Urban Fabric and Socioeconomic Resilience: Real Estate Properties,
Governance and Socioeconomic Activities

In the recent context of global development, the social and economic structures of cities are expected to have dramatic changes. A city with strong socioeconomic resilience capacity will be better transforming in these changes. For socioeconomic resilience, this study will focus on socioeconomic inclusiveness for building public good, which refers to the diversity of economic activities and the facilitation of social relationship.

In the field of planning and design, studying relationship between public space and public life is a popular approach to understand urban space and socioeconomic activities for enhancing urban capacity and improving quality of living. After the prevalence of rational urban planning, some researches and designers believe that physical environment is the chief culprit of lifeless public life. Consequently, they considered that small scale traditional urban fabric is more resilient than large scale modern urban fabric.

However, the study in Singapore reveals that physical environment may not principally determine socioeconomic life. In the observations of shopping malls, shopping streets and shopping complexes, even if sites share similar urban fabric, different modes of governance of capital, plots and buildings significantly affect the socioeconomic activities taking place on these sites. In this discourse, governance refers to ownership, operation and management of real estate properties. It could be conducted by owners such as individual, family, company, Real Estate Investment Trust, cooperative, government and so on. It is believed that the owners are determining the mode of governance and shaping urban fabric.

The paper will reveal, except for physical environment, how governance of real estate properties impacts the socioeconomic resilience of city. This will shed light on policy decision making and urban planning for governing and building a more socioeconomic resilient city.