Presenter: A/P Ho Kong Chong, Department of Sociology, NUS
Time: 4pm to 5:30pm
Venue: AS7-01-17, The Shaw Foundation Building, Block AS7, Level 1
National University of Singapore, 5 Arts Link, Singapore 117570

Abstract:
As a modern metrpolis, many Singaporeans tend to spend most of their waking hours at work or in schools, away from their residential neighbourhoods and neighbourly relations tend to be weaker. Yet as our society ages and as our population become increasingly hetergeneous, we will need more caring neighbourly relations. One of the recent initiatives of spatial policy in Singapore has been efforts at strengthening the neighbourhood community,as neighbourhoods where neighbours know and interact with each other is seen to be an important building block of a cohesive society. We draw our findings from a community bonding project at Tampines, a New Town completed in different stages between 1983 and 1997. The project involved efforts at a social amenity co-creation exercise between residents and town planners at Tampines Central. Our study involved a study of the effects after these amenities were built and the study involved the analysis of CCTV footage of cameras mounted at different public sites where these amenities are located. Significantly these sites are found in and near a busy pedestrian and bicycle linkway which connects residents in Tampines central to the market and buses. Our study show how the different amenities – the creation of a flexible social space, a new café, a mini hardcourt and a more modest attempt at placing seats at a convenient place close to the market where shoppers can rest before walking home – have different social effects in building and reinforcing social relations at the neighbourhood level. Our analysis show the importance of understanding the micro-spaces of the neighbourhood, the different neighbours who traverse these spaces at different times of the day and the resulting rhythms of everyday social life of the neighbourhood.

Presenter’s profile:
Ho Kong Chong is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. Trained as an urban sociologist at the University of Chicago, his research interests are in the political economy of cities, migration, higher education, and youth. A/P Ho is a research advisor to MSF’s Family Research Network and the National Youth Council’s Youth.sg research project, and a research associate with the Asia Research Institute’s Migration and Asian Cities Clusters. He is an editorial board member of Pacific Affairs and the International Journal of Comparative Sociology.

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Registration closes on Friday, 24 Feb 2017.
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