Black Areas: Urban Kampongs and Power Relations in Post-war Singapore Historiography

By analysing a collection of key texts, this paper examines state-society relations in post-war Singapore in social and spatial terms. It traces the history of state regulation of urban space and a parallel story of resistance by the Chinese population. This paper analyses the making of modern Singapore as a contestation over urban space in the post-war years. A strategic theatre of this struggle was the autonomous Chinese kampongs on the urban periphery. A controlling discourse, representing the urban kampongs as sites of social pollution, made possible the state's efforts to eradicate them by relocating their dwellers in public housing.