Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemUpgrading of public housing in Singapore( 2008)Public housing in Singapore houses more than 85% of the nation's population. It is undergoing a massive upgrading programme with an intended $15 billion budget given by the government. The most unique feature in the programme is having the residents living in the flats while the upgrading works are carried out. This consideration has the merit of not disrupting the social network of the residents. But it has also created the demerit where the residents have to endure the various inconveniences associated with the upgrading work. The research examines many aspects of the upgrading process. It unveils the numerous obstructions faced by design consultants and contractors in the course of their work as well as the benefits and drawbacks that the residents received. The motivations of the residents are examined to reveal these benefits and drawbacks of the upgrading process. Additionally, the research includes possibilities for improvement to the upgrading scheme, based on the residents' preferences and expectations. The thesis also argues that upgrading contributes to maintenance of a building. It extends the life cycle of the building by eliminating obsolescence. The concept of injecting upgrading into the maintenance phase of a building life cycle develops a new approach in maintenance of buildings. The core of the research was interview based surveys of the residents, the design consultants, and the contractors that are involved in the upgrading programme. On the whole the current upgrading system was found to be reasonably adequate in the aspects of project management, design and construction methods. Satisfaction level, which achieved a mean score of only 2.93 from a total score of 5 in the Likert scale, was the lowest among the results of all the research questions. However this contradicted the individual score for the upgraded items, where most of them scored above 4.0. The inconsistent result was found to be contributed by the group of residents whose flats were in the midst of the upgrading process. This group of residents returned the lowest score of 1.75. Another reason inferred from the result was that many residents ''ere not too happy due to their lack of involvement and participation with the design team. Most residents interviewed expressed that they would prefer to be involved as early as the inception stage. The key to the success of the upgrading programme lies in the residents. It is through the tolerance, understanding and co-operation of the residents (TUC) that the upgrading programme can achieve success.
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ItemThe order of housing things : public housing policy discourse in New Zealand and Australia, 1983-1999( 2001)The purpose of this thesis is to examine discourses of housing assistance to understand how empirical knowledge came to be effected in the state housing assistance arrangements of New Zealand and Australia. To achieve this purpose a discursive methodology was crafted to account for both the constitution of empirical knowledge, and the bureaucratic apparatus by which housing assistance is administered. By pursuing the theoretical insights of US pragmatist thinkers, and recent French post-structuralist authors, empirical knowledge in the thesis was understood as a series of regular relations between abstract categories of 'things' or 'statements', as enunciated in the utterances of housing assistance policy actors and agents. Similarly the state was viewed as a discursive apparatus, which operates to constitute reality through the enunciation of this empirical order of things. The results of the methodological strategy were to be found in the empirical case studies of housing assistance in New Zealand and Australia during the period 1983 to 1999. In New Zealand a regular arrangement of housing policy discourse operated. until 1990. This 'order of housing things' constituted its subjects as unable to operate effectively in the housing market, thus requiring direct intervention via the housing assistance apparatus to ensure their needs were met. After 1990, this arrangement was replaced by an order in which the market was constituted as able to efficiently allocate housing to those in need, with maintenance of an adequate income becoming the sole basis for state action. In Australia, the order of housing things has consistently been one in which the directly provided subsidised state housing is the enunciated and practiced 'truth' of housing assistance. While alternative orders have been enunciated, such as the provision of assistance solely through an income payment, none of these alternatives obtained the status of the incumbent order during the study period. The thesis contributes to social scientific understanding through the careful and extensive empirical analysis of public housing policy in the two countries under consideration. Added to this understanding are the detailed theoretical explorations, which tease out recent post-structural approaches to discourse and the state, and which provide methodological solutions to questions of the nexus between empirical reality, language, practice, subjects and government policy.