Architecting (In)Equality
Summary of This is what Inequality looks like
2018
Introduction
Architecture and Inequality
Architecture is not the answer to inequality.
Then again—nothing is, at least not in isolation.
Inequality is the product of intersecting systems: politics, economics, culture, and the built environment. That’s what makes it so complex—and often contradictory. To begin addressing it, we must first understand that the problem lies not within a single discipline, but in the relationships between them. It is within these linkages—between policy and pavement, law and land, capital and construction—that inequality takes root and spreads.
So, what can Architecture do?
Architecture becomes the physical expression of inequality. It makes visible the tensions between people, the failures of policy, and the stratifications of communities. It is experienced in the size of a room, the view from a window, the distance to a school, the absence of choice.
In This Is What Inequality Looks Like, Teo You Yenn offers a powerful lens into these lived realities. Her work moves beyond numbers and charts—it documents the everyday of those living at the margins. And crucially, she reminds us: inequality is not just about “them.” It’s about “us.”
Teo reveals how inequality is built into the systems of care—from housing policies to school admissions, from employment precarity to social welfare. She demonstrates that two people may follow the same rules, but due to their class position, they experience vastly different outcomes. Her analysis reframes inequality not as a deficit of effort, but as a consequence of deeply structured conditions.
Drawing from her observations, we can distill four key themes that run throughout the book—four threads that help us better understand how inequality is woven into everyday life:
Moving through different Worlds
Inequality and Mobility
Mobility—through space and time—is one of the key negotiations for those living at the margins.
In Singapore, a city known for its efficiency and accessibility, mobility is unevenly experienced. For some, especially those with private transport, distances shrink—everything feels near. But for lower-income individuals, a trip to Marina Bay can feel like going abroad. Their experience of the city is often confined to a limited radius, shaped by necessity rather than choice. Longer commutes tend to be tied to work, not leisure or consumption. As Teo You Yenn puts it, mobility and immobility are not just physical conditions but lived and imagined realities. They shape how people see their lives—where they’ve been, and where they believe they can still go.
This extends to social mobility. In a system built on meritocracy, individuals are told they can ascend through hard work and academic success. But meritocracy, by design, also produces inequality. It selects, sorts, and ranks. It deems some deserving—and by default, others undeserving. Those who don’t “make it” are not just economically marginalized; they are often socially and culturally cast as the ‘Other’, deviating from what success is supposed to look like.
As a result, we live not in one city, but in multiple Singapores—multiple narratives coexisting. For some, it is a city of promise, progress, entertainment, infrastructure, safety, and global appeal.
For others, it is a city of limited movement, physical hardship, and a persistent sense of being stuck. In this shiny, future-facing metropolis, the values of resilience, generosity, and quiet endurance often go unrecognized—unrewarded—unseen.
Living on Loan
Inequality and Housing
In her book, Teo You Yenn highlights how the physical living environment of low-income families not only reflects inequality—it reproduces it. In this sense, space is not just the result of injustice, but also a cause of it.
Rental flats in Singapore are typically located within larger HDB neighborhoods rather than isolated estates. Yet their architectural form tells a different story. The units are small and tightly packed, with doors mere steps from one another—an arrangement that reveals a façade of density and facilitates constant visibility. This proximity fosters a culture of surveillance, where scrutiny and gossip can easily flourish. Privacy becomes a luxury. And tension follows—between neighbors, between families, between the “watched” and the “watchers.”
Shared spaces often amplify this strain. Cockroaches and ants are common near open rubbish chutes. Abandoned furniture, lingering smells, and cluttered corridors—where clothes, mattresses, and upholstery are aired due to lack of space—further expose the inequalities of care and maintenance. These narrow walkways often become territorial markers, breeding conflict over shared but scarce space. Tensions can also spill over into communal areas, such as playgrounds and open courts, especially between rental flat residents and their neighbors in owner-occupied blocks.
Inside, the 1- and 2-room units are cramped. Yet families try to create dignity in small ways—through DIY murals, hand-painted stencils, and neat arrangements. In one-room flats, the living room becomes a bedroom by night. Mattresses are unfurled across the floor. Private space is scarce, and often improvised—curtains hung around the bottom bunk, shelves repurposed as dividers, a fragile attempt at carving out autonomy, especially for girls and women.
As children grow up, the spatial limitations weigh heavily. Privacy becomes personal freedom, and its absence leads to emotional friction. Teenagers, in search of space and self, may begin to drift—choosing not to return to a place that doesn’t feel like home. This lack of space isn’t just a physical constraint; it’s a relational one, eroding the bonds between parents and children, between authority and affection.
Dreams and Dignity
Inequality and Other
The rental housing environment is not designed for comfort. It functions as a transition space—a temporary stop along the path toward financial stability and, ideally, social mobility. The smallness of these flats is not incidental; it reinforces the idea that this is not a place to settle, but one to move beyond. For many families, especially those with growing children, the desire for more space becomes symbolic of a larger dream: to move up.
Children are at the heart of these dreams, regardless of class.
Parents—especially in low-income households—harbor deep aspirations for their children. They want them to live better, do better, be better. Even the smallest gestures—buying a toy, a new pair of shoes, giving them a room of their own—carry the weight of that dream. But when those needs can’t be met, guilt and shame set in. The daily act of care becomes a struggle—especially for women, who must juggle inflexible jobs, long hours, and the demands of caregiving. As Teo You Yenn notes, work-life balance should not be a class privilege, but for many, it is.
And so, the pursuit of dreams is tethered to the fragility of dignity.
What is dignity?
It is being seen, being valued, having your worth recognized—not in grand achievements, but in everyday life. Like clean air, you don’t realize its absence until it’s gone. And for many low-income families, it’s in short supply. State assistance may ease material burdens, but the way it is rendered can often leave people feeling small, judged, or humiliated. Systems meant to help can quietly erode the very dignity they should protect.
In this tension between dreams and dignity, success is often rewarded with pride—a sense that one has “made it.” These rags-to-riches stories are celebrated in Singapore’s national narrative: a country that rose from scarcity to global status through grit and intelligence. Woven into that story are personal accounts of families who slogged, sacrificed, and succeeded.
But not all stories follow that arc.
Many who haven’t “arrived” are left out of the narrative—seen as having failed, made poor choices, or simply not tried hard enough. Their stories are not woven in; they are set aside. They become the ‘Other’ in a society that celebrates only one kind of trajectory.
Differentiated Deservedness
Conclusion
The principles of self-reliance and “family as first line of support” have made one thing clear: in Singapore, there are no universal entitlements. The portrayal of most Singaporeans as self-reliant wage workers and members of the middle class is not just a narrative—it is institutionalized through policy. And in doing so, the State has systematically built the structures of inequality. Policies don’t just reflect class—they create it.
From education to housing, employment to marriage, healthcare to childcare, the Singaporean life course has been meticulously designed around the nuclear family. There is a prescribed trajectory: finish school, work a few years, accumulate CPF, find a partner, apply for a BTO, get married, start a family. This path is governed not only by the State, but by the logic of the free market. Over time, as access to goods and services becomes pegged to spending power, we’ve come to accept that different levels of service are deserved depending on wealth. This quiet acceptance further entrenches stratification, creating distinct classes of ‘customers’—and differentiated treatment based on what one can afford.
In this landscape, deservedness is no longer a social right, but a product of market logic, shaped by policy and institutional design. Despite recent efforts to promote “social inclusion,” the reality is a society with little sense of shared obligation. The dominant ethic remains: take care of yourself, and your own. The doctrine of self-reliance still reigns—unyielding, unchallenged.
Across these four themes—mobility, space, dignity, and deservedness—a clear picture emerges. It’s not a romantic or sanitized vision of progress.
If we say we do not see poverty in Singapore, it is because we’ve been taught not to look, and because its expressions have been masked—folded into architectural norms, buried in bureaucratic thresholds, or hidden behind tidy facades.
Architecture, in this context, becomes both a tool and a veil. It integrates inequality within the visual logic of equality, disguising difference under a shared roof or clean finish. Sometimes, it even serves as a filter—blurring, flattening, erasing.
But once we choose to see it—we cannot, and must not, unsee it.
This is what inequality looks like.
References
Who I quoted
Teo, You Yenn. 2018. This is what Inequality looks like. Singapore: Etho Books.