What a barricaded void deck says about Singaporeans and play in the heartland

The silhouette of a football player, red line running diagonally across him, is an image familiar to most Singaporeans.

Plastered on walls of void decks at Housing Board estates all over the island, and often unaccompanied by words, its meaning is clear: No football allowed.

However, it was not enough for the Sembawang Town Council, which recently reinforced this rule by temporarily barricading the void deck of Block 638 Woodlands Ring Road.

A photo of the closed-up space, first posted by website The Monitor SG on Nov 23, drew a host of reactions online.

Many netizens were critical of the town council’s action.

Facebook user Sang Chua said: “This is really too much. Kids need space to grow up.”

A user on Reddit, meanwhile, called the move making “a mountain out of a molehill”, and said the sight was “depressing”.

The image also stirred discussion online about whether Singapore had become too homogenised and restrictive about public spaces, and whether there was still room for spontaneous play and gatherings.

Some suggested Singaporeans were becoming less tolerant.

After all, this was not the first time such measures have been taken at community spaces in the heartland.

After the photo of the barricade in Woodlands went viral, netizens said they had seen similar ones set up at void decks in Jalan Kayu and Tampines.

In May, Singaporean actress Pam Oei railed on Instagram against people who had called the police on two children, aged nine and 11, for playing football in an “alfresco multi-purpose hall” in an unnamed neighbourhood.

In 2016, three 3.5m-long railings were erected at a block in Queenstown to prevent the playing of football, and in 2004 an even more extreme action was taken when some 100 blocks in Tampines and Hougang had nails and barbed wire fixed on walls.

In many of these instances, municipal bodies acted after complaints from residents about the noise, danger posed by stray balls or dirty markings on walls as a result of children playing football at the void deck.

When ST visited the Woodlands block on Dec 1, the barricade had been removed.

Experts that ST spoke to said that community spaces like void decks remain vital for fostering social cohesion.

And despite increased structure and formalisation, and the odd instance of deterrence, like in the Woodlands case, these spaces and opportunities to utilise them – be it for football or other recreational activities – have not necessarily diminished.

These spaces, which include neighbourhood fitness corners, open fields and basketball courts, all represent “something bigger”, said Dr Aidan Wong, assistant professor of urban studies at Singapore Management University.

“These are spaces of interaction, spaces of encounter, and more importantly, spaces that break the monotony of an otherwise purely residential area,” he said.

Associate Professor Ho Kong Chong, head of urban studies at Yale-NUS College, said he felt that the Sembawang Town Council’s actions were an “exception”, adding that the increasing structure over existing community spaces is understandable.

“This is essential, as it provides some order to a high-density environment like Singapore’s,” Prof Ho said, adding that the structure allows for more efficient use of space.

However, he said that the use of heartland recreational facilities that require booking, for example, reduces conviviality, or the warmth and friendliness among people.

“You are forced to leave once your booking is up, and, because of this, relationships do not span beyond those you enter the booked courts with,” Prof Ho said.

He added that one example of what achieving this balance may look like is the dual-use scheme (DUS) under the ActiveSG programme run by national agency Sport Singapore.

This scheme allows for more than 40 fields in Ministry of Education schools to be used by the public after school hours, some of which do not even require booking. The scheme also includes the use of other school facilities such as indoor halls for badminton and basketball courts.

Prof Ho believes the scheme fosters a “reciprocal relationship” between the school and the neighbourhood it is situated in, and explained: “This means that residents living near the school should be able to use its facilities, and the school can contribute to the development of the neighbourhood.”