Wikipedia:Peer review/Singapore Improvement Trust/archive1

Singapore Improvement Trust

I've listed this article for peer review because I've just expanded the article significantly and am hoping to bring the article to GA status.

Thanks, R22-3877 (talk) 06:14, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Comments by KN2731

I'll take a look later this afternoon. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 05:05, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Prose

• Assuming back lane isn't being used metaphorically (e.g. backstage/back alley), wikilink and dehyphenate since it's a qualifying noun.
• In the late 1950s, plans were set out to replace the SIT with two departments—housing and planning—culminating in two bills that were passed in 1959. With the establishment of the successor organisations by the government of Singapore, the Housing and Development Authority and the Planning Authority, in 1960, the SIT was disestablished. I feel this doesn't flow very well. Cutting off the sentence after mentioning the bills passed in 1959 leaves the reader wondering what effect said bills had on the SIT. Meanwhile, it could be made clearer that the proposed housing and planning departments were the Housing and Development Authority and the Planning Authority respectively.
• "dissolved" is simpler and fits better than "disestablished".
• Perhaps it would be better to replace "Improvement Rate" in the lead with property tax, since people are more familiar with the latter term.
• Check consistency of Oxford comma – think you missed one at "and government loans" and another at "Buildings, Planning and Management departments".
• Nevertheless, the resources and powers provided to the SIT proved insufficient for it to carry out urban renewal, and a draft Town Improvement and Development bill that was to facilitate the SIT's work in town planning was rejected by the government in 1924, leaving the position of the SIT unclear. Rather long sentence, could be split after "urban renewal".
• In 1931, the SIT carried out a scheme to construct houses for artisans in the Balestier Road area, to provide workers with sanitary and affordable residential facilities. Two "to"s make this sound like a run-on sentence, which could be avoided by changing "to provide" to "thereby providing" or similar.
• negligible upkeep being done under Japanese rule can do without "being done".
• In addition, the Singapore Housing Committee's report... Remove "in addition", since the following sentence isn't introducing another issue with the SIT.
• The flats built by the SIT were expensive to build, so it started building cheaper "emergency" flats from 1953 – overly repetitive use of "build".
• Nevertheless, the "emergency" flat programme only succeeded after the Kampong Tiong Bahru fire in 1959. "Nevertheless" and "only" both demonstrate contrast with earlier failures of the emergency flat programme, so you can get rid of one of them.
• as well as around 300 additional workers – "additional" becomes unnecessary if you remove the comma after that clause.

For further prose improvements (if you want to bring this beyond GA status), you can check out User:Tony1/How to improve your writing and User:Tony1/Redundancy exercises: removing fluff from your writing.

Content

Some questions about the SIT that I had after reading through the article:

• Was there a reason why the SIT was given official powers in 1927 despite it having an uncertain future back in 1924? Was there some change in attitude by the government?
• Was the "Planning Authority" succeeding the SIT part of the Ministry of Local Government Lands and Housing as plans in June 1956 from the earlier sentence alluded to?
• Did the SIT have a dedicated building for its offices or headquarters?
• Legacy – what has happened to the houses built by SIT? I'm guessing they've mostly been torn down and replaced with newer housing.
• Perhaps a See also section with links to Urban planning in Singapore, Public housing in Singapore, and the current urban planning entities (SLA/URA)?

Nothing major that would impact GA criteria 3a, but may be brought up at a FAC as the standards for FA criteria 1b and 1c are much higher.

Images

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Captions#Formatting and punctuation should be applied consistently.
• No issues with licensing.

References

• Citations are great, just check the formatting of Loh Kah Seng's name in FN 24 and 25.

Overall this is pretty well written; it's not far away from GA status. Random fact: this is the first article I've seen that gives a flat 0.0% on Earwig's Copyvio Detector (even with "Use search engine" enabled). ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 07:26, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

@KN2731: Thanks for the comments, I've incorporated most of your recommendations. For the part on the SIT's legacy, I believe that since the article is on the organisation rather than the flats, the fate of the flats is not so relevant to the article. R22-3877 (talk) 07:39, 11 June 2021 (UTC)