Land

One of the biggest downsides to living in Singapore is probably land. The large majority of residents here will never be able to have their own piece of land, and have to content themselves with public housing - a little bit of space floating in the air, 14 storeys high. (I know I got this image from a Singaporean poet, but I can't remember the poem or the poet.)

The effect of Singapore's public housing is, I think, very alienating.

It's no surprise that land reform was often a populist (& socialist) policy in many countries. The slogan of the Russian revolution was 'Peace, Bread and Land' - people ranked land all the way up there with basics like food and security. On a national and international level, the most enduring and dangerous international conflicts are about land. The Arab-Israeli conflict can be summarised (albeit rather simplistically) thus - 2 peoples, 1 piece of land. The origin of the conflict (or 1 interpretation of the origin) is, of course, the problem of a Jewish nation which did not possess its own land. The Indo-Pakistani conflict is partly over land, land that India, Pakistan and some Kashmiris all want for themselves.

Of course I'm lumping very different conflicts together, but the point is, land is very important to people. Possession of land means you can hide in there when you don't want to see anyone, you can grow whatever you like on that land (perhaps subject to drug laws etc), you have the space to live and create your own 'country' so to speak. It means you have a great degree of privacy and freedom, and when it comes to our daily lives, these two often go hand in hand. It means you can say 'this is mine, you can't take it' (ref. lyrics: 'For Once in My Life').

In Singapore, we live in what are, quite honestly, very cramped quarters. We don't stay in one flat for very long, and we don't really own that space (it's public housing after all). When we go home from work, what do we go home to? A place that is not ours, a place that is in no way a repository of memories the way our old kampong houses were. We go home to just a temporary holding cell until we move to our next storage space.

We live too close together. Though we're all ideally supposed to be living in harmony in one big HDB estate community, most of the time, living in such close proximity. we just do our best to tolerate each other. If your neighbours make a whole lot of noise, apart from calling the police & HDB (often ineffective), you have to live with it. If your neighbours put their life's collection of pottery along the corridor, unless you're prepared to go to extreme measures, you have to live with it. If you simply don't like your neighbours, you still have to live bumper to bumper, nose to nose with them. You live so close that you can hear each other speak. You see each other the moment you step out of your door. You can smell each other's cooking and see each other's laundry. If your neighbour's a total bitch you just have to suck it up and live with the daily aggravation.

Basically we live in tiny pigeonholes stacked on top of and next to each other. Sometimes the lack of a piece of land we feel connected to makes us something like refugees without a disaster - possessing a high degree of security, yet lacking a sense of permanence and security and ownership.

Perhaps those who're born into this situation see no problem with it - I don't know. But I know plenty of people who've lived elsewhere who simply find it hard to swallow that they're to spend their whole lives travelling between work and a tiny little cell they have no choice but to call home.

I feel plenty depressed when I think about it. Do I have any solution? Du-uh, you should know me better than that. Absolutely none.