INTEGRATION VERSUS SEGREGATION - ETHNIC-MINORITIES AND URBAN-POLITICS IN SINGAPORE

This article examines housing market regulatory mechanisms aimed at achieving and maintaining ethnic integration in urban residential areas. From the end of the 1960s, the Singaporean government has pursued a policy of (residential) integration of all ethnic groups. To achieve this, it has relied on housing market-related instruments. A larger degree of residential integration has been achieved. However, the integrated residential pattern has not remained stable. During the second half of the 1980s re-clustering of ethnic groups has become apparent. The government has intervened in this process by tightening control through devising a new set of public housing allocation regulations aimed at 'blocking' the mechanisms which have allowed re-clustering. These processes are analysed in the specific Singaporean context. As far as the ideologies of dispersal and integration versus segregation and concentration from the point of view of 'minority problems' are concerned, the Singapore experience leads to the conclusion that the basic tenets behind them still remain essentially unresolved. Furthermore, the question of the limitations of housing market-related instruments as to achieving integration deserves further study. It seems inevitable in further studies to consider the implications as to the functioning of the housing market.