The high-rise apartments — some with panoramic views of Singapore’s tropical cityscape — are airy, light-filled and spacious enough to comfortably raise a family. They are also public housing units, and for decades were emphatically affordable, giving Singapore an enviable rate of homeownership.
Now, however, at least a few of the apartments are being sold at a price that would have been unthinkable not long ago: more than $1 million.
“I’m sad to see that — because public housing must equal affordability,” said Liu Thai Ker, the urban planner who gets much of the credit for creating the country’s widely lauded approach to housing its citizens.
Now 86, Liu is considered the architect of modern Singapore because of his role overseeing the development of about half of the more than 1 million apartments that make up public housing in the small and exceptionally prosperous city-state of 5.6 million people.
But in the 1960s, the country’s economic standing was starkly different. It was one of the poorest cities in Southeast Asia, where 3 out of 4 residents lived in overcrowded and filthy slums, in ramshackle houses with tin walls known as “squatters.” At that time, Liu was working in the New York office of architect I.M. Pei. He had recently graduated from Yale University with a master’s degree in city planning.
“After four years, I felt that America really did not need me; they had way too many architects,” he said. “So I started thinking about coming back.” He returned in 1969, accepting a job as head of the design and research unit at Singapore’s Housing and Development Board.
One of his main jobs was to create “new towns,” or planned urban centres, for Singapore, even though no one could explain how that would look. So he had to figure it out.
With some research, he decided the new Singapore would include highly self-sufficient neighbourhoods with schools, shops, outdoor food stalls and playgrounds.
Liu also wanted to avoid the kind of public housing he had seen in the United States and Europe, where apartments face one another with a central corridor with little light. People with low incomes were living cheek by jowl, creating what he called “ a concentration of poverty.” He also wanted to spur a sense of community among residents. To figure out how to do that, he asked sociologists to estimate how many families should live in proximity to maximise social interactions. Six to eight was the answer, so each corridor would share six to eight units; that way, neighbours could mingle.
As the public housing following his vision began to be built — and its success to be recognised — Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, gave Liu an ambitious goal: resettle everyone still living in the slums by 1982.
By 1985, virtually every Singaporean had a home.
Liu was 6 when he arrived in Singapore in 1944 from Malaysia. His father, Liu Kang, was an accomplished artist in Shanghai who fled to Malaysia during World War II.
After his mother asked him to study architecture to help the family earn money, Liu obtained a scholarship and enrolled in a part-time course at the University of New South Wales in Australia, where he worked and studied at the same time. He graduated with first-class honours.
Liu then headed to Yale, where after graduation, he was offered a choice to go to Harvard University to further study urban design or to work with Pei. He chose the latter.
It was a crucial milestone in his life. From Pei, Liu learned the importance of “flow” and “harmony” in designing buildings, he said, concepts that he put into practice in Singapore.
From 1989 to 1992, Liu was CEO and chief planner of Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority. In 1991, he created the “Concept Plan,” dividing Singapore into five regions, making each one a small city unto its own so people didn’t have to leave an area to go shopping or see a doctor.
After leaving the public sector, Liu did urban planning work in roughly 60 Chinese cities, including Fuzhou, where he met the highest-ranking local official, a man by the name of Xi Jinping. Xi asked him to design the Fuzhou airport, a project that Liu initially turned down because he had not done an airport before.
Several months later, Xi, China’s future leader, came to Singapore and asked Liu to reconsider, according to Liu. This time, he agreed.
At 79, Liu started his own consultancy and is now advising Fiji and the governments of Sichuan and Guangdong in China on urban planning. He works five days a week, which, he said, “slows down the ageing process of my brain and my body.” — The New York Times
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