Commentary: The way forward for Singapore’s ageing strata-titled malls lies in action, not nostalgia

The impasse of multiple failed collective sales highlights the need for a “fractional adaptation” approach. Instead of the all-or-nothing en bloc model, we should incentivise developers to buy into a building partially.

By strategically allowing for partial collective sales and offering adaptive reuse incentives – similar to those offered to the potential new owners of Golden Mile Tower last year during a collective sale exercise to nudge the conservation of the iconic cinema block – we can break the monolithic scale of the “mega-block” into independently-managed “micro cultural nodes”.

This will allow more flexible responses to changing retail demands. It may even encourage the creation of spaces with organic human-scale qualities, like KOTE in Seoul, Sala Saneha in Bangkok and others in the region.

Adaptive reuse, even if partial, also addresses the massive environmental cost of embodied carbon, as retrofitting an existing building saves a carbon debt that new buildings take decades to repay.