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Loss of buildings a common theme at Queenstown forum

SINGAPORE — Singaporeans have always loved their hawker food, but how much more important are hawker centres and coffee shops beyond that?

The 60-year-old Queenstown housing estate has Singapore's first HDB block and the first sports complex. Photo: Ernest Chua

The 60-year-old Queenstown housing estate has Singapore's first HDB block and the first sports complex. Photo: Ernest Chua

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SINGAPORE — Singaporeans have always loved their hawker food, but how much more important are hawker centres and coffee shops beyond that?

They are essential, for reinforcing “social trust and community networks”, according to sociologist Daniel Goh from the National University of Singapore.

And he believes that the idea of building hawker centres only when there is a “critical mass of residents” in a town is a “wrong” one.

“They should grow up with the town together because they provide the basis of the fabric of the town to form. They are the catalyst, so to speak,” he said yesterday at a symposium on heritage versus development.

And in describing hawker centres and coffee shops as “third places” where people meet to forge strong family and friendship ties, Dr Goh said that they must be built in both new towns and those set for redevelopment.

The construction, and loss, of physical infrastructure was a common theme at the My Queenstown Symposium held yesterday, organised by My Community and supported by the Queenstown Citizens’ Consultative Committee as part of a forum series to celebrate the estate’s 60th birthday.

Some of the 150 current and former residents present spoke about how the loss of buildings, like the Margaret Drive Hawker Centre, turned the estate into a “ghost town”, for instance.

They also asked how more could be done to conserve other parts of the estate, such as the Queenstown Public Library.

Architecture, history and social merit are considered in deciding whether to conserve a building, Urban Redevelopment Authority director (Conservation Management) Kelvin Ang said in reply at the symposium.

“We cannot conserve everything, we need to narrow down to those buildings that can ideally play multiple functions,” he said.

He noted that many participants were unaware that buildings in the estate such as the Blessed Sacrament Church and the Princess House, which served as the headquarters of the Singapore Improvement Trust — the predecessor of the Housing and Development Board — have been conserved.

He added that more effort is needed to educate and reach out to the community, for example, by giving community groups access to information.

The need to understand heritage is one that also struck Dr Goh’s students for an academic paper on the differences between Queenstown and Tiong Bahru.

The lecturer said his students were surprised to find out that Queenstown residents did not quite understand why the town should be preserved in its physical form.

He added, though: “A lot of memories are not so much located within the physical spaces as much as they are located in family relationships, friendships and in kinship. And as long as they remain, they are more important than physical spaces.”

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