialization spurred on by global investments concentrated in the largest or capital cities have raised land prices. Such increases in land costs have exacerbated the problem of housing and certainly fuelled further development of squatter settlements. In Vietnam, which has sought integration with a full market-led economy, land prices have soared in the larger cities. Most times, the only alternative left to the poor in these cities has been the illegal occupancy of buildings and vacant land. Not surprisingly, these sites are often located in marginal areas along canals and riverbanks although they generally are near to centres of employment like government offices or factories and transport centres. Most of these settlements are not connected to electricity or have piped drinking water and other urban amenities such as modern sanitation or sewerage. According to the United Nations Development Programme, urban health statistics often underestimate the seriousness of disease and malnutrition in poor neighbourhoods. In Manila, the infant mortality rates are three times higher in the slums than in the rest of the city, rates of tuberculosis are nine times higher, diarrhoea and anaemia are twice as common, and three times as many suffer from malnutrition. While the lack of provision of modern amenities to large sections of the urban population remains a major problem, there has been growing concern about the management of environmental resources such as potable water supplies in Southeast Asian cities. A case in point has been Jakarta where

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

11

the urban residential and industrial demands on water supplies was expected to have grown fourfold by the year 2000. The concern was also with the strain placed on existing supplies of water and its quality in urban areas. There is extreme pollution of lowland rivers and water courses, including the presence of non-degradable organic chemical compounds and heavy metals. At the same time, alternative water sources were severely underprovided. In 1980, only 28 per cent of the Jakarta population were served by piped water. The scale of urbanization in Indonesia during the 1980s up until the late 1990s, however, was unprecedented and Jakarta alone was expected to absorb some 70 per cent of the growth in total urban population. The urban housing programmes that have been initiated in Southeast Asian cities are varied in nature. While many of these programmes are aimed at providing new housing stock or at least the urban land required to develop it, others are aimed at improving the conditions of existing settlements. Some of the programmes that have been successfully implemented have actually contributed towards an alleviation of the housing problems. Yet in terms of the sheer scale of the problem and the dimensions of the growth in numbers that have to be housed in the different cities, a major challenge has been to ensure an adequate and sustainable housing supply. Indeed, the continuity of programmes such as those initiated to improve slum settlements in Bangkok have been doubtful. The Slum Improvement Programme in Bangkok was initiated and implemented by the National Housing Authority. The programme however managed to include only some 26,000 dwelling units in slum settlements over a period of four years between 1978 to 1982. Wider improvement works for the slum settlements had run into questions of the legitimacy of land claims of the slum dwellers and other

12

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

initiatives meant to address urban housing needs for the poor in Bangkok. There have been similar programmes to improve sites and services in settlements in which most of the urban poor are residing in Metro-Manila. The Zonal Improvement Programme that had been proposed was aimed at providing legal land tenure status and services to over 1.8 million people in some 300 areas over a period of 12 years. Other programmes have been initiated that have been meant to provide sewerage for parts of the metropolitan area not yet provided with such services. In Jakarta, the Kampung Improvement Programme sponsored by the World Bank was introduced in 1969. Since then, the programme has been extended to cover some 200 cities in Indonesia and 3.5 million people. The thrust of the programme has been to provide public works — water supply and drainage — to residential areas occupied by the urban poor. Similar efforts appear to have been undertaken by the authorities in Kuala Lumpur vis-à-vis squatter settlements, many of which are so well established that the urban fringe locations they used to occupy are now central to the city which has expanded around these settlements. Upgrading programmes that have been extended to the older squatter settlements include the provision of health services, family development centres as well as standpipes for drinking water supply. One of the more successful stories has been that of the public housing programme which was implemented in Singapore in the 1960s. A contrast with efforts elsewhere in Southeast Asia has been the relatively drastic methods adopted to address the housing problem that was apparently as severe in Singapore in the late 1950s as it is now among the urban poor in the region. A comparison between policy and programme approaches to the meeting of urban housing needs between Singapore and

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

13

the other cities in Southeast Asia highlights important differences in the relations between the state and society. Socio-political conditions associated with housing provision vary markedly among cities in the region. The common backdrop however, is presented by the drive towards economic growth and development that has been shared by the national governments of most of the Southeast Asian countries including those emerging from socialism.

Structure of the Book — Tales of Urban Housing In the discussion which follows, focus is on the experience that each of a selection of the major Southeast Asian cities have had with housing provision. Focus on both the mega-cities as well as smaller capital cities like Kuala Lumpur and the city-state of Singapore provide a palette of different approaches that have been adopted in the bid to address urban housing needs. The housing provision in the cities discussed provides an understanding of the importance allocated to housing needs in government agendas. In the following case studies of different cities in Southeast Asia, the involvement of the state ranges from minimal or virtually absent to ambivalent and hence, to relatively strong intervention with legislative requirements and even total management of public housing programmes. The nature of the contribution by the market or private sector housing developers in cities like Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur also varies. These contrasts and the persistence of housing problems in cities in the region are discussed in relation to the role of the state, public policy and hence, the relationships between different social groups and business interests.

14

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

Chapter 2

Bangkok Metropolitan Area: Housing in a Primate City Introduction The largest city in Thailand — its capital Bangkok — has expanded rapidly from its original location along the banks of the Chao Phraya river, some 20 km from the Gulf of Thailand. The city is sited in the midst of a flood plain which is the rice bowl of the country. Since the economic boom in the 1980s, foreign direct investment has flooded into Bangkok, resulting in turn in a boom in the development of residential housing estates, office buildings, factories, hotels and golf courses. There has been a rapid extension of inner city districts, metropolitan suburbs and provincial boundaries. Not surprisingly, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administrative area has now been designated the Bangkok Metropolitan Region or BMR and is effectively not just a mega-city anymore but a mega-urban region. Spanning some 1,567.8 sq km, the urban region comprises five provinces that have become an emergent economically integrated area. This is urban growth of enormous dimension from the original 4 sq km that Bangkok occupied at the time of its founding in 1882.

Housing Challenges Bangkok Metropolitan in Area: a Rapidly Housing Urbanizing in a Primate Region City

15

By the late 1980s, the population of the so-called Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) had been estimated at 7.7 million people and some 2.2 million households. Bangkok has been held up as an example of the archetypal primate city, that is, the type of cities dominating the urban hierarchy in developing countries. The best infrastructure together with economic growth and development have been concentrated in Bangkok. This explains in part why some 60 per cent of the urban population of Thailand live in Bangkok. In contrast, the next largest city in Thailand in the urban hierarchy is almost twenty times smaller in terms of population. Located on the flood plain of the country’s major river, Bangkok faces major environmental challenges apart from those concerning basic needs such as housing. During the monsoon season, the city is regularly flooded because of heavy rain and high water levels in the river. The situation is worsened by considerable land subsidence due to the long-standing practice of extraction of ground water as well as large-scale and indiscriminate filling in and obstruction of the canals running through the city. This formerly extensive system of canals (klongs) was an important drainage network leading into the Chao Phraya. Many have been filled in to serve as roads since motorized land transport has overtaken the use of water transport in the city. Storm sewers and the remaining canals have in many places been neglected and poorly maintained because of increasingly serious problems with squatters, and squatting as a housing solution. These drainage facilities are simply not able to cope with the run-off from the increased built-up surfaces. To try and avoid the flooding of their homes and land, home and landowners in the city generally raise the level of their land with earth fills. These are, however, expensive and not affordable for many.

16

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

Population increase in Bangkok has averaged some 3.5 per cent annually. This has been largely due to in-migration from the rural provinces as well as other smaller cities and less to natural increase among the urban population. Such rapid population growth poses a major challenge for the city government regarding social policies and the provision of basic needs including housing. The BMR generates half of the national economic growth in Thailand as well as half of the jobs. Not surprisingly, the spillover of urban growth has meant that there is now no clear division between the built-up area of the BMR and contiguous development in the neighbouring provinces. Indeed, small municipalities have been incorporated in the urban expansion driven by industrialization and commercial development. In spite of the rapidity of the national capital’s growth, Thailand remains one of the least urbanized countries in the world, with some 7 in 10 among the population continuing to live and work outside of cities. Hence, the total land area of Bangkok, which constitutes only 0.29 per cent of the whole area of the country, accommodates some 11 per cent of the national population and more than two-thirds of Thailand’s total urban population. In Thailand, the government (i.e. the National Housing Authority) is hampered by the inability to exappropriate land. Until the late 1980s, some one-third of the population had no access to public water supplies. These urban dwellers would buy water from vendors, usually at higher prices. Only some 2 per cent of the households were connected to a sewer system. This means that sewage or human wastes are generally disposed of through septic tanks and cesspools with their effluents, along with waste water from sinks, laundries, baths and kitchens discharged into stormwater drains or canals.

Housing Challenges Bangkok Metropolitan in Area: a Rapidly Housing Urbanizing in a Primate Region City

17

Urbanization and Development Urban growth in Bangkok has been haphazard. There has been urban sprawl and rapid development along the major transportation routes leading into the city. This has meant the spilling over of the urban development projects into highly productive farming land. The provision of urban infrastructure including housing and transport has been trailing far behind urban growth. Intriguingly, in the midst of such rapid growth, there has been an increasing amount of vacant land within and around the already built-up areas of the city that have either been left to slum settlements or are awaiting development. The city’s urban transport and traffic congestion problems are major issues. Most of the transport woes facing the city have arisen because of urban fringe developments, that is, the growth of residential areas. The urban population living in these fringe areas have to commute daily to the city to work, generating high traffic volumes that the existing road infrastructure in the city has been unable to cope with. Traffic volumes have grown in tandem with the growth of industrial and commercial activity concentrated in Bangkok. The volumes are aggravated by the lack of attention paid to the provision of alternatives like a good public transport network. Until recently, with the development of a mass rapid transit system, the city was a case study of urban transport development left almost entirely to the private sector. Indeed, this observation also applies to the public policy involved in meeting other urban basic needs like housing. Owning one’s own land and home is reportedly the goal of all Thai families and this has also been promoted through government policy. Housing development however, has been regarded as an individual and private affair. Housing supply is

18

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

determined largely by the availability of land for rent and subject to personal needs and limitations. The construction of housing is mostly a private affair, either arranged by the occupants themselves or by means of small contractors or large-scale developers. In other words, the role of the state vis-à-vis the provision of urban housing in Bangkok and other Thai cities, so apparent in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, has been a relatively recent development. Hence, the private sector has been a bigger player in the meeting of urban housing needs. People in need of housing have either rented or bought homes, which can range from high-income housing to squatter dwellings, or build their own private homes on an acquired plot. This land can either be bought, rented or used for squatting. Some households opt for whatever public housing is available. With the massive migration to cities in the 1970s and the economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s until the economic crisis of 1997, private developers had been active in providing serviced plots of land for sub-division as well as housing development schemes. This has also, not surprisingly, spun-off an upsurge in land price speculation, driving up land costs and hence, housing prices. Increasingly the low and middle-income urban dwellers have been squeezed out of the burgeoning land and housing market. This has in turn led to the growth, in absolute numbers, of slum dwellers. Slum and squatter housing provides the urban poor with solutions to living and working in Bangkok. First, such housing is usually located close to employment opportunities in factories as well as hotels and restaurants. So rental apartments in the inner city as well as barrack housing provided by factories and slum and squatter housing are located close to markets, the port, factories and government offices that are concentrated around the ring enclosing the inner city. Indeed, most of

Housing Challenges Bangkok Metropolitan in Area: a Rapidly Housing Urbanizing in a Primate Region City

19

the slums developed within 6 to 7 kilometres of the central business district (CBD). Such close proximity to work keeps the urban poor in the loop regarding information about jobs and also keeps down the costs of transport as well as commuting time to work. Since 1940, some 15 to 20 per cent of the Bangkok population, have resorted to slum dwelling for housing although this has always been short term, sub-standard and often illegal. Furthermore, with the expansion of the city and new real estate developments, evictions have been the norm. The pattern has been the gradual pushing out of slum dwellers towards the edge of the city, as the land they occupy is allocated or sold for other developments. Yet with land speculation rife and housing costs spiralling, a growing number of middle-income urban workers are also finding themselves unable to afford housing in the formal market. Private sector developers who are faced with increasing land costs are also finding themselves unable to continue to provide for the lower segment of the middleincome housing market.

Challenges of Urban Housing and Housing Solutions The rapid economic growth of the 1980s and early years of the 1990s in Thailand has had major implications for housing in Bangkok. Real incomes apparently rose during the economic boom benefiting even the low income households, This income increase has made it possible for a growing portion of the population of Bangkok to find accommodation in the formal housing market. As purchasing power increased, private enterprise responded by supplying low-cost housing to meet the demands of those sections of the population which sought housing in the formal sector (Yap 1992, p. 8).

20

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

The rapid economic growth also meant that there was greater demand for land for hotels, shopping centres, offices and condominiums in many parts of the city. Not surprisingly, the impact has been a steep rise in land prices in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region. In some places land prices doubled or tripled annually for several consecutive years. Such changes in land prices in the city mean that locating land for housing that is affordable for the remaining poor sections of the population become increasingly difficult. This is particularly in key areas like the city centre. Furthermore, informal housing solutions become impossible and areas for these would gradually be edged out to the fringe. The pressures on land in more accessible parts of the city create problems for members of low-income households employed in the service sector and in small-scale commerce that tend to be concentrated in the centre. Without the option of living in or near the city centre, many service sector employees have to travel long distances to work and negotiate the traffic congestion problems that Bangkok is wellknown for. These workers can usually ill afford the long travelling time to work and also the costs of transportation. Informal housing usually comprises slum and squatter housing. However, slum housing in the BMR is not altogether informal since the residents pay rent and are not illegal occupants of the land. More often than not, these slum dwellers occupy land on a temporary basis and pay a nominal rent to the landowners who would have consented to the arrangement. The tendency among policy-makers however, is to use the term “slum” to refer to all forms of poor or low-income housing, both legal and illegal, including squatter housing. The trend has been for landowners to develop their land or sell these to willing buyers. The increase in the number of slum and squatter areas has reportedly been slowing down vis-à-vis

Housing Challenges Bangkok Metropolitan in Area: a Rapidly Housing Urbanizing in a Primate Region City

21

the relatively faster rate at which the rest of the city is growing: the net result has been slum clearance. In Thai society, which attaches a high value to conflict avoidance, land owners often stop collecting rent from the slum dwellers to signal their intention to terminate the lease contract, although they may wait several years before they actually request the slum dwellers to leave. This is meant to give slum dwellers time to prepare for the eventual eviction and can be seen as a form of compensation (Wright 1991, p. 76).

The process of locating affordable land for housing in Bangkok has been negotiated by urban residents, the private sector or market sector and civil society organizations or nongovernment organizations (NGOs) with relatively little intervention by the state. Bangkok has grown virtually without planning. Land-use controls are virtually non-existent and developers have been at liberty to build any type of housing at any location. Furthermore, the government has actually eased subdivision regulations and building standards and streamlined the administrative procedures for housing development, resulting in a regulatory environment that has facilitated and largely supported nearly all types of housing development. Not surprisingly, the proportion of the total housing stock accounted for by large-scale developers in 1990 was some 20 per cent. Small-scale and independently built housing accounted for some 30 per cent, while shophouse development was attributed with some 20 per cent. Public housing appeared to have contributed a miniscule share at less than 10 per cent. This meant that slum housing took care of about 15 per cent and other housing around 5 per cent. Hence, the urban housing challenge in Bangkok has been met in highly varied and complex ways involving negotiations and conflict resolution between urban dwellers who need

22

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

housing and the private sector or market sector landowners as well developers, with the intervention or intercession occasionally of civil society or state actors.

The Role of the State and Politics in Urban Housing Issues The role of the state in urban housing has been ambivalent. While the policy has been to leave the provision to the market sector and economic development, the state has however been pursuing economic policies aimed at stimulating growth through export-oriented industries and tourism. This has meant provision of incentives for investors while at the same time trying to keep costs low, leading to avoidance of taxes, pressure to increase wages or labour and safety standards. The outcome, it would appear, is plain to many. Since the 1997 economic crisis, a financially beleaguered state has found it difficult to afford the outlay for improving and expanding physical and social infrastructure such as housing for the low-income population. This has in turn led to adverse urban and environmental conditions as well as an intractable road congestion problem which have tended to make Bangkok increasingly less attractive to international investors. Bangkok therefore appears to have been a city which has subscribed to the belief that economic development would eventually provide solutions to address urban basic needs such as housing, particularly for the low-income and poor. In Bangkok, a string of state agencies responsible for addressing housing needs reflect the persistence of the problem. These were agencies and departments created at both the local and central government level to address housing issues. There was the Housing Bureau, the Slum Clearance Office of the Bangkok Municipality, the Housing Bank and the Housing

Housing Challenges Bangkok Metropolitan in Area: a Rapidly Housing Urbanizing in a Primate Region City

23

Division of the Department of Public Welfare. Finally in 1973, the National Housing Authority (NHA) was set up. Initially the primary objective was to provide alternative housing, walk-up apartment buildings, for slum dwellers who had been evicted. The NHA’s track record in addressing urban housing for the poor and low-income has been relatively dismal and marked more by cancellation of its plans and proposals than building programmes. An initial five-year plan to construct 120,000 housing units in walk-up apartments floundered in the late 1970s and was cancelled because the government found it unaffordable. The subsequent plans to develop sites and services schemes as well as upgrading of slums with only limited subsidies was also largely abandoned in the early 1980s. Some low-rental housing estates have been developed by the NHA as well as sites and services schemes in and around Bangkok. Without government subsidies, the NHA turned to a rather unique recourse to finance its housing provision effort. The authority decided on the development of high and middleincome housing in a bid to turn the profits over for the financing of low-income housing programmes. Not only was the NHA unable to compete successfully with the private sector in the development of housing for the high-income and middle-income housing market but observers have remarked that the NHA now looks as if it is more active in this housing market than in the provision of housing for the urban poor. The NHA concedes that its sites and services schemes may not have reached the target groups — the urban poor. A major obstacle that the NHA faced has been the difficulty of securing land for its housing projects. Against the backdrop of escalating land prices, it has been extremely difficult for the authority to compete with private sector developers to acquire land in Bangkok.

24

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

The policies needed to address urban housing issues in cities like Bangkok are often embroiled or complicated by the politics prevailing between national and local governments. Such politics become major hurdles that state agencies like the NHA and Bangkok Metropolitan Administration have to negotiate particularly when there are rival political parties in office at the national and the local level. This is not helped by the fact that for a long time, the political party that has been in power in Bangkok has usually been the opposition party. While the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration would like to be responsible for slums upgrading and improvement in Bangkok, it has neither the staff nor the expertise to plan and implement such physical improvement projects. The NHA, on other hand, is responsible for slums upgrading throughout Thailand in the smaller cities as well. Hence, the poor in Bangkok form but a small proportion of the total low-income population that the NHA has to look after. Moreover, these urban poor in Bangkok are considered relatively privileged compared to the rest of the poor in Thailand. The NHA’s lack of political and professional clout is evident in the most prevalent solution to housing for the urban poor in Bangkok, that is, slum housing. Many slum developments have resulted because of an agreement between the landowner and urban households looking for affordable housing near their workplaces. While NHA efforts have focused on improving services and site improvements in slum settlements, this is no guarantee that the slum dwellers will not be evicted or that these areas will not subsequently be removed. A number of the slum settlements that have been cleared had been upgraded by the NHA and some had actually developed community committees to oversee common interests. The civil society sector has proven more effective in helping slum dwellers resist eviction. Indeed, in working on the premise

Housing Challenges Bangkok Metropolitan in Area: a Rapidly Housing Urbanizing in a Primate Region City

25

that the urban poor have rights to live in the city, the civil society organizations have initiated a solution known as land sharing. The work of the NGOs has helped the slum communities to negotiate with landowners for a share of the land they have been occupying. This means that the land is divided into a portion on which the slum dwellers continue to live. The rest of the land is returned to the owner for development. For the slum dwellers, land sharing has allowed them to remain where they have always lived. The slum dwellers however, have to re-build their homes on smaller land areas and build them at higher densities if the decision is to continue to live in the row housing which is the housing form that has been the norm. There has to be active participation and also success in securing resources for rebuilding within the slum dwelling community. In a small number of cases, land sharing has actually succeeded. The success is believed to have been due to landowners wishing to secure and repossess the land without a long waiting period to evict the slum dwellers. This is not without the landowners having tried steps to evict the slum dwellers, such as negotiating pay-offs. There have been instances when the dwellings are set on fire or gangs sent to intimidate the slum dwellers. Thai society supports the landowner’s rights to the land and does not recognize any claims that slum dwellers might have. There is also no written law about slum dwellers having such rights. If land sharing succeeds, however, then there is tacit legitimization of the rights to the land claims that the slum dwellers have made by both the state and the landowners concerned.

Slums and Low-Rental Housing For Bangkok’s urban poor, the more prevalent solution to their housing needs in the midst of a booming land and property

26

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

market has been less a reliance on squatting and more on an arrangement with landowners to occupy vacant land on a temporary basis for nominal rents. These arrangements have resulted in the development of slum settlements: slum dwellers therefore outnumber squatters in the city. Squatters on the other hand, have settled on state land that has been available and not yet used for other purposes, such as land along railway lines belonging to the State Railways of Thailand. While slum settlements are developed on either wholly privately owned land or public land or a mix of both, the norm appears to have been those developed on temple (wat) or crown land. Although the slum dwellings have been built with some form of legal arrangement between the landowner and the dwellers, the houses cannot be registered because they are not authorized. Without house registration, there are often a variety of problems including: the registration of children and securing places in school; water and electricity supplies (slum dwellers might have to purchase water and electricity from another household which has registered but this would be at a premium and more expensive); and obtaining valid identification papers Without such identification, it is often impossible to deal with the public sector agencies. The profile of slum dwellers can be highly diverse, from recent rural migrants to more established urban dwellers who may actually have sufficient income to purchase more permanent types of housing. These latter are usually more in a position to take advantage of land sharing opportunities to build new and more permanent housing for themselves. Not surprisingly, conditions in the slum settlements are generally dismal. More often than not, such slum settlements are located on sites that are both flood-prone and unimproved. Many try to contend with the floods by raising the housing

Housing Challenges Bangkok Metropolitan in Area: a Rapidly Housing Urbanizing in a Primate Region City

27

built on wooden posts which then stand above stagnant water, since drainage is not developed in such areas. Some landowners provide electricity, water and wooden walkways to the dwellings, but sanitation is usually makeshift and toilets are little more than holes dug in the ground. Poor drainage and infrastructure as well as the lack of proper ventilation add to the unhealthy living conditions. There is also a high incidence of drug addiction and AIDS. Slum dwellers, as already discussed, live with the prospect of eviction perennially. Arrangements that have been secured with the landowners may require the slum dwellers to vacate their homes within thirty days upon notification. Slum dwellers lose everything upon such notification to vacate the land they occupy. Whatever they have invested in their homes will be lost although in a few cases, there is some prospect of using the materials to rebuild homes in new sites. As explained, the loss of their homes mean a loss of income for the slum dweller. Perhaps most importantly, the slum dwellers lose the social and support network that they have established over time. Such networks comprise local shopkeepers who allow the residents to buy things on credit as well as local businesses which rely on the suppliers for raw materials and even business contacts. Once the slum settlement is evicted and erased, such networks that are so location-bound and fragile are lost and difficult to re-constitute elsewhere. Efforts by the NHA to provide alternative accommodation for the slum dwellers have been relatively unsuccessful. The solution was to provide walk-up apartments that apparently made it difficult for the slum households because of relatively higher recurrent costs, lack of income generating opportunities as well as space and social networks. Furthermore, the NHA usually lacked funds for proper maintenance and management

28

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

of the apartments and the buildings. Many became virtual vertical slums.

Housing as a Basic Urban Need The housing effort in Bangkok particularly for the poor highlights the dilemmas of the provision of public or social housing in a capitalist economy. Demands on urban land reflect the dominance of the market sector although civil society activism has to a small extent challenged the largely market-driven logic of urban development. Space for the low-wage and poor has been made available mostly by private landowners for temporary use until decisions are made about permanent development projects that do not generally include the interests of the households already staying on the land. Such private arrangements, however, are not generally incorporated into the state’s urban infrastructure development, which means housing conditions are often dismal and the slum dwellers subject to eviction as well as lack of access to urban services. In addition, state intervention in housing the poor in Bangkok, has also been relatively insignificant, largely because of competing demands from other cities where urban poverty is greater. Caught between the ineffectiveness of state intervention and the “bottom line” logic of market sector housing developments, it is not surprising that housing problems in Bangkok persist and look set to grow.

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

29

Chapter 3

Housing in Jakarta — Contrasts between the Wealthy and the Poor Introduction Indonesia comprises some 13,667 islands (and more it appears, are being found). Java, the most densely populated island, was important historically and continues to be Indonesia’s economic and agricultural centre. The former capital city of the Dutch colony of Java and its surrounding islands, Batavia, now known as Jakarta, is located on a flat river delta plain on West Java’s northern coast. With an estimated population of some 12 million in 1998, Jakarta ranks among the world’s 11 largest cities and is one of 16 mega-cities in developing countries. Jakarta has characteristics that may be considered similar to those of the other mega-cities in Southeast Asia — Bangkok and Manila. All three cities are the capitals of their nation–states and all three are primate cities: Metro-Manila is nearly one quarter the population of the Philippines, Greater Bangkok is one fifth the population of Thailand, and Jakarta is nearly ten per cent of Indonesia (Hogan and Houston 2001, p. 1).

30

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

The population of the Jakarta mega-urban region or the greater urban area beyond its official boundaries would be much larger, estimated at some 17 to 20 million people. Jakarta’s growth has been similar to the other cities, with substantial urban sprawl. Suburban development is spilling over and even incorporating and transforming neighbouring regional urban centres or towns. Urban land-use varies widely with a diversity of industries, services and housing of all types. Like the other primate and capital cities in the region, Jakarta has a concentration of government and business activities including the manufacturing sector as well as construction, utilities, trade and services and finance. Jakarta is also the site of the headquarters of Indonesia’s largest banks as well as the offices of multinational corporations. Not unexpectedly, Jakarta is also where most of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and hence, jobs in Indonesia are being generated. Just before the 1998 economic crisis, the GDP of the city was reportedly 3 per cent higher than the national rate. Yet, social development indicators suggest a city of social contrasts. Even in the late 1980s, less than a quarter of the city’s population was directly connected to a piped water supply system. Some 30 per cent depend entirely on water that they buy from vendors. This has driven the cost of water to five times that of piped drinking water. The city has no waterborne sewage system. Some 25 per cent of the population are served by septic tanks, with other households using pit latrines, cesspools and ditches dug along the roadside. This means a majority of the population has to rely on drainage canals for bathing, laundering and even defecation. Without a city-wide infrastructural system for sewerage, most of the wastewater is discharged untreated. While the city experienced its worst floods in recent years during the wet season, environmental degradation

Housing in Challenges Jakarta —inContrasts a Rapidlybetween Urbanizing theRegion Wealthy and the Poor

31

in the coastal plain hinterland in which the city is located has meant severe water shortages during the dry season.

Housing and the Urban Policy The urban population in Indonesia has been growing rapidly with the growth rate in Jakarta estimated at an average of some 4 per cent between 1997 and 2002 and that in other cities at some 4.5 per cent. Jakarta’s share of the urban population in Indonesia is estimated at about 40 per cent. Population growth estimates for Jakarta are not easy to calculate. While the population growth rate in the five years between 1980 and 1985 in Jakarta averaged about 3.3 per cent, that in the areas bordering Jakarta and from which large numbers of people commute to work in Jakarta daily, has been increasing at far more rapid rates. For example, between 1917 and 1980 (the years for which city-level data are available), the urban area populations of the Jabotabek districts Bogor, Tangerang, and Bekasi grew at annual per centage rates of 5.7, 3.8, and 10.0, respectively (Struyk et al. 1990, p. 27).

Given the rapid rate of population increase and especially the rates and scale of the population increase estimated for Jakarta and other cities in its vicinity, it is not surprising that urban housing needs driven by urban population growth will be very large. While there is a well-prepared and conceptually fine blueprint for greater Jakarta, the plan does not appear to have been implemented and hence, remains ineffective and nonfunctioning. Furthermore, the plan lacks long-term development goals in the area of urban housing and other related aspects (Sari and Susantono 1998). Indeed, the views of scholars

32

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

commenting on the effectiveness of planning for the myriad escalating needs of Jakarta have been nothing short of scornful. At the time of economic and political upheaval, there is little political will to implement even the minimal key objective of the Jakarta Structure Plan 1985–2005, which is to ensure Jakarta a basic system for formulating policies for landuse, sectoral activities and preparation of the more detailed plans. Both before and after Suharto [the political leader who was 32 years in office until toppled in the aftermath of the 1998 economic crisis], the priorities of governing … have overwhelmed the planning needs of the nation’s primate city (Hogan and Houston 2001, p. 2).

This may explain why the national policy on urban development has not proven wholly effective to date. The urban development policy has been aimed at promotion of spatial balance with an emphasis on cities in the more economically backward and isolated regions of Indonesia. Developmental priorities however, would be determined by the functional roles and hence the importance of the cities in national as well as regional development. Ultimately the urban development objective seems to focus on small and intermediate-sized cities in order to decentralize as well as de-concentrate urban growth. This would entail strategies to attract potential migrants away from the largest metropolitan centres like Jakarta to redress the substantive disparities between regions. Jakarta appears to be the only Southeast Asian mega city that has not developed a mass transit system. There is a heavy reliance on private road transport and an already bad problem of air pollution, which is expected to become chronic over the next two decades, if not sooner. The problem is not helped by urban sprawl, which goes on largely unregulated. Furthermore, land speculation at the fringes of the Jakarta administrative boundaries has been rife.

Housing in Challenges Jakarta —inContrasts a Rapidlybetween Urbanizing theRegion Wealthy and the Poor

33

Housing Policy and Housing Conditions Upon gaining self-rule from the Dutch colonial regime in late 1950, one of the first decisions taken by the state was to include a Housing Section within the Department of Public Works. In the early 1950s, the government became involved in housing largely through the assignment of vacant housing and land for occupation by issuing housing permits that a local military garrison controlled. This policy led to problems partly because some military and housing officials viewed the allocation of new housing as falling under their jurisdictions. In the 1960s, a Basic Housing Law was enacted to address the housing shortage in cities but no public housing programme was initiated. At the same time, a research institute on housing was established. University graduates were also sent abroad to the United States and Scandinavian countries for training. A public housing programme was not initiated until the first Repelita or National Development Programme of 1969 to 1974. Focus was on basic things such as the setting up of an institutional framework, development of urban housing prototypes and the use of local materials. At the same time however, the Jakarta government started a low-income settlement improvement programme which is better known as the Kampung Improvement Programme (KIP). During this period, the major problems appeared to be the increase in the number of so-called illegal slums and housing congestion. While the projection estimated housing demand for some 300,000 housing units, only some 40,000 were expected to be supplied. The deficit in meeting housing needs worsened in the next decade. While private housing developers started building homes for the middleincome and the wealthy, some 73,000 units of low-cost housing were produced at the end of the 1970s. The shortfall therefore remained substantial.

34

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

The KIP has involved public participation in the improvement of housing areas that were originally not served by any urban services. While success has been at best uneven, the implementation, in many cases with loans from international agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank as well the Dutch government, the programme has improved the physical environment. There has been provision of water and garbage collection, both of which has improved public health. Complementary work including tree planting and the provision of street lighting has also been carried out in a significant number of areas. The World Bank considers the KIP in Indonesia as the classic example of slum upgrading by bringing services to urban settlements not provided with any urban amenities whatsoever. During the second Repelita from 1974 to 1979, the National Housing Policy Board, the National Urban Development Corporation (Perumnas), and the Mortgage or Housing Credit were all established. By 1976, the rudiments of an effective housing programme were implemented. These consisted of a low-cost housing programme and a Settlement Improvement Programme. Things remained about the same over the next decade or so although a National Urban Development Strategy was initiated in the late 1980s. In 1983, Perumnas started the construction of walk-up flats in Jakarta. While these were eventually fully occupied, less than 15 per cent of the people actually came from the previous kampung inhabitants who were evicted with compensation to make way for the construction of the flats. This appears to be a problem with the low-income housing programme because in low-cost housing schemes, due to selection criteria few low-income families have been properly served (Struyk et al. 1990). If one finds a poor family living in a public housing estate, then most likely they are people evicted

Housing in Challenges Jakarta —inContrasts a Rapidlybetween Urbanizing theRegion Wealthy and the Poor

35

from their original place which was needed for a certain project that was higher in economic, public or private value. Again the other obstacles are the selection criteria, which are mainly formal, such as education, employment and income, and residential status. The majority of the urban low-income population are no more than elementary [school] educated, self-employed and thus do not have fixed, regular incomes. Even if they are eligible according to certain criteria, they have to compete for the few houses offered. Demographic as well as economic indicators reflect in Jakarta a level of economic progress which does not quite extend to the infrastructure, planning and environmental dimensions of life. Some eighty-five per cent of new housing stock is informal, that is, self-constructed or home-made housing that the urban poor make do with because they cannot afford anything else generally. Each building or group of buildings may have a well or a septic tank although some have neither. Housing conditions and quality are strongly dependent on the urban infrastructural network which delivers urban services like electricity, sewerage, modern sanitation and water supply among others. In Indonesian cities, services like access to the supply of piped drinking water varies by household income. Income makes a dramatic difference in access to piped water, since a household must not only be located in a neighbourhood served by the water distribution system but be able to pay a hook-up charge. As a result, households with monthly incomes of over Rp. 400,000 (about US$55) are more than seven times as likely to have piped water than those with incomes of less than Rp. 50,000 per month (about US$7). Water supply is a greater problem in Jakarta than in other cities. This is because piped systems appear to be less common in Jakarta than elsewhere. Furthermore, ordinary wells which

36

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

are usually an alternative source are not a viable option in Jakarta because much of the ground water has been contaminated by encroaching seawater or surface pollutants. While wells and piped water systems are the top water sources in many cities, in Jakarta the two main sources are pumped water, that is, water from deeper wells and water distributed by peddlers. Practically, a third of Jakarta households continue to rely on peddlers whom they pay to bring clean drinking water. The proportion relying on peddlers for clean drinking water in Jakarta is some four times higher than in other cities. In addition, at least some 10 per cent rely on these water peddlers to bring them water for other purposes like washing and bathing as well. In contrast, services like garbage collection, are better organized in Jakarta than in other cities. Again, the provision of such services also depends on household incomes in Indonesian cities. Only 18 per cent of the poorest households have garbage removal service compared to almost 70 per cent among the wealthiest. In Jakarta, slightly more than one in two households get their garbage removed, much higher than in other cities, which average about one in three households. The private housing sector provides only a small fraction of the housing in Indonesia, some 15 per cent. The remaining is produced by home owners themselves, that is, the individual households. A distinction is made here between formal and informal housing although they share common characteristics. Much of the housing is built by individual households without help from the state or more formal private sector institutions comprising banks, contractors or real estate developers. Each household would therefore buy its own land or the housing unit, build or make improvements on the housing and land usually incrementally, as well as finance all these activities

Housing in Challenges Jakarta —inContrasts a Rapidlybetween Urbanizing theRegion Wealthy and the Poor

37

without any help apart from whatever can be assembled among the family and from friends and informal sector construction workers. Such development is also reflective of several smallscale rental housing projects undertaken by individuals and marketed among low and moderate-income households in Jakarta and elsewhere. The private sector real estate developers have therefore focused on medium and large-scale housing projects targeted at the top 30 per cent of the urban population. Such housing is sometimes subsidized by the state. The housing subsidized by the state, like the state housing developer, focuses more on moderate-income households and are relatively smaller. Private housing real estate developers are more likely to build housing units that include the top end of the housing provided by state-subsidized programmes, that is, the larger and costlier units. Housing in Jakarta is therefore segregated in terms of incomes. There are two predominant systems of housing. One is known as the popular or household-based system. This supplies most of the urban housing. The other is what is considered as the more formal housing system which services the moderate to high-income households and is often also heavily subsidized. The latter would be housing provided for civil servants. This is the smaller system that has been found to be relatively incapable of solving housing problems and also financing for housing in the cities. Land costs and scarce or costly resources are reflected in the prevalence of higher coverage ratios for housing in Jakarta compared to other Indonesian cities. In Jakarta, some 23 per cent of households have coverage ratios of unity, that is, they have no yard or unbuilt land left while in smaller cities, the figure is only 4 per cent.

38

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

The Study of Contrasts — Housing for the High-Income Against the background of a city that is grappling relatively unsuccessfully with its urban and environmental problems as well as its burgeoning population, there are housing and urban projects that have been undertaken by private business groups which provide an almost surreal contrast. In other words, the development of so-called edge cities in Jakarta for largely middle and upper income residents by private sector developers presents a contrast in urban housing and living standards that have to be seen to be believed. One such edge city is Lippo Karawaci which was developed by the Lippo Group comprising a stable of companies and subsidiaries spun-off by the Lippo Bank. While the banking group was badly affected by the 1998 economic crisis, the interests of the group in both China and Hong Kong have apparently helped to stave off the liquidation that was the fate of several other banks. The edge city developed by the Lippo Group in Jakarta began in 1992–93. Projects like Lippo Karawaci can be interpreted in various ways. One is the initiative that the private real estate sector has taken with new town development. Such initiative has been taken in the vacuum seen in the Jakarta urban authorities’ apparent inability to grapple effectively with urban and environmental problems. In many ways, edge cities like Lippo Karawaci demonstrate the outcome of effective housing estate development and management that can be achieved even in Jakarta, given the necessary resources and development decisions. Lippo Karawaci was conceived as … a real kota mandiri (self-sufficient town) in that from the beginning there would be a full infrastructure built to modern standards with education, health, commercial and recreation

Housing in Challenges Jakarta —inContrasts a Rapidlybetween Urbanizing theRegion Wealthy and the Poor

39

facilities in place before and while homes were being built. Until then, this was not the norm. In Indonesia, the real estate industry generally built housing schemes, not new towns. There were new towns, but basically the private sector built hectares of housing, leaving the infrastructure often out-dated, ill-built, late and with few social facilities. It was 17 years, for instance, before one major housing project had any major shopping facilities, that is, in 350 ha of land (Benton 2000, p. 60).

Projects like Lippo Karawaci face major constraints. A major negative implication is the requirement or ruling that 40 per cent of any housing project area (roads, drains, landscaped areas, school and recreation land) has to be handed over to the government upon completion. The outcome has been inadequate provision or the inadequate quality of provisions that a beleaguered government in Jakarta has often been unable to address. Hence the maintenance of the facilities has often been unsatisfactory resulting in notoriously huge losses from the reticulated water supply system or pot-holed and far too narrow roads for the traffic volumes generated and often without usable verges, drainage that does not work as well as uncontrolled building and general environmental degradation (Benton 2000, p. 60). Such problems have affected even “expatriate” suburbs, one of which is to be found in south Jakarta and has been described as an “executive slum”. A gauge of the level of frustration among even the middle and high-income residents of Jakarta would be the amount of investment that the developer claimed went into the development of Lippo Karawaci. The amount was estimated at US$20 million a month and this came purportedly from house purchasers, commercial investors, parents of the school children and university undergraduates and the developers themselves. Lippo Karawaci was developed on a 500 hectare site with plans to develop a further 550 hectares in the next two years.

40

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

The edge city boasts several firsts. Buildings included a school offering classes from kindergarten to grade 12 with English language as the medium of instruction and native English language speakers as the teachers; 1,500 landed properties, a 300-bed hospital and a 200-room five-star hotel as well as a country club and golf club; a 300-shop shopping; and 3 office tower blocks (Benton 2000). There is even a university started in 1995 and housed in a nine-storey office block. Focus is on the provision of educational facilities and world-class facilities. Lippo Karawaci is clearly targeting the upwardly mobile middle class residents of Jakarta with its focus on educational facilities. A total of some 30,000 residents live in a series of thematic estates which have been inspired by residential areas in Orange County, Irvine and similar corporate city developments in Southern California. The names of the estates provide an idea of the themes like Taman (Garden) Mediterranean Golf or Taman Paris. The city has virtually nothing that refers to Islamic culture particularly in the housing designs. Residents have had to build their own religious buildings like churches. The supermall is located at the town centre and has a large amusement park as well as pagoda and concert stage. Not surprisingly, during the social and political turmoil that followed the economic crisis of 1998, the supermall — a complex covering some 220,000 sq m — was the target of looters and arsonists. While the building of new towns is not a novelty in the region and has been an urban planning strategy in most countries, Lippo Karawaci is interesting because of the corporate sector’s role. Most similar new towns reflect more the kind of new planning by the state in the second half of the twentieth century. Lippo Karawaci could be considered a company town which is modelled on garden city design principles.

Housing in Challenges Jakarta —inContrasts a Rapidlybetween Urbanizing theRegion Wealthy and the Poor

41

Lippo Karawaci is housing aimed at the new upper middle class and has been developed in the context of other such gated communities in cities elsewhere that are based either on ethnic and class lines. Hence, housing projects like Lippo Karawaci do not encourage widespread emulation in Jakarta or for that matter, even appreciation of the new town planning principles and proper infrastructural provision that it may be attempting to inspire. More problematically, an answer would have to be found for the wider question of the urban politics and the policing of the private/public split that is represented by the private affluence of Lippo Karawaci in contrast to the public squalor represented by the needs and deprivation of the urban poor of Greater Jakarta. Private security forces check the crossing into the edge city daily of the urban poor and working classes who provide much of the labour for Lippo Karawaci. Edge cities such as Lippo Karawaci spatially segregate the poor from the rich and exacerbate social fragmentation and polarization.

Addressing the Social Fragmentation in Housing The housing in Jakarta or at least the low-cost programmes, has been described as a dualistic system. Part of the system comprises the provision of low-cost housing while the other part consists of the improvement of existing housing estates among the urban poor. Edge cities like Lippo Karawaci not only signify the might and clout of corporate wealth in Jakarta but also questions the role of the state in key areas of urban governance such as housing policy. Adequate housing in Jakarta may persist as a problem but more troubling is its reflection of the prevailing social fragmentation.

42

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

Chapter 4

Multi-ethnicity and Housing in Kuala Lumpur Introduction There is no national housing policy in Malaysia, although the quinquennial Malaysia Development Plan does outline social and macroeconomic objectives. These stated objectives are to ensure that all Malaysians, particularly low-income groups, have access to adequate and affordable housing. Housing delivery in Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere in Malaysia has been undertaken by both private and public sectors. The private housing sector comprises large and small-scale developers, individuals, cooperative societies and groups of individuals. Almost 96 per cent of private sector housing has been provided by developers. Hence, cooperative societies and the other agents in the private housing market remain little more than supplementary sources. The private sector has built not only high and mediumincome housing but also low-cost homes. Since the Fourth Malaysia Plan, the state has required private sector developers to cooperate in the provision of low-cost homes. More specifically, the government requires the private sector to provide 30 per cent of housing units that are low-cost in their developments.

Housing Challenges Multi-ethnicity and Housing in a Rapidly in Kuala Urbanizing LumpurRegion

43

The public housing sector comprises largely a range of national and sub-national agencies. Public low-cost housing programmes have been undertaken by the sub-national government agencies under the supervision and monitoring of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. These programmes comprise low cost housing units, sites and services schemes as well as housing loan schemes. The national government has provided loans to the sub-national agencies or state governments to carry out the low-cost public housing programmes. These funds are channelled through the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. The State Economic Development Corporations and the Urban Development Authority are other agencies which contribute to public housing within each state at the sub-national level and particularly in urban areas. City Hall in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur prepared the Kuala Lumpur structure plan that since the 1980s has been aimed at addressing urban issues such as housing. The plan actually envisaged that every resident in Kuala Lumpur would have his or her own home. Housing policies during the colonial period, not unlike those seen in British colonial cities elsewhere, generally adopted a laissez-faire attitude particularly in terms of the provision of housing for Asian urban dwellers. The policies of the Malaysian government have been more interventionist. The New Economic Policy that was implemented between 1971 and 1990 saw the encouragement of bumiputeras or “sons of the soil” — largely Malays in Malaysia — to migrate to the cities. The federal (national) government had been encouraging Malays to migrate to urban centres as part of the NEP strategy to change the character of the Chinese-dominated urban population and also to create a new Malay commercial community in urban areas (Agus 1997, p. 37).

44

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

Not surprisingly, the in-migration added to the housing problem in cities like Kuala Lumpur. In the Fifth and Sixth Malaysia Plans between 1986 to 1995, focus was on the development of cheap housing. There is relatively high homeownership in Malaysia with some 67 per cent of homes that were owner-occupied in 1991. In Kuala Lumpur, problems persist with squatter housing and also urban housing needs that have not been effectively addressed. Kuala Lumpur has been the least successful among the cities in the provision of low-cost homes and has generally managed to meet only some 22 to 25 per cent of the targeted development of such housing. The efforts by the state aimed at addressing urban housing needs have been threefold. First and beginning with the Fifth Malaysia Plan, the public sector has provided social facilities such as schools, clinics and community halls in residential estates of cities. Site and layout plans for large-scale projects were required to include the provision of basic infrastructure, social facilities and commercial sites as well as primary and secondary schools, community halls, mosques, clinics, shop lots, open spaces and recreational areas. Such planning provision was incorporated into the integrated human settlements programme that was first introduced and implemented in Kuala Lumpur in locations designated as the city’s New Growth Areas. These were all located at the fringe of the city but the developments have since grown into major suburbs with largely middle and upperincome housing. The growth areas however, incorporated housing development for the low-income households which would then benefit from the infrastructural facilities developed for the projects. The Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan (1984) stated that one of its objectives’ was “… to create four major subcentres of self-contained mini-cities structured to meet the socio-

Housing Challenges Multi-ethnicity and Housing in a Rapidly in Kuala Urbanizing LumpurRegion

45

economic needs of residents and the surrounding areas” (Agus 1997, p. 45). The state in Malaysia has worked on the premise that there are limitations on the public sector’s capacity to produce low-cost housing. This may explain the drawing of private sector developers into such low-cost housing development programmes. The following discussion details this rather novel working arrangement between government agencies and private housing developers. Generally the government has provided land for the projects as well as the administrative and policy framework for the management of the low-cost projects. It is compulsory for private housing developers in the programme to construct and provide 30 per cent of low-cost housing units in the housing development project. Price ceilings and floor areas are also determined by the public sector. Kuala Lumpur has therefore relied rather uniquely on partnerships or procedural and policy arrangements between public and private sectors in order to address the need for affordable housing for low-income groups in the cities.

Urban Housing Conditions The housing type norm in Kuala Lumpur appears to be medium to high density. Reports show that the proportion of terrace houses in the housing stock increased from 18 per cent to 27 per cent between 1980 and 1991 with the total number of units practically tripling over the period. The rise in the proportion of high-rise condominium housing has been even more spectacular. Over the same period, the proportion has risen more than threefold from 4 per cent in 1980. A majority of the housing stock comprise medium and high-income housing which comprises some 52 per cent of the housing stock. Housing provision nevertheless remains inadequate. Such inadequacy is however being assessed more in terms of the floor

46

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

area allowed per family or household member as well as the provision of social facilities and services in residential areas. Other areas of shortfall in housing has been the management of public facilities in residential areas. There is reportedly a large proportion of extended family households that are cramped in small apartments and flats as well as makeshift housing. In many areas, including residential areas which are considered middle-class but especially in locations occupied by the poorer groups, such as … Pandan Perdana in Kuala Lumpur, the residents are denied the use of such facilities [neighbourhood recreational areas or community facilites] due to the lack of maintenance, repairs and upgrading. Indeed, some of the facilities have been so neglected that they have become dangers to public health, such as broken swings and slides in children’s playgrounds and broken manhole covers along the roads (Goh 1997, p. 101).

Furthermore, the pace of urban housing development in Kuala Lumpur has led to encroachment on pristine nature reserves as well as secondary forest areas that serve both as green lungs and recreational areas for the city.

Housing the Urban Poor Housing provision appears to have been a major strategy in the poverty eradication programmes that have been a continuing developmental goal running through the series of quinquennial Malaysian Plans since the 1970s. There appears however to have been a slate of different programmes that have been initiated with the view to addressing urban housing needs by the national and local state in Kuala Lumpur. Consequently, the public housing policy that has been implemented has a number of different sub-programmes or initiatives. The policy basically provides for a partnership in urban development

Housing Challenges Multi-ethnicity and Housing in a Rapidly in Kuala Urbanizing LumpurRegion

47

between the public and private sectors. While housing construction is the responsibility of the private housing sector, local authorities usually undertake the provision of infrastructural facilities and services such as community centres and other social amenities. The policy framework has been to facilitate largescale housing projects by private sector developers which include provision of low-cost housing. The state facilitates these housing development projects by allocating government land. Incentives are provided for the inclusion of low-cost housing development by either discounts on government levies or even waivers. Guidelines to the state economic development corporations are provided by the Ministry. Such guidelines set the qualifying criteria for housing like household income levels, age and marital status of household heads as well as citizenship status, household size, home town origins and even political affiliations. State governments however, are allowed to adjust these qualifying or eligibility criteria for public low-cost housing except for the household income level. Finance is provided by the Treasury to the state governments which the Ministry of Housing and Local Government manages. These loans charge low interest rates and are for a period of up to 27 years. Such loans are disbursed by the state governments to low-income households to purchase their homes with low-interest rate loans. A second programme initiated by the national government is the site and services scheme. This was introduced during the Fourth Malaysia Plan of 1981 to 1985. The programme is implemented by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and is aimed at providing affordable housing for households with incomes of not more than RM$500 per month. This programme provides two types of low-cost homes. First, basic infrastructure services and a housing site is provided. Each household pays RM$5,000 (US$1,250) for a housing lot of some

48

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

395 sq metres. The second type comes with a house of a single storey in some 400 sq meters for which households each pay RM$10,000 (US$2,500). The housing is provided with modern sanitation and the estate is usually allocated infrastructural services such as proper roads and drainage. A third sub-programme was the special low-cost housing programme that was introduced in 1986. This was basically meant to pump-prime the economy which was in recession at the time by stimulating construction and building. A single agency at the state level, that is below the national level, was encouraged in order to coordinate and regulate low cost housing provision. Finally, there was the hard core poor programme which was introduced in 1993 with a budget of RM$1.4 billion (US$0.35 billion). Some RM$504 million was allocated to a RM$900 million fund that was created in 1994 that was administered by the Central Bank of Malaysia. This fund was allocated to two major projects. The first was to be disbursed to housing developers as bridging finance for the completion of low-cost housing projects. This part of the fund was administered by the Syarikat Perumahan Pegawai-pegawai, an agency owned by the national government. The remaining part of the fund was allocated to the construction of housing for the so-called hard core poor in squatter settlements within towns with the most acute squatter problem. This included Kuala Lumpur and the City Hall had in 1996 allocated some RM$88.5 million for such housing. The funds have been provided for the construction of high-rise apartments for the accommodation of the poorest urban households. The first project under this scheme in Kuala Lumpur was the development of two blocks of 17-storeys each of flats with some 441 units. These housing units are meant for households with monthly incomes of RM$200 to RM$500 each. The units are meant for rental. Some half-a-dozen other projects

Housing Challenges Multi-ethnicity and Housing in a Rapidly in Kuala Urbanizing LumpurRegion

49

were also slated, providing among them a relatively large slate of locations within Kuala Lumpur for the low-income households. Yet given the increasing costs of urban living, there may still be a preference among recent migrants to Kuala Lumpur to live in squatter settlements. Other schemes in Kuala Lumpur include a RM$1 billion housing development project in the northern part of the city. This development was to have been financed by the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) to which employers and employees contribute from monthly wages. The project involved the development of a new township comprising 20,000 units of low and medium-cost housing that would actually be built on 236 hectares of land located in a forested nature reserve. The EPF Board together with a private housing developer and the state government were to undertake the project and the first five-year plan was to complete 100,000 units of affordable homes. Upon completion, the project would provide alternative accommodation for 98,000 squatters living in Kuala Lumpur and around the state of Selangor where the capital city is located. In spite of the active engagement of the state at the national and local levels in addressing urban housing issues, the major problems that confront the housing programmes discussed so far have been the delays encountered in the processing and approval of applications for land development. Common complaints about the public sector have been the delays in land development conversion, sub-division and issuance of land titles. Processing time has reportedly taken up to two years. The other problem that is often encountered has been the financing of housing construction and the success with ensuring that credit facilities benefit the low-income. One observer suggests that “… the bulk of the credit facilities for housing development went to the middle and upper income households and not to the urban

50

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

poor who are actually the target groups” of the public housing programmes (Agus 1996, p. 586).

Distribution among Ethnic Groups An ethnic quota system requires that at least 30 per cent of the low-cost housing units built in urban areas be reserved for the Malays. The delivery of low-cost housing units has been generally undertaken by either the state bumiputera participation unit or local authorities: “Both at local and state levels, different interpretations of the guidelines laid down by the national government have affected the lower income groups’ [ability] to own houses” (Agus 1996, p. 586).

Provision of Low-cost Housing by the Private Sector Before 1990, the private housing sector’s contribution to the stock of low-cost housing was generally below the targets set. Some 80 to 85 per cent of the housing units set for delivery were completed in the Second and Third Malaysia Plans. Only during the Sixth Malaysia Plan from 1991 to 1995 did the private sector meet the targeted 217,000 units set. Apart from the mandatory requirement by the state, housing development was also spurred by the strong economic growth seen until the economic crisis of 1997. With the boom in the high and middleincome housing market, developers have been more open to the idea of the provision of low-cost housing. The shortage of low cost homes in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur has been the most critical. With the concentration of urban population in the city, it is not surprising that the demand for housing and particularly low-income housing is high. During the mid-1980s property slump, observers pointed out the paradox of completed housing worth billions of Malaysian ringgit

Housing Challenges Multi-Ethnicity Multi-ethnicity and Housing in a Rapidly in Kuala Urbanizing LumpurRegion

51

as well as more people living in squatter areas in unsanitary and unhygienic conditions. The major approach that the national government has taken towards the provision of low-cost housing or housing for the low-income and the poor has been to require private sector developers to provide such housing at prices that are affordable to these groups. Essentially, there is a requirement for the subsidy of such housing by the private sector housing developers as well as the high and middle-income home buyers.

The Persistence of Squatters Squatter settlements persist in a city in which there has been rapid expansion of middle-income and also high-income private housing estates — low and medium rise as well as condominium developments. In the 1970s, the estimate was that there were some 25,000 squatter families distributed about the city with a total of some 103,370 people. Malays comprised only some 20 per cent of the total squatter population since they also did not form a large proportion of the urban population at the time. Among the remaining squatter population, the Chinese made up the largest proportion with some 67 per cent and the Indians 13 per cent. By 1980, the squatter population in terms of households has practically doubled with 46,000 families and some 236,101 persons. Not surprisingly the largest increase was seen among the Malays. The proportion of squatter population who were Chinese declined from 67 per cent to some 53.6 per cent in 1980 and subsequently to 44.5 per cent in 1992. This decline among the largest ethnic group living in squatter areas might have been due to the growing population base living in such areas and also the increasing proportions of the other ethnic groups like the Malays.

52

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

City Hall policies have also apparently contributed to the containment of the growth in the number of people living in squatter settlements. Vigilance has apparently been stepped up and squatter movements or mobility monitored more carefully and regularly in order to check the expansion of existing squatter settlements as well as the formation of new areas. There have also been some efforts to redevelop squatter settlements between 1980 and 1992. Nevertheless, an estimated 202 squatter settlements still remain in Kuala Lumpur. These are concentrated either around the central business district and at the fringes of the city. Kuala Lumpur City Hall had reported that in 1984, some 11,800 households or 4.9 per cent were living below poverty level, with monthly household incomes of less than RM$350 (about US$90). In 1992, the estimate was that among some 190,900 squatters in Kuala Lumpur, some 12.1 per cent were living on monthly household incomes of lower than RM$300 (less than US$75) (Kuala Lumpur City Hall 1992). Among squatter households in Kuala Lumpur not below the poverty line, at least two-thirds were living on household incomes of RM$500 (about US$130) a month. If income levels were extremely low among squatter households, access to social and health care services was apparently slightly better. While still officially considered to be illegal settlements, some services have been allowed to be delivered to selected squatter settlements with the view to upgrading the access to certain services such as maternal and child health care clinics. While limited by the availability of suitable land in good locations for redevelopment of housing required to relocate squatters, the Kuala Lumpur City Hall has undertaken such projects starting in the second half of the Fourth Malaysia

Housing Challenges Multi-ethnicity and Housing in a Rapidly in Kuala Urbanizing LumpurRegion

53

Plan. The process involved a partnership between the public and private sector, with the public sector providing the policy framework and the private housing developers constructing the low-cost housing units. Redevelopment for some 11 squatter settlements have been reported by the Kuala Lumpur City Hall with a projected total of 21. The goal was to accommodate some 35,000 low-income households in low-cost housing units. Between 1978 and 1988, the City Hall succeeded in relocating some 45,606 squatters. The process involved relocation first to so-called transit areas after which the squatter households are then relocated to five-storey walk-up flats or high-rise apartment blocks. While the relocation of the squatter households has improved living conditions with the provision of modern sanitation, piped drinking water and electricity, it is recognized that the two-stage resettlement exercise could be socially disruptive. Households would have to adjust not only to the new high-density and high-rise living conditions but possibly also some further dislocation.

The Ethnicity Factor in Housing Kuala Lumpur provides an interesting insight into the impact of the preferential policies that have been adopted by the state in developing urban housing. The norm in the spatial distribution of residential estates including squatter settlements appears to have been the segregation of the major ethnic groups — Malay/ bumiputera, Chinese and Indians. A predominantly Chinese squatter settlement had to make way for a highway that was being constructed between Kuala Lumpur and the capital city of a neighbouring state — Seremban in Negri Sembilan — in 1970. This highway had been proposed as part of the World Bank’s Urban Transport Programme for Kuala Lumpur. The Chinese

54

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

squatter settlement in Kampung Salak South in the southern area of the city was identified for relocation. Policymakers at the time were considered to have not quite appreciated the complexity of housing provision in a multiethnic society. The project ran into administrative delays some of which at least were due to problems engendered in the involvement of several national as well as local and urban agencies in the squatter relocation. For instance, the Federal Territory Land Office was reluctant to become directly involved in giving new land titles to predominantly non-Malay squatters because there were no consultations between the Urban Development Authority, Kuala Lumpur City Hall and other participating agencies in matters such as land acquisition, planning standards and financial assistance to squatters (Agus 1997, p. 42).

Ensuing disputes among the different agencies as well as the contractors affected the completion schedule for the project. While it took four years to complete the housing construction, it took agencies another two years to allocate the housing units.

Housing and Ethnicity Issues The effort to address housing issues such as access and affordability in Kuala Lumpur has been complicated by policies that also consider ethnicity. There has been a policy focus of encouraging more Malay migrants to the cities and specifications of the proportion of low-cost housing which has to be allocated to Malay households. Concerns here would be the neglected agendas in housing, that is, the needs of the non-Malay urban poor. Wider political agendas and politics involving inter-ethnic relations have therefore affected the degree of success seen in addressing housing needs in Kuala Lumpur.

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

55

Chapter 5

Housing and Urban Segregation in Metro-Manila Introduction The Manila Metropolitan Area is also a primate city. Since the Spanish colonial period, Manila, the capital of the Philippines, has been its centre of trade, economic and cultural development. For the Philippines, government resources will never be sufficient to maintain a continuous subsidy for housing for low income families and there is a need for policy reinforcements especially in land acquisition and strategies to lower the cost of housing in order to make it accessible to the poor. Only 15 per cent of the population of Metro-Manila is estimated to be served by sewers or individual septic tanks. Some 1.8 million lack adequate water supplies, educational, community, health and sanitary services. Inadequate services such as the collection of domestic solid wastes means that garbage is dumped into canals and drains in the city, causing blockage and flooding. Despite the fact that relocation sites were planned to rehouse hundreds of thousands of squatters, the sites themselves were ill-prepared, the promised facilities were not available and people had to make do with hastily constructed shelters. For many

56

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

squatter households, relocation meant the uprooting of life in its entirety. These urban dwellers had to move from an environment that had become vital to themselves and their families, economically and socially. Squatters were usually brought to locations and sites outside of Manila far away from their workplaces, their established network of friends or relatives and work as well as business contacts. Their children had to leave their schools. People who earned extra income looking after infants and children had far fewer opportunities to earn such secondary incomes in the sites to which they had been relocated. Research has shown that before removal to the relocation or resettlement sites, household heads as well as their spouses would usually work for a living as drivers of jeepneys (jeeps converted into taxis). Others worked on construction sites, as security guards, street vendors, scavengers, laundrywomen, maids and dressmakers. Many who could not find regular work of this kind would have to find casual work in the city and hence, had to live close to the central city areas in order to locate such work. Most would have to be able to live close to work also so that they could walk or at least keep commuting costs down and save on transport. Casual workers were even more badly affected by the moves. After relocation their difficulties included not only the time to commute as well as the costs of getting into the central city areas but also the disruption of networks which were the key source of information concerning casual work and hiring. Social divisions in Metro-Manila are reflected visibly in its urban housing. The poor live in sectors of the city segregated from the middle and upper income residents. Urban housing in the metropolitan area poses a fascinating case study of a basic need that has been neglected by both market and public sectors. In the vacuum, the civil society sector has strengthened its legitimacy in representing the poor but lacking financial and

Housing Challenges and Urban Segregation in a Rapidly Urbanizing in Metro-Manila Region

57

political clout generally, the impact on housing in the burgeoning capital city region has not been significant. Such civic engagement with basic urban needs provision contrasts sharply against a background of landownership patterns that are a legacy of the feudalistic practices of Spanish colonialism. Landownership has been concentrated in the hands of a small group of individuals and institutions and large landowners like the Ayala business group which can virtually independently develop entire sections of the city. In the meantime, the means to develop state or publicly owned land has been paralysed because of the problems of resettling long-established squatter settlements. Metro-Manila officially encompasses some 4 cities and 13 municipalities that in the 1990s had reportedly a population of some 10 million. There are therefore some 17 local government units within Metro-Manila, making coordination among these extremely challenging particularly in the wake of the political changes and general instability following the ousting of Marcos in the early 1980s. Financially, the local government units are extremely weak and lack the clout to implement plans or effectively coordinate programmes. Together with processes such as industrialization and commercial growth, the rapid increase in the population have been the main factors leading to severe housing and other urban environmental problems facing Metro-Manila today. The rate of urbanization has been rapid particularly in the 1980s, growing from 39 per cent in 1985 to 49 per cent in 1990. Like Bangkok, some two-thirds of the country’s larger manufacturing establishments which hire 20 or more workers are located in Manila. The city also employs the majority of the nation’s total construction workforce. Furthermore, the country’s top universities are also located in and around Manila, swelling the numbers converging on the city further.

58

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

Rural–urban migration accounts for the population growth of Manila. In the 1950s, following the end of the Second World War, the destruction of the city and its suburbs led to a housing shortage. The influx of rural migrants led to a sharp rise in the population density in established areas and poor migrants moved into the ruins of Intramuros, squatting on vacant lots in this former centre of Spanish colonial authority and culture. They were only relocated to areas outside of Manila in the 1960s. The postwar decades also saw rapid suburbanization or urban sprawl with the expansion of Manila’s residential areas to Quezon City. Much of this growth was fuelled by the movement of Manila’s middle and upper income families into government housing projects and private subdivisions in Quezon City, with the transfer of schools, national government offices and factories into the new national capital. Municipalities like Makati also saw population increases. Makati has grown rapidly because of planned urban development by the Ayala business group. The development comprised land spanning some 900 hectares or more than onehalf of the land area in the municipality. The large estate was developed into modern upper-class residential subdivisions or estates and commercial as well as industrial sectors. The area is now one of the most expensive in terms of real estate in Manila. The growth of suburban cities and municipalities like Manduluyong and Paraque has been due more to in-migration from the city of Manila and the provinces. With undeveloped land available and lower land values, these places have seen the influx of manufacturing and other establishments from the congested city of Manila. This has then given rise to new residential sub-divisions as well as squatter settlements with migrants moving in search of jobs and better lives.

Housing Challenges and Urban Segregation in a Rapidly Urbanizing in Metro-Manila Region

59

Hence, rural–urban as well as urban–suburban migration patterns have changed and transformed Metro-Manila’s residential landscapes. Towns like Tondo, once suburbs of Manila during the colonial regime (and including the aristocratic suburb of San Miquel where the rich Spanish families settled) have become sites for the poor and lower middle class. In contrast, adjacent cities and municipalities such as Quezon City, San Juan, Mandaluyong and Makati, which were historically lower-middle class areas, have now become the locus of middle and upper class housing. While remnants of the old mansions of the wealthy still remain in some parts of the city of Manila — Ermita, San Miguel and such — these areas are now largely towering structures of hotels, office buildings, cramped bars and match-box dwellings. Amidst the residential developments in Metro-Manila, are the hovels of the low-income migrants who make up the squatters and slum dwellers. Traditionally, the squatters have been concentrated around Tondo. They make up most of Manila’s urban poor. An estimated half of the city’s slum and squatter population, many recent rural migrants used to live in settlements in Tondo. The settlements are crowded and dilapidated with mostly apartment buildings and shanties that are conveniently located around the city’s marketplaces and business districts, near to factories and warehouses as well as railway tracks on land belonging to the state and also the seashore close to the piers. These settlements lack amenities such as piped drinking water, modern sanitation, sewers and drainage facilities. There are not even proper roads because many of the settlements are sited off the main roads and access is negotiated through narrow alleyways and makeshift lanes. Similar types of squatter settlements are scattered all over MetroManila.

60

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

The contrast in housing provision is provided by the low density, modern and exclusive gated estates where the upper middle and higher income classes stay. These residential estates are concentrated particularly in Makati, Mandaluyong and Quezon City. According to Caoili (1988, p. 79), Living standards in these residential enclaves are comparable to the North American middle income areas. These are characterised by spacious dwellings, furnished with the latest household appliances, and well-tended lawns. Many have two-car garages and swimming pools. … paved roads, adequate water supply, sewers and drainage facilities, modern supermarkets and shopping malls and, frequently, their own security guards and fire stations.

Outside of these gated communities, only some eight in ten among the population would be served by a water supply. A million or so people are still relying on either deep wells and other water sources including shared lines with neighbours, public taps or bought water from peddlers. Many who are connected to the water supply system also face low water pressure, leakage, dry taps and other problems. Connection to sanitation tells a similar story.

Housing Challenge Manila is a city where neither the public nor the private sector appears to have much commitment and interest in housing the poor. Hence, there are people in Metro-Manila who live on the city sidewalks because they cannot afford or are unable to find cheap housing alternatives. The challenge to housing in Metro-Manila is complicated largely by the concentration of urban landownership in the hands of a few individuals and institutions. This pattern of ownership evolved under the Spanish colonial regime and seems

Housing Challenges and Urban Segregation in a Rapidly Urbanizing in Metro-Manila Region

61

to have continued as traditional communal lands became private estates in modern Manila. Many such estates are in prime urban locations and it appears that some remain undeveloped even as the landowners speculate on their land holdings. There has therefore been limitations on the supply of land in Metro-Manila with resulting pressures on land costs which have spiralled upwards rapidly. “Consequently, the expanding urban population has been forced to settle in the already overcrowded older residential areas or to squat in vacant private lots and unused public lands near possible places of work” (Caoilli 1988, p. 94). The national government has also failed to provide a national housing policy. Following on the destruction of housing stock during the Second World War, there has been no master plan to guide postwar reconstruction and further housing development in Manila and Quezon City. Prewar zoning and building regulations apparently remain in place in the face of a burgeoning urban population. Not surprisingly, the result has been uncontrolled urban growth which has seemingly reached unmanageable proportions. Without a comprehensive national housing policy, some researchers have argued, processes such as land acquisition, subdivision and housing development have been undertaken by varying national agencies in a piecemeal and often uncoordinated fashion. The spiralling land costs have also limited the ability of government agencies to provide adequate housing for the lower income segments of the population. Further limitations on the effectiveness of the state and public intervention in urban housing have been due to the difficulty of coordinating local regulations with national policies. Although empowered to pass local zoning and subdivision regulations in conformity with national policies and regulations, many local

62

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

governments generally lacked the resources and wherewithal to plan and carry out such legislative changes. What has resulted has been the skewed distribution of housing development with the city divided into highly congested districts occupied by the poor and low-income in Manila with the luxurious and gated housing estates elsewhere as well as open undeveloped land in areas in prime locations. Local governments have also not had the resources and often lacked the authority to carry out housing construction and management directly. Rent control ordinance introduced in the 1960s did little to solve the housing problems of the poor. Moreover, urban landowners eventually succeeded in challenging and nullifying the ordinance. There have been some efforts by local governments to buy land from private landowners for redistribution to the landless as well as the construction of low-cost condominium housing but such efforts have been rare and sporadic. The norm has been a reluctance to even provide sites and services to improve slum and squatter settlements because of the concern about encouraging more such areas in the city. The ambivalence towards slum and squatter settlements has aggravated housing conditions in Metro-Manila. Initially, tolerance of such slum and squatter settlements was a solution to the economic problems of a developing country. Not surprisingly, these settlements have grown and conditions have also worsened in them along with the congestion. The growth of these impoverished settlements have also depressed property values in neighbouring estates as well as contributed to declining local revenues from falling property and land values. Furthermore, the continual influx of rural migrants has not only strained housing provision but also other urban services and infrastructure including transport, health, education,

Housing Challenges and Urban Segregation in a Rapidly Urbanizing in Metro-Manila Region

63

police, fire protection as well as sanitation and drainage among others. There has however, been growing public demand for the clearance of such slum and squatter settlements. Squatters and slum dwellers however, have become politically relatively wellorganized and some have been successful in frustrating the state’s attempts at relocating them in order to develop the land being occupied. Politicians have also recognized that such slum and squatter communities are important sources of electoral support, a card that the residents of slum and squatter settlements also know how to play. Previous efforts by state agencies to relocate residents of slum and squatter settlements have been hasty and uncoordinated. Consequently, the sites to which the residents are relocated often lack basic amenities and services including transport to get the residents to work and schools. Rather expectedly, the residents have drifted back to the city to other slum and squatter sites. What this means has been the shift of squatter and slum residents and the housing problems from one site to another in the city. There appear to be no accurate statistics on the extent of slum and squatter settlements in Metro-Manila. The general consensus, nevertheless, is that these settlements represent a relatively large proportion of the kind of urban housing in which the population is living. In the 1980s, the estimate was that about one in four urban residents was living in such squatter and slum settlements. By the late 1980s, the estimate had risen to some one-third of the population in Metro-Manila and the absolute population figure in such settlements had practically doubled. Furthermore, the estimates were that such settlements were occupying some 700 hectares of land in Metro-Manila. Of this land area occupied by squatter and slum settlements, some

64

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

60 per cent was government land or public property while the rest were apparently privately owned. The consequences of the proliferation of slums and squatter settlements in Metro-Manila have been city-wide, resulting in flooding and environmental problems that have an impact well beyond the areas occupied by these settlements. •

•

•

Slums and squatter colonies along rivers and waterways are major causes of flooding, water pollution, and drainage problems of Metro-Manila. This can be attributed to improper disposal of solid waste and excreta in the absence of adequate sanitation and garbage disposal facilities. The formation of slum and squatter colonies in government reservations and vacant land physically obstruct efforts being made to maintain and improve public infrastructure and services such as roads and highways, thus contributing to the worsening traffic congestion. The lack of government or public services and unhealthy living conditions are the principal reasons for the higher incidence of sickness and health problems in such poor housing areas, especially among children.

An estimated 600 tons of solid waste are being dumped daily into the city’s waterways, that is, in storm drains, esteros, canals, creeks and rivers or openly burned, abandoned to lie about in the streets, as well as recycled by scavengers. Indeed, dump sites in the city have been where large squatter settlements are located. One such notorious site which has since been closed and cleared of squatter settlements was Smoky Mountains. The flooding as well as water pollution in Manila cannot be solved without relocating residents of squatter and slum settlements now occupying the banks of rivers and waterways. Estimates of the kind of housing provision that the city of Metro-

Housing Challenges and Urban Segregation in a Rapidly Urbanizing in Metro-Manila Region

65

Manila has to consider was 890,000 housing units in the 1990s. Squatting poses the biggest challenge to housing provision since the chief measure required would be the resettlement of these squatters. More than 200,000 families were estimated to be living in squatter settlements that have sprung up in flood-prone sites such as esteros or waterways and along railroad tracks. Many of these sites were earmarked for government infrastructure projects so that the occupation by squatters further exacerbates the city’s problems. This is further aggravated by the activities of professional squatters and powerful squatting syndicates who operate with seeming impunity, victimizing the marginal and homeless. Squatting syndicates hamper government agencies and foil non-government organizations’ efforts to help the urban poor.

Need for Public Policies that go beyond Good Intentions The medium-term national development plans has good intentions but is relatively short and even silent about specific goals. These include housing provision particularly for the low income in Metro-Manila. Macroeconomic targets appear to be narrow, relying on raising per capita incomes, GNP growth and reducing the incidence of poverty. There is little concrete action such as the exchange of idle government land for private land to develop social housing or housing at costs that the poor find affordable. Other measures such as working with the private sector to provide housing for the low income have not been seriously addressed either. Institutional infrastructure needed to implement a large and far-reaching social housing programme has actually been initiated. However, even the Community Mortgage Programme has yet to be widely endorsed and supported by local governments.

66

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

Chapter 6

Housing in Singapore — Housing and Nationhood Introduction In contrast to the other major cities in Southeast Asia, Singapore is a city-state, that is, both a nation–state and a city. Being a unitary state, the advantage it would appear to have over the other city governments in the region, is that the single-tier government structure can expedite policy decisions and implementation. Most city governments in Southeast Asia would have to contend with national interests that can overwhelm localized or urban needs. In terms of urban housing, Singapore’s housing landscapes also contrasts sharply with those in other Southeast Asian cities. Public housing dominates. Some nine in ten people in Singapore live in public housing. This comprises largely high-rise and highdensity apartments. Not only has the state developed the public housing units, it has allocated such housing and until the late 1980s, managed all the public housing estates as well. The majority are located in new towns or planned neighbourhoods provided with a range of basic services including shops, banks and public transport. Studies have highlighted that while Singapore has been an independent nation–state for only the

Housing in Challenges Singaporein— a Rapidly HousingUrbanizing and Nationhood Region

67

last four decades, it had basically solved much of its housing problem within the first two decades, that is, in the 1980s. Relationships between housing provision, urban planning and economic development in the economy as well the national savings system have been attributed with the success of public housing in Singapore. The successful public housing policy has also been linked to the political hegemony of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) which has been in power since Singapore gained independence. Not only does the state play the dominant role in development in Singapore, it has provided the planning framework and regulates all land-use options and choices in the city-state. If there is scepticism about whether the success of Singapore’s public housing programme can be replicated elsewhere, there should be far more agreement about the range of larger economic and political objectives that the public housing agenda has met. In Singapore, the public housing policy reflects a programme of wealth distribution which should be more seriously considered. The policy has in turn contributed to the cooptation of the labour force into the economic development plans and political agenda set by the state.

Housing and Nation–State Building The colonial urban legacy in Singapore, as in Kuala Lumpur, consisted of a layout that was originally aimed at segregating the Europeans from the Asians. Land allocation by the British colonial regime had also segregated the different groups of Asians — Malays, Chinese and Indians — according to their different occupations or trades. Rapid population growth was fuelled largely by immigration particularly from China and led to a serious housing shortage. This shortage was exacerbated by the destruction of housing stock during the Second World War. The

68

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

situation received no reprieve with the introduction of the Rent Control Act of 1947 that effectively dampened the development of new housing. A practice that was instead encouraged was the partitioning of existing shophouse buildings into numerous tiny cubicles. The colonial government had in 1927 initiated the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) that was intended to address the housing problem in the colony. This problem was particularly acute among the poor and especially the more recent migrants to the colony at the time. The SIT did manage to provide low-cost housing in the form of medium-rise apartment units at the urban fringe. When it was superseded by the establishment of the statutory board, the Housing and Development Board (HDB), in 1960, there was a large deficit in the supply of housing units. The success of the public housing programme has also provided political legitimacy for the dominant political party, the PAP, in Singapore, One of the boldest steps taken by the PAP government towards securing its political support base was to embark on a national public housing programme; improvement of housing condition was a covenant between the newly enfranchised electorate and the elected government (Chua 2000, p. 47).

With its long tenure in political office, the PAP government has managed not only to effectively implement its public housing policies but also remained in political power long enough to review these policies and improve upon them over time. The commitment that the PAP government has made to housing provision is reflected in the proportion of government expenditure that has been allocated to the housing sector. Singapore allocates some 14.32 per cent of its government expenditure to housing, which is many times more than the proportion in developed countries like the United Kingdom

Housing in Challenges Singaporein— a Rapidly HousingUrbanizing and Nationhood Region

69

(5.8 per cent) or France (2.83 per cent), for instance. Since 1960, the public housing programme has produced some 700,000 public housing apartment units and close to a million properties in total including shop units, markets and other buildings. Politically, the rationale appears to be that access to housing gives individuals a stake in the country (Ching and Tyabji 1991) and hence, public housing has been strategic in nation-building. More importantly, in the beginning, only citizens of the new-found nation were eligible for public housing. The public housing programme and the policies of housing allocation were strategic to the larger national agenda of the state to re-engineer society and social behaviour. Originally done in a more covert manner, public housing policy allocated the apartment units with the aim of spatially integrating the different ethnic groups officially defined by the state agencies as Chinese, Malays, Indians and “Others” (that is, smaller ethnic groups). The breaking up of the ethnic neighbourhoods would discourage the ability of political opposition parties or candidates to use race or ethnicity as a platform. While the policy aims at ethnic integration, the outcome is the spatial integration of the different ethnic groups. With the relocation of a majority of the population to new public housing estates, the PAP government has also been able to put in place a nation-wide network of grassroots organizations closely linked to the state or more accurately, the PAP. Public housing policies have also supported other social policies including a population planning policy that mandated families to stop at two children. This partly explains why the sizes of the public housing units were extremely small to begin with. Certainly there were other major factors such as the affordability of the homes and the constraints that the HDB had faced initially

70 Housing in Southeast Asian Cities Housing in Singapore — Housing and Nationhood 70

in securing enough land for its development projects. The norm was an apartment unit with two bedrooms and one living room. This would accommodate a married couple with two children. Indeed, the eligibility criteria emphasized the family nucleus. This led to the rise in the proportion of nuclear families that then saw the state introducing new incentives in its housing programmes to encourage more home-buyers to live either together with their parents or at least near them in a spatially modified form of the extended family. A major concern of the state was that eventually the ageing members in these families would be turning to the state rather than the family for support. While overtly anti-welfarist in its policy stance, the PAP government has however been indirectly focused on social development and hence, indirect welfare provision. Indeed, near universal provision by the state of major social needs appears to have depoliticized both the issues and population. Public housing has been a strong political tool for the PAP. Upgrading for older estates has been an offer used to win over voters who are told about higher priority and also preference if they vote in the ruling party (Teo and Kong 1997). Politics has therefore always figured prominently in public housing policies including the new institutions that have been brought into place since the 1990s — the Town Councils and Community Development Councils. Town Councils were introduced with the aim of encouraging greater voter accountability. Community Development Councils are chaired by MPs from the PAP as well as the candidates contesting the elections against the opposition MPs in opposition wards. The interpretation would be that the Councils are providing community services courtesy of the PAP rather than the state which has eschewed direct state welfarism. Both Town Councils and Community Development Councils will ensure that the

Housing in Challenges Singaporein— a Rapidly HousingUrbanizing and Nationhood Region

71

politics remain in public housing because the work of these councils are defined territorially by election boundaries. Hence, the boundaries of the towns managed by Town Councils have been changed continuously since they were introduced before the 1991 elections because electoral boundaries have been changed during every election since 1991. Similarly, the boundaries of the districts that the Community Development Councils serve have also changed since these districts too are defined by electoral boundaries. The HDB in Singapore has prided itself on having provided the public housing residents and indeed, other Singaporeans, with residential estate facilities that have ranged from child care centres to columbaria or literally, from cradle to grave. Such provision has contributed to the role which public housing has played in nation-building. It is a role however, that has also contributed in a major way towards the shaping of a whole new society from the mix of migrants and indigenous Asian groups that had comprised the colonial social order. Public housing estates with their high-rise and high-density living conditions thrust Singapore citizens into modern urban life and imposed a new social as well as spatial order in the city-state.

Housing and Planning for Integration of the Economy into the International Marketplace Public housing provision facilitated the urban redevelopment agenda launched by the state to shape a central business district that would support the economic development plans of the citystate. Such urban redevelopment would not have been possible without the resettlement of a majority of the population from the central area where most of the people had been concentrated. This massive resettlement exercise involved not only residential households but also small and medium-sized businesses, cottage

72

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

industries as well as a range of agricultural activities including pig farming. The resistance to resettlement slowed down the freeing up of the land required for redevelopment because land had been divided up into small land parcels at the time. Efforts by planning authorities like the URA focused on consolidating these small parcels into larger lots for redevelopment. The compensation package for resettled households and businesses was not surprisingly revised upwards several times in order to speed up the process of urban redevelopment. Other measures included efforts to build the earlier public housing estates in the urban fringe and hence, near to existing facilities and services. Such a measure not only obviated the need for the provision of a large range of urban facilities and services in the new public housing estates but the proximity to familiar places contributed in part to the socialization of these HDB residents into accepting their new high-rise and high-density homes. Subsequently, when more land became available outside of the city centre further away from existing facilities and services like schools, the practice was to plan and build new towns with a fuller range of provision for everyday needs for goods and services among the residents. The distribution of a majority of the population outside of the city centre led to the planning of a land transport system that was integrated with the development of land uses like public housing estates and new towns. Another powerful piece of legislation that has been important in the provision of land required for development by state agencies has been the Land Acquisition Act of the British colonial government, which was amended in 1966. While such legislation exists in other countries, what is unique in Singapore is that the level of compensation for landowners whose land parcels are being acquired is determined by the state itself. Such land

Housing in Challenges Singaporein— a Rapidly HousingUrbanizing and Nationhood Region

73

acquisition powers has raised the share of the state in land holdings substantively from some 26 per cent to about 70 per cent. The HDB, unlike housing authorities elsewhere in Southeast Asia, therefore was given sweeping powers not enjoyed by any state housing agencies in the other cities. In Singapore, the HDB … established in 1960, is entrusted with extensive powers in land acquisition, resettlement, town planning, architectural design, engineering work and building material production — that is, all development work except the actual construction of buildings, which is undertaken by private contractors. It is also responsible for the allocation of flats both for sale and rental, and until recently the management of all aspects of the housing estates. In short, it is also responsible for the total management of the public housing sector except for the setting of sale and rental prices, which are decided by the Ministry of National Development (Chua 1995, p. 129).

This Ministry has oversight of the HDB which is a statutory board responsible to the Minister of National Development. Infrastructural projects while initially funded with loans from international agencies were subsequently financed entirely by national sources and most predominantly the Central Provident Fund (CPF). The CPF, comprising wage contributions by both employee and employer to a retirement fund for the employees, has also provided financing for most of the public housing residents to buy their homes. This institution has been highly effective in “capturing” wage benefits for the urban workforce from an economy that has sought global integration beginning in the late 1960s. In other words, the CPF has ensured that the urban workers or employees are provided with wage arrangements that would enable them to meet basic urban needs such as housing. The HDB has basically planned and developed its public housing estates for a modern industrial social order. Its housing

74

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

estates are relatively self-contained, provided as they are with a range of facilities and services so that the residents can generally obtain basic goods and services without travelling out of the estate or the new town in which they are living. These facilities and services are provided according to a set of planning standards that allocate them based on the sizes of population catchments, that is, a park or a food market per fixed number of households or number of people. In this way, the public housing estates have been developed in a manner reflective of the factory production system or industrial process. Every neighbourhood would have the same number of housing units, households and hence, a similar range of estate facilities that is then repeated chequerboard style. Furthermore, the new towns that the HDB subsequently planned outside of the city centre and as distant as 20 to 30 kms away were located on major expressways and trunk roads connecting the public housing estates to both the city centre as well as major areas like the Jurong Industrial Estate as well as other such sites where work would be available. When the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) was developed, the network of services linked public housing estates to the city centre and major industrial estates. Such integration of the homes of people to major industrial sites and the city centre would ensure connections between the workforce and industrial locations where firms would need large pools of labour. Urban planning also focused on locating public housing estates as close as possible to light industrial estates with the same objective in mind, that is, to ensure that industry would have easy access to large pools of workers. Most new towns are planned with space allocated for industrial estates. The provision of public housing together with the effort made to integrate its development with public transport has

Housing in Challenges Singaporein— a Rapidly HousingUrbanizing and Nationhood Region

75

been important in containing wage levels. By keeping housing and urban transport costs affordable, and hence, wage levels relatively competitive particularly in the early days of development, the state was able to implement its economic development plans without too great a concern about labour unrest. Universal provision for basic needs like housing and transport contributed enormously to the social and political stability that have allowed for the phenomenal rates of economic growth that have seen Singapore join the ranks of newly industrializing economies and now one of the highest income countries in the world.

The Housing Process — Change with Continuity There have been gradual if slow adjustments to public housing policies in order to sustain the relevance of such housing provision in the city-state. So the first public housing units were small and built in 6-storey blocks often without a lift. These units face a central corridor ventilated and lit only by two openings at each end of the corridor. Families made homeless by fires which had destroyed their homes located largely in squatter settlements would, however, have appreciated the provision of modern sanitation and water supply as well as electricity in these early public housing units. Furthermore, each family would have private access to such housing services and not have to share them with other households as was the common practice in the past. The HDB, nevertheless, has considered its earliest phase of public housing development as a phase driven by the aim of providing the largest number of housing units in the shortest possible time and at the lowest costs achievable. The small units built initially comprised one living cum bedroom, a kitchen and toilet. Sometimes whole families of

76

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

nine people would have to crowd into such units: a provision that even HDB concedes as spartan socialized Singaporeans into high-density living and the necessity of sharing their common spaces from common corridors to lifts and others. Since residents included farmers as well as fishermen, the adjustment to highrise and high-density living also meant a total switch in the residents’ livelihoods to modern urban employment either in factories or other commercial activities. Most of the smaller units built in the public housing programme were meant for rental. When the policy was introduced to encourage home ownership, the change to slightly larger units was made. The norm became the threeroom flats which comprise two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and two toilets. Growing income levels prompted further adjustments to the distribution of public housing units by apartment type. Soon the four-room flat became the norm. These are three bedroom flats. Ultimately the “point blocks” were designed. These consisted of five-room flats, that is, flats with three bedrooms and a dining room as well as a living room, a kitchen and two toilets. Such point blocks provided privacy with only four families sharing a lift landing and common lift lobby or landing. The norm however, has been to have as many as 16 apartment units sharing a common corridor. With the development of threeroom flats, the norm also was to range them along a common corridor with the flat units on one side opening on to the corridor. Upgrading of estates was also the practice. While there is now a large upgrading programme that has been implemented among older public housing estates involving some addition of space to individual housing units as well as the sprucing up of apartment blocks, HDB has also made efforts to ensure that the

Housing in Challenges Singaporein— a Rapidly HousingUrbanizing and Nationhood Region

77

estates developed earlier do not compare unfavourably with the newer estates in terms of facilities and services provided. So there has been a continuous process of upgrading facilities and services in older estates. There has also been an effort to increase the variety and range of estate facilities with the changes in the types of flats designed and built. In estates that had been built in the urban fringe in the 1960s, there had been less need to provide a full range of estate facilities like schools or cinemas. With new towns being developed further away from the city, the range of estate facilities has increased with supermarkets, town gardens and bus interchanges. Most new towns now have modern shopping malls with cinema complexes. HDB designers have even attempted to design for greater identifiability of the public housing estates and new towns. Particularly since the 1980s, there have been efforts to move away from the standard new town designs which make it difficult to distinguish one new town from the next. Efforts have focused on apartment block designs as well as the use of other land-use developments such as parks to distinguish and visually differentiate the new towns. Yet because the housing development is both high-rise and high density, there appears to be limitations on the capacity to achieve such visual identity. The public housing process has meant a certain degree of homogenization of housing landscapes and a large degree of the flattening of cultural differences and preferences that are often reflected in housing form and its internal design. Like social processes however, public housing and the changes that have been evident over the last few decades since the establishment of the HDB, have not been entirely conflict-free. Indeed, HDB with its ability to regulate so many areas of life among public housing residents, had increasingly to face

78

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

applications for review of such rules and regulations not only from the public housing residents but also their Members of Parliament (MPs). It was therefore not surprising that by the end of the 1980s, the institution of Town Councils was introduced to take over the day-to-day running of public housing estates from the HDB. Town Councils promised to be another development in the slowly evolving public housing process. This would involve some decentralization and even the participation of public housing residents in decision-making on the running of their housing estates. Yet the discussion above has already underscored the political agenda that has consistently shaped public housing development goals. Town Councils were also intended to ensure that public housing residents voted MPs who would be able to help manage their estates efficiently to maintain housing values as well as ensure high standards of housing quality. The introduction of Town Councils was also in part aimed at community development. This development can be viewed as another attempt by the state in its relatively unsuccessful effort at rebuilding the community networks that had been undermined by resettlement of a majority of the population to public housing estates. Although strong sub-national networks such as local community networks might not be seen as important to the state if they replicate the work of the PAPlinked grassroots organizations, yet organizations like Town Councils regard them as useful to the estate management work that the councils do. Town Councils are keen to mobilize greater community effort to help develop greater civic consciousness among residents, contain problems of littering and enhancing security in public housing estates. Such community mobilization can be difficult particularly since the scale of the development of public housing estates, as well as the highly centralized

Housing in Challenges Singaporein— a Rapidly HousingUrbanizing and Nationhood Region

79

approach towards decision-making, prevent most public housing residents from engaging more strongly with and developing a sense of ownership in their estates. The lack of wider public participation in the development of public housing is evident even in the current upgrading exercise. While there is opportunity for residents to vote against inclusion in the exercise which means the postponement of the upgrading, the recipe for the upgrading works remains fairly uniform. This means another round of homogenization through upgrading. Where time had created some degree of difference among public housing estates developed during different periods in the last four decades or so, the upgrading exercise is now in the process of flattening again these differences. Most upgraded public housing estates are going to look relatively similar at least at the ground level, that is, that which is most significant to daily living for the residents.

Politics and Place Identity The public housing programme in Singapore is a significant case study of success in providing for almost universal needs because of the ruling party’s political agenda. Such a relationship between political parties and urban housing is unique because few other cities would be able to rationalize housing provision in such political terms. Public housing in Singapore is important not only for its phenomenal success in addressing the housing shortage problems facing most rapidly growing cities in the region but also in accommodating some nine in ten people living in Singapore. Socialization of such a large number of people into modern high-rise and high-density living conditions in a relatively short period of time would have been far less successful without the care taken to resettle city centre dwellers to the urban fringe

80

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities

and then gradually further away. Fortuitously, it would seem, there has been a relatively equitable approach to locating public housing estates and new towns at least in the beginning. These estates are located all over the city, in and around the city centre as well as its fringes and in most of the other developed parts of the city. This differentiates the public housing programme from those in other cities including even Hong Kong, another city with a large public housing programme that is also high-rise and high-density. The trend has been to locate public housing outside of the city often at long distances from where people who are being resettled would be working. Public housing in Singapore, on the other hand, actually provides a larger range of locational options. A number of new towns and public housing estates are located near to the city centre. More importantly, the link between the national savings programme and the purchase of public housing has been important in the financing of home ownership and keeping housing costs in the city affordable for most of the urban workforce. The challenge ahead appears to lie in the limited success that has been seen in mobilizing greater residents’ engagement with the management of their estates. This implies that the state remains the dominant sector in the running of the public housing estates.

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

81

Chapter 7

The Housing Question in Southeast Asian Cities The post-1997 period has seen a slowing down of economic development and in turn, some dampening of the burgeoning urban growth in Southeast Asia. Yet the population living in cities in Southeast Asia is projected to rise and grow above the growth rate of the national population. In many countries, the growth in urban population will be also higher in the megaurban regions, that is, the regions that have grown around the largest cities and been incorporated into the expansion of these primate cities. Continuing urban growth in the cities of Southeast Asia is of concern not only because urbanization is an inevitable trend as the region globalizes and continues to develop. The concern is with the living conditions in cities particularly for the large numbers of urban poor. There is also growing concern with the ability and capacity of city governments to address the needs of the growing numbers who are moving to cities to look for better living conditions and economic opportunities. Housing provides a highly visible indicator of the citizens’ share and benefits from economic growth. In the cities of Southeast Asia, housing is also the most visible form of urban land use and hence, is an important aspect of the image of these cities.

82 Housing Question in Southeast Asian Cities Housing in Southeast Asian Cities The 82

Studies have highlighted the role which developmental and political ideologies have contributed to the measures undertaken to address urban housing needs. In Vietnam, the socialist state pursued housing policies that have changed since the transition to a more open economy. The changes have certainly been obvious in the country’s major cities — Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Under the socialist state, the ideological point of view was that housing is an amenity to be provided free of charge or at least practically free of charge to all citizens. Under socialism, housing was regarded as a welfare provision to which everybody was entitled and was ideally also intended to be distributed according to a formal definition involving minimum requirements as well as the maximum entitlement to space per person. Yet for practical reasons and largely because Vietnam is a poor country, the right to housing appears to have been bestowed on generally the employees of the state only. Furthermore, such provision serves more as a form of indirect salary. It has not been extended to other people in the society who apparently rely on the private or cooperatives sector for their housing needs. Prior to the rise of the socialist regime in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, as it was previously called, like most other Southeast Asian cities at the time, had its share of slum and squatter settlements. Some of these slum and squatter housing areas were developed along the beaches and open canals in the city. Some low-cost housing projects were undertaken. These comprised medium-rise apartment housing and some blocks of collective housing. They did not appear to have been adequate in providing for housing needs because of the proliferation of squatter housing. One of the first things that the socialist regime did was to clear these squatter homes. The policy has been to build four-storey housing blocks, each with 100 flats comprising

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

83

two rooms. Such housing development was financed with funds from the state supplemented with those raised among the people. The socialist state in Vietnam has also implemented a policy of containing the rate of urbanization. This has been similar to the policy that was introduced in socialist China. People do not have the freedom to move as they like to live in cities. There is a registration system which only permits those who are registered as inhabitants of the city to live there. Conditions have however changed rapidly since the adoption of more open economic policies. In Vietnam, there has been an escalation in the scale of the migration to cities and certainly to its largest cities. This has led to changes in urban housing conditions and the problems that the cities face in coping with the rapidly growing urban populations. The proportion of population in Vietnam living in urban areas rose from 19 per cent in 1980 to 20 per cent in 1991 and was 24 per cent in 1992. In 2005, the projection is that the urban population would be 31 per cent of national population. Hanoi, the capital city, has a population of some 2.2 million people. Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam with a population estimated at about 5 million. The pressure on land for housing is evident. Slums have been built by some 25,000 households with a total of some 100,000 people along the canals in the city. While statistics are lacking, the estimates are that the number of households in urban areas outnumber the supply of housing by 1 to 1.2–1.3. Not surprisingly the land occupied by slums and temporary housing that have been erected over streams and sewage canals has been estimated to be about 10 to 16 per cent of the total land area of most cities and towns. In the Southeast Asian cities which have been discussed, ideology might not have appeared to have played such a major

84 Housing Question in Southeast Asian Cities Housing in Southeast Asian Cities The 84

role in urban housing policy. Yet this is deceptive since a wide variety of political agendas have informed and also driven efforts to address urban housing needs. Particularly in the provision of housing for the urban poor and those of incomes too low for them to count as a force in urban housing markets, it is noticeable that the market sector has not contributed significantly in cities like Jakarta. In Bangkok both the public and private housing sectors have provided some effort towards the housing of the poor. The role of the private housing sector has been most significant in Kuala Lumpur where developers are required to provide a proportion of low-cost housing in each housing project. In Manila, it appears that neither the private nor the public sector has taken any specific interest in providing homes for the urban poor. So is the role of the state a factor in housing provision in Southeast Asian cities? Certainly in Singapore, the state or rather the ruling political party has placed public housing high on its political agenda. It would appear that without the politics, the state process that is directed by the bureaucracy entirely is less likely to succeed in the effort to effectively address urban housing needs.

Housing and Social Fragmentation In the introduction, mention was made of the way in which housing conditions reflect how society organizes the provision of this basic need as well as the social fragmentation with the associated social disparities that exist. In Southeast Asian cities that have been discussed, the social disparities in terms of the access to adequate housing among the urban population are likely to grow for a number of reasons. A major reason is the increasing demand for land in the city particularly in its most central and more accessible areas. There will be a dwindling supply of land for squatter or slum settlements. The existing squatter

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

85

and slum developments are likely to come under increasingly intense pressure by developers and landowners to relocate. A focus on the development of high and middle-income housing in the form of gated communities by private sector or market sector developers will serve to intensify the disparities in access to housing and the differences in the housing conditions of rich and poor in Southeast Asian cities. The spatial impact of such disparities in living conditions between the rich and poor would not only be the segregation between these two groups of urban dwellers but also differences in their locational distribution. One concern would be the access of the poor segments of the urban population to homes near to the city centre in the future. Will the more well-served and central locations in the city be accessible for housing only for the rich in the future? Social disparities and hence, disparities in housing conditions between the rich and the poor in many Southeast Asian cities complicate developmental issues that have been difficult to address because of ethnic differences. The majority who can afford housing in the gated communities being developed in Jakarta, for example, are ethnic Chinese. In Kuala Lumpur, there is a priority given to Malays in the allocation of low-cost housing although there may be equally poor Indian and Chinese families in the city. The coincidence of social and housing disparities with divisions among ethnic groups will present problems for social and political stability in the future if they go unaddressed.

Balancing the Role of the State and other Sectors In the context of cities in Southeast Asia, scepticism about the role that the state can play in social development generally and housing in particular, has been based on the neglect or lower priority accorded housing and other social services provision by national governments. National governments profess to have

86 Housing Question in Southeast Asian Cities Housing in Southeast Asian Cities The 86

limited resources for addressing housing and other social problems in low-income countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia. Other governments appear to be juggling available resources to meet other mega-urban projects and infrastructural needs such as telecommunications services development and international airports. The case studies of state intervention in the provision of housing in Malaysia and Singapore demonstrate the importance of the role of the state in addressing housing issues. Minimally, it would appear that a housing policy framework at the national as well as city-wide level is crucial in tackling urban housing issues. This framework is important to coordinate the effort of different government agencies. It will also serve to coordinate the different aspects of a sound urban housing programme from the financing to the development and ultimately allocation of the housing units. A national housing policy framework that is effectively translated into concrete programmes at the urban level and which is also transparent to the public would provide opportunities for the more balanced involvement of the market as well as civil society. There are voluntary organizations which might be also working to meet housing needs particularly among the poor. Such a national housing policy framework should allow for the involvement of both large and small private sector housing developers. In Jakarta, the bulk of housing needs appear to have been met by small and even informal or unlicensed building contractors. The shaping of a national housing policy framework will require relatively accurate statistics and information about the existing housing situation and conditions. Information on housing needs in the cities would have to include not only the housing stock but also locations of housing estates and the

Housing Challenges in a Rapidly Urbanizing Region

87

provision of the facilities and services so important to daily living. In other words, housing needs entail more than just property development. The social and spatial impact of housing extends beyond the mere provision of housing units or shelter as housing studies with this traditionally narrow focus, have put it. In the introduction, the spatial impact of housing on urban form was discussed. Whether the city dwellers are living in high-rise apartments or low-rise detached housing, has an impact on the organization of transport as well as the provision of other facilities such as parks and other public spaces. The case studies of Bangkok and Jakarta both highlight the lack of a clear and coordinated national housing policy framework. Hence, there is little understanding of the ideological standpoint or other rationale involved in urban housing provision. Manila lacks such a framework altogether. If the constraints of excessive state involvement in housing are demonstrated in the case of Singapore, the fault lies not in the effective provision of affordable housing but more in the lack of public participation. The Kampung Improvement Programme in Jakarta and other cities in Indonesia indicate that such public participation and ownership of public policy are significant in the success of slum upgrading projects. Similar challenges face the housing management authorities in Singapore where there has been difficulty met in mobilizing residents to contain the rising costs of public housing and estate management services.

The Housing Challenge The adequacy of housing provision in the cities of Southeast Asia will continue to be a challenge to national and urban governments in the future. With city governments grappling to cope in the midst of economic crises and rapidly growing urban populations, there are lessons that can be culled by considering

88 Housing Question in Southeast Asian Cities Housing in Southeast Asian Cities The 88

the experiences of the different cities. Each of the cities that has been discussed has had both urban neighbourhood-level as well as city-wide successes in meeting housing needs to share. However, many problems persist. The urban housing issues that need to be addressed appear to be simple enough — adequacy and affordability. Yet further discussion provides an understanding of the extent of the complexity involved in housing provision. Adequacy would involve not only enough space for households and a degree of privacy for individual members but also the provision of infrastructural services such as modern sanitation as well as water and electricity supply. The locations of such housing in relation to distance to work, cities and urban services such as health care as well as availability of transport are important aspects of the adequacy of housing provision. Affordability would involve more than just the ability of the urban households to pay for housing provision. It would mean the establishment of a financing system. This would include not only the purchase or rental of housing but also maintenance and management. The importance of allocating attention and resources to addressing the housing problems in the cities of Southeast Asia cannot be overstated. Persistence of the problem reflects not only the lack of political will among governments at addressing the issues involved but also the disparities in the distribution of wealth as well as the share in the benefits from the rapid economic growth seen in the region until the economic crisis of 1997.

Housing The Housing Challenges Question in in a Rapidly Southeast Urbanizing Asian Cities Region

89

References Agus, M.R. “Historical Perspective on Housing Development”, in Housing the Nation: A Definitive Study, pp. 29–69. Kuala Lumpur: Cagamas Berhad, 1997. Benton, G. “Lippo Karawaci: An Indonesian Edge City”. In Model Cities — Urban Best Practices, Vol. I, edited by Ooi G.L., pp. 60–67. Singapore: Urban Redevelopment Authority and Institute of Policy Studies, 2000. Caoili, M.A. The Origins of Metropolitan Manila — A Political and Social Analysis. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1988. Carino, B. “Urban Environmental Problems of Metro Manila”. In Environmental and Urban Management in Southeast Asia, edited by A. Awang, M. Salim and J. Halldane, pp. 309–319, Johor Bharu: Institut Sultan Iskandar, 1994. Castells, M., L.E. Goh, and RY-W Kwok. The Shek Kip Mei Syndrome — Economic Development and Public Housing in Hong Kong and Singapore, London: Pion, 1990. Ching. L.K. and A. Tyabji. “Home Ownership Policy in Singapore: An Assessment”, Housing Studies 6 (1991): 15–28. Chua, B.H. Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore, London: Routledge, 1995. . (2000), “Public Housing Residents as Clients of the State”, Housing Studies 15, no. 1 (2000): 45–60. dan Haan, R. and van de Kuilen, R. The Planning of Public Housing Sites. Delft: Delft University Press, 1986. de Recio, A. “The Role of Housing in Environmental and Urban Management Towards Philippines 2000”. In Environmental and Urban Management in Southeast Asia, edited by A. Awang, M. Salim and

90 References

Housing in Southeast Asian Cities 90

J. Halldane, pp. 243–60. Johor Baru: Institut Sultan Iskandar, 1994. Foo, T.S. “The Role of Private Housing Developers in the Provision of Low-cost Housing in Bangkok”. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, 1990. Fraser, J.M. “Housing and Planning in Singapore”. Town Planning Review 23 (April 1952): 5–25. Hogan, T. and Houston, C. “Corporate Cities — Urban Gateways or Gated Communities against the City? The Case of Lippo, Jakarta”. Research Bulletin 47, Globalisation and World Cities Study Group and Network. Home, R. Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities. London: E & FN Spon, 1997. Kong, L. and B.S.A. Yeoh. The Politics of Landscape in Singapore. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002. Lam, M. T. “Water Pollution in Ho Chi Minh City and Feasible Measures for Environmental Protection”. In Environmental and Urban Management in Southeast Asia, edited by A. Awang, M. Salim and J.F. Halldane, pp. 205–213. Johor Baru, Malaysia: Institut Sultan Iskandar, 1994. Struyk, R.J., Hoffman, M.L. and Katsura, M.L. The Market for Shelter in Indonesian Cities. Washington D.C.: The Urban Institute Press, 1990. United Nations Economic and Social Commission on Asia and the Pacific. Study and Review of the Human Settlements Situation in Asia and the Pacific. Bangkok: United Nations Economic and Social Commission on Asia and the Pacific, 1986. United Nations International Culture and Education Fund (UNICEF). Philippine Urban Situation Analysis, Manila, 1986. World Bank. Cities in Transition — World Bank Urban and Local Government Strategy. Washington, D.C.: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank, 2000. Wright, J.J. The Balancing Act: A History of Modern Thailand, Bangkok: Pacific Rim Press, 1991. Yap, K.S., ed. Low-income Housing in Bangkok – A Review of Some Housing Sub-markets, Bangkok: Division of Human Settlements Development, Asian Institute of Technology, 1992.