ABSTRACT
This chapter begins the process of excavating the two most important of these 'roots': the now 60-year-old mass housing programmes of the mini-states of Hong Kong and Singapore. This was a period dominated in Singapore by the rule of the People's Action Party (PAP) and in Hong Kong by the last decades of British colonial rule until 1997. The international 'foundation narrative' of the history of public housing has revolved almost exclusively around Europe and North America, spanning from the early-twentieth century up to the 1970s and 80s. This narrative comprises a relatively restricted palette of well-known world-outlooks, often polarised against each other in stereotyped ways, as between the European welfare state and the US combination of capitalism with residual public housing. In a comparative international context, and then pinpoint the divergent ways in which those practices were appropriated and transformed during Asian decolonisation and post-colonialism in Hong Kong and Singapore.
