ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses developmental context in each city that makes it possible for urban policies to be formulated and carried out, and examines urban housing and transportation as two facets of urban development policies. Situated 2,583 kilometers apart on the Asian Pacific rim and serving their respective geographic regions, the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore are frequently paired in development, scholarly, and planning circles. The success that Hong Kong and Singapore have enjoyed in their urban policies is premised upon several contextual factors, the first of which is political stability. In Singapore urban planning had a more definite start, at least in the central area, through Sir Stamford Raffles's directives in the nineteenth century to segregate the area adjacent to the two sides of the Singapore River according to ethnic group. Public housing in Hong Kong originated in 1953 when a large squatter fire in the district of Shek Kip Mei forced the government into providing emergency resettlement housing.
