S’pore architect’s solution to the urban slum

In an interview with SINGAPORE Magazine, veteran architect Tay Kheng Soon described a visit to study the slums of Manila with his urban design students from the National University of Singapore. He came to the conclusion that simply helping the poor was no solution -- to resolve the phenomenon of the urban slum, the solution had to be sought in the countryside.

He came up with one such idea for this, which he termed “Rubanisation.” In his own words:

I coined the term “Rubanisation” to describe the concept of rebalancing the disparity between the city and the countryside. It offers a different idea of “development” where more resources are diverted from cities to the countryside.

Failure of the countryside results in the drift towards the city. As long as rural poverty is not addressed, all efforts towards the urban poor are a drop in the ocean of poverty and degradation.

Rubanisation provides the context to work, live, learn, play, farm and heal in new urbanised rural settlements.

It serves the 99 per cent, while the city serves 1 per cent.

Like all new concepts, it takes time to sink in. The situation also has to be right. The global economic crisis signals the need to rethink the big city, export-oriented, developmental model. A more equitable model needs to come about. Thus Rubanisation, which has been incubating for seven years.

A Memorandum of Understanding has already been signed to do four Ruban settlements in northeast China. I have just returned from Sri Lanka this June where, at the invitation of the Ceylon Institute of Builders, I presented the keynote on Rubanisation and its relevance to Sri Lanka ... Right now, what is exercising my mind is the establishment of a “Ruban Bank” that mobilises crowd-funding to finance uplifting of rural areas everywhere.