ancient cities

708 Shophouse
and cities in Southeast Asia. They are typically
two-story terraced buildings (although buildings
of three or more stories may be found in more
densely populated areas) divided into numerous
units. Most shophouses have narrow frontages
but extend to considerable depth inside. Shophouse
design and ornamentation range from early,
largely functional shophouses built by the first
waves of impoverished Chinese migrants to a later
“Chinese baroque”—highly ornate traditional
Chinese motifs juxtaposed with grand European
classical columns, French windows, and Corinthian
capitals—as well as art deco styles associated with
the Depression years. As suggested by its name,
the shophouse is multifunctional; the first story is
occupied by businesses and stores ranging from
grocers, clinics, and workshops to clan association
halls. The upper floors are commonly residential
quarters for the family and employees working in
the shop below, although this is not necessarily so,
as it was common for sleeping space to be rented
out to tenants.
The hybrid word shophouse is likely to be a
literal translation of the Chinese term dian wu
(“shop” and “house” in Mandarin). Building
forms similar to the Southeast Asian shophouses in
terms of floor plans, construction, and iconography
have been found in the treaty ports of southern
China, suggesting that the urban form was
transplanted to Southeast Asia by migrants from
Fujian and Guangdong provinces in the nineteenth
century. Colonial conditions, such as the new town
planning regulations of the British (in Singapore
and Malaya) and the Dutch (in Batavia, now
Jakarta), also influenced the evolution of the shophouse
form, producing what scholars have termed
an “Anglo-Chinese urban vernacular.” The original
commercial row house found in Guangzhou
and other southern Chinese cities was thought to
have been an easily imported style that fit well
with the gridlike nature of streets in the urban
plans of some Southeast Asian cities, where they
underwent further transformation. In Singapore,
for example, the British founder of the town
Stamford Raffles decreed in 1822 that shophouses
should have uniform frontages and a covered
walkway (known as the “five-foot-way”) running
the length of the block for the convenience of
pedestrians seeking shelter from the tropical
weather and the disorderly street traffic.
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as
the expanding colonial urban economies of Southeast
Asia absorbed large numbers of labor migrants, the
shophouse form in central areas of the city provided
accommodation for the laboring classes in increasingly
overcrowded conditions. Neither the colonial state nor
private enterprise was willing to shoulder the cost of
providing houses for the laboring classes, for such
investments yielded far lower returns compared to
those from rubber, tin, and commerce. Given the
unremitting pressure of rapidly growing populations
and acute housing shortages, living space in shophouses
was subdivided into cubicles to accommodate
the people. Shophouse areas such as the Chinatowns
in Southeast Asian cities became associated with gross
overcrowding, insanitary conditions, and disease.
In the immediate post–World War II period,
shophouse areas continued to be perceived as slum
quarters characterized by insanitary and dilapidated
buildings. As Southeast Asian nation-states
gained independence in the 1960s and began
modernization efforts, urban renewal of the city
core led to the bulldozing of shophouse areas—
considered obsolete architectural forms that had
outlived their purpose—to make way for modernist,
high-rise residential and commercial structures
signifying efficiency and rationality.
Urban conservation is a relatively new (and still
limited) phenomenon in Southeast Asian cities. It is
best observed in Singapore, where conservation efforts
since the late 1980s began to target the remaining
shophouse areas, resulting in the designation of some
of these areas as historic districts (such as Chinatown
and Little India) and the conservation of distinctive
shophouse rows as part of urban heritage. In several
Malaysian towns and cities, shophouse areas hang in
the balance as the relative merits of conservation vis-àvis
redevelopment continue to be debated.
Brenda S. A. Yeoh
See also Asian Cities; Chinatowns; Housing; Singapore
Further Readings
Lee, Ho Yin. 2003. “The Singapore Shophouse: An
Anglo-Chinese Urban Vernacular.” Pp. 115–34 in
Asia’s Old Dwellings: Tradition, Resilience, and
Change, edited by R. G. Knapp. New York: Oxford
University Press.