Singapore Probes

SINGAPORE PROBES

To investigate, research and examine thoroughly. To question mindfully as an act of probing

To analyze and examine with a probe.

Singapore Probes

Singapore Probes

Department of Architecture

School of Design and Environement

National University of Singapore

Lee Foundation

ISBN: 978-981-08-9588-4

PROBES SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE PROBES

Tan Bing Hui

Tan Ee Teng Eudora

Toh Wei Ching Felicia

Erik G. L’Heureux AIA, LEED AP

Published by the Department of Architecture

Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture (CASA).

National University of Singapore

4 Architecture Drive, Singapore 117566

Tel: +65 65163477

Email: akierik@nus.edu.sg

ISBN: 978-981-08-9588-4

Concept: Erik G. L’Heureux

© Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture National University of Singapore

© Individual Contributors

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission of the publisher.

The publisher does not warrant or assume any legal responsibility for the publication’s contents. All opinions expressed in the book are of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the National University of Singapore.

Thesis Advisor / Editor: Assistant Professor

Erik G. L’Heureux AIA, LEED AP

Thesis Studio:

Tan Bing Hui

Tan Ee Teng Eudora

Toh Wei Ching Felicia

Contributors:

Brenda Yeo

Michael Lee

Peter Schoppert

Siew Molly

Tan Szue Hann

Tay Kheng Soon

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Singapore

PROBE #1: CONSTRUCT OF

Globalising

Flows in the City

Brenda S. A. Yeoh and T. C. Chang

Singapore:

Singapore Dreaming Introduction

This book endeavors to expose and clarify Singapore through a combination of data, references, and hypotheses. Its purpose is not to provide a comprehensive historical account of Singapore nor to present a magical formula for replicating the country’s success elsewhere, as many might wish. Instead, Singapore Probes is an architectural compendium that amalgamates diverse criticisms to gain a deeper understanding of this small red dot on the equator. It aims to serve as a probing tool, allowing us to examine the city more closely and delve into its intricacies. Over the past ten years, Singapore has been my home, and this work intends to formulate, edit, and distill insights, which is especially crucial in an age inundated with vast amounts of often meaningless content.

As an architect with an interest in the overlapping realms of theory, history, technology, planning, cities, and the ideas they generate, I seek to comprehend Singapore’s inherent ideologies to inform my own design work on the equator.

Thinking through the City

This book seeks to refine critical awareness of Singapore, fostering greater sensitivity towards the city and its underlying structures, which are intrinsically ingrained in the fabric of architecture. As Diana Agrest eloquently put it, “to think of the city is to think of architecture, for the city is the limit of architecture.” When we envision Singapore as a product of 20th-century planning ideals, influenced by British colonial legacies and tropical modern typologies, we realize that it has become a model that now influences the world. Although there are other, more unplanned and irrational cities in Southeast Asia, such as Jakarta, Manila, Phnom Penh, and Ho Chi Minh, they also turn to Singapore for solutions and guidance, making it the “solution provider” for the region and beyond. Understanding Singapore means comprehending the allure that shapes policy, planning, and architecture, not just locally but globally, from China to Dubai, India to Vietnam, Malaysia to Moscow.

Critical Probes into Singapore

The probes within this book shed light on, sometimes celebrate, and often offer alternative visions as a form of criticism. This critique aims to expand the conversation, encouraging us to think about unexplored aspects or reassess the relevance of ideas from past decades. The probes in these pages scrutinize the urban ideology of high density and high-rise structures, coupled with theories of land scarcity and statesponsored capitalism, which have become the de facto model for Singapore’s success. They question whether adopting 20th-century Corbusian towers in manicured parks as prototypes is the most effective solution for a city that was once dense, wild, messy, congested, and yet full of energy and agency.

The probes bring to light the assumptions surrounding and the impacts of myths about density, dispersal, and atomization on Singapore’s urban form. They question the ingrained belief that economies of scale, state authorship, and deployable singular prototypes are the logical conclusions for city-making in Asia by Asians. Despite Singapore’s quantitative successes, which are often celebrated, there remain qualitative components of living in the city that need improvement, going beyond the infamous Singaporean five “C’s” -- cash, credit cards, cars, condo and country clubs.

Alternatives of Singapore

More importantly, the probes imagine Singapore as a vastly different place: an empty site or a tabula rasa that can be rethought through alternative visions borrowed from distant places, mutated, and transplanted into Singapore. From Barcelona to Brasília, from Paris to Broadacre, from cities of the past to a City of Tomorrow, Singapore becomes a mirror not only to itself but also to the cities that inspire much of its imagination. Through a series of thought experiments, Singapore is envisioned through plausible low-rise models, floating models, linear models, flat models, centralized models, fabric models, and even higher-rise object models than currently practiced. Singapore’s choice of the Corbusian towers in the park model is just one of many possibilities. To imagine architecture is to envision a city that is still in formation, a work in progress—Singapore as a place where all orders are possible.

In Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi states, “I try to talk about architecture rather than around it...by concentrating on [my] own job.” To probe into Singapore means focusing on the underlying frameworks that shape cities and architecture in Asia today. To discuss the city is to discuss architecture and what defines it. To talk about Singapore is to address our “techno” future, as alluded to in William Gibson’s now infamous article. Above all, if there is one fundamental job of an architect, it is to imagine our future.

Erik L’Heureux AIA, LEED AP Assistant Professor 2012

PROBE #1: CONSTRUCT OF SINGAPORE

Globalising Singapore: Debating Transnational Flows in the City

by Brenda S. A. Yeoh and T. C. Chang

1. Introduction

Transnational practices and networks of capital, labour, business and commodity markets, political movements and cultural flows are both “the products of, and catalyst for, contemporary globalisation processes” (Transnational Communities Programme, 1998). For example, transnational communities—“communities that sit astride political borders and that, in a very real sense, are ‘neither here nor there’, but in both places simultaneously” (Portes, 1998, p. 3) sustain and fuel the process of globalisation. An important site of intersection between the processes of globalisation and transnationalism lie lies in dominant ‘global cities’ of the world urban hierarchy (Sassen, 1991; Yeoh, 1999). As key nodes in the economic, social and technological networks spanning the world space economy, these ‘global cities’ are also places in themselves, where the social, cultural and economic fabric is not only woven of local elements, but involves a high density of transnational relationships as well.

In these cities, global forces must necessarily articulatecollide with distinctive local ensembles of class and culture, power constellations and patterns of state/society relations. (Oncu and Weyland, 1997, p. 1). Despite the high premium on fluidity, mobility and connectivity in the global city, Borja and Castells (1997, p. 14) further argue that cities must integrate their “local societies” because without a solid base in the citizens, city governments will not have the strength that is needed to navigate those global circuits. The global reach of the individual city in turn depends on its position as a node within networks of capital, information and telecommunications in the regional and global spheres; and its ability to innovate that is, generate and process new information and maintain “institutional flexibility” becomes critical.

The ability to confront the challenge of globalisation and global competition calls for not only positionality and expertise in capturing global networks, but also the ability to create and maintain a specific local culture of innovation and flexibility—a certain ‘institutional thickness’ (Amin and Thrift, 1992)—as well as a quality of life which will attract, maintain and develop high-quality human resources (both local expertise and foreign talent). Social anthropologist Hannerz (1993) describes four groups of people who are actively engaged in the transnational flow of culture and who, in some constellation or other, give cities their ‘global’ character. These are:

(1) ‘transnational business’, involving highwaged, highly skilled professional, managerial and entrepreneurial elites usually associated with finance, banking and business services;

(2) ‘Third World populations’, comprising lowwaged immigrants who occupy insecure niches in the unskilled or semiskilled sectors of the urban service economy;

(3) ‘expressive specialists’, who participate in the cultural scene in areas such as art, fashion, design, photography, film-making, writing, music and cuisine; and

(4) ‘tourists’, who are present in considerable numbers, attracted by the cosmopolitan intensity of the global city. Rather than a comprehensive catalogue, Hannerz (1993) intends these four categories as a heuristic device which may be useful in unpacking the transnational flows which help produce the global city.

In this paper, we have chosen to draw on Hannerz’s four groups of transnationals as our organising scheme, primarily because its range accords well with the framing of categories in local discourse in Singapore par excellence. Focusing on the way in which transnational flows of people—as embodiment of skill, talent, culture and capital — are materially and discursively drawn into the formation of the globalising city, this paper looks at the example of Singapore. Already one of the most open and networked in the world, the city has, in recent years, harkened closely to the beat of the-

globalisation drum in its drive to become a key global node in the region.

2. Singapore: Creating a ‘Global City’ and Sustaining the ‘Best Home’

Within the world city hierarchy, Singapore is ranked in the second tier, among those aspiring for “superleague” status. As Chua (1998, p. 995) points out, Singapore “eminently qualifies for a place in the collection of cities which are discursively grouped under [the term ‘world cities’]” having been, since its ‘birth’ during the modern age of mercantile capitalism, intensely part of global service capitalism. This has had a major influence on the cultural context in which Singaporeans understand the meaning of the nation-state in which they live. As Harper writes (1997, p. 261):

Singapore is a child of diaspora. Its history embodies many of the tensions of blood and belonging that the concept evokes. Singapore testifies to the difficulties of creating a modern nationstate on a model inherited from Europe in a region where history mocks the nationstate’s claims to cultural and linguistic exclusiveness. The post-colonial experience of Singapore has been dominated by the attempts of the state—an artifact of British rule— to surmount these constraints and to create a national community bounded by a common culture and a sense of place, and bonded by individual allegiance.

In Singapore, the construction of nationhood has been a major state-driven project since independence (Hill and Lian, 1995). The pressures of creating a nation of ‘one people’ belonging to ‘one place’, and associated manoeuvres to secure political legitimacy, build ideological consensus, discipline its industrial workforce and mould the consciousness of its new citizens have been important imperatives threaded into all major state policies— housing, education, language, community development, national service, economic development—governing various aspects of social and political life.

The current vision to secure and enhance Singapore’s position as a global city has further added a new dimension to these endeavours. Singapore’s leaders have chosen to frame the new challenges of globalisation in terms of the need to navigate between the countervailing pulls of transnationalism and localism. This is clear in the terms of reference of a high-level, Minster-led Singapore 21 Committee commissioned recently to address the challenge of, on the one hand, making Singapore a city with global reach—international, cosmopolitan and creative—and, on the other hand, “the best home for Singaporeans” (The Straits Times, 20 October 1997). The critical dilemmas of contradictory pulls of “internationalisation/regionalisation vs Singapore as home” and that of “attracting foreign talent vs looking after Singaporeans”.1 The framing of these dilemmas as irreconcilable dualisms is intended, in the words of the Prime Minister,

to drive home the point that many of these issues we face as a nation are really issues of choice … We can’t have everything that we want. We have to choose (The Straits Times, 20 October 1997).

Incidentally, the determined strategies of the Singapore government to ride the crest of globalisation and yet continue to shape the local arena demonstrates that the ongoing remapping of the world in terms of global– local tensions does not render the national arena irrelevant. Instead, as Oncu and Weyland (1997, pp. 11–12) point out,

it does not follow that national identities have now become a chimera, or that the state elite have lost the capacity to develop and pursue strategies which are contiguous with, albeit transformed versions of, older nationalisms. On the contrary, the rapid integration of national economies into global markets sets limits upon the viability of projects the state elite may initiate, but … [does not diminish] the significance of the state elite as key actors in reshaping metropolitan space [space interpreted as both material and ideological].

In the case of Singapore, as Yeung (1998, 1999) has argued, the state involvement in the push to venture beyond nation-state’s territorial limits is paramount, not simply through using government-linked companies as primary instruments to spearhead the regionalisation drive, but also by engaging in ‘political entrepreneurship’ through which the state opens up overseas business opportunities for private capitalists and negotiates the institutional framework for such opportunities to be tapped by Singaporean firms. Conversely, the state’s choice to pursue the strategy of global reach has been relatively uncontested in the local arena, in part because the state has generated a political discourse of survivalism and ruthless competition… which implies the deferral of political options to the global scale (Yeung, 2000, p. 145).

In this paper, we explore recently constructed and ventilated discourses and debates around the issue of transnational flows shaping the social and cultural fabric of the city, using Hannerz’s (1993) four categories as an organisational scheme. For each category, we discuss the government’s notion of best practice in drawing in and negotiating with these transnational ‘outsiders’ whose economic or social itineraries have converged, at least momentarily, in Singapore as a place.

2.1 The Business and Professional Class: Creating an ‘Oasis of Talent’

As “the most powerful manifestations of the internationalization of capital in the world space economy”, global cities distinguished by a high concentration of corporate headquarters, advanced telecommunication and R&D infrastructure and international financial services also contain disproportionately large clusters of high-waged professional and managerial expatriate workers (Beaverstock, 1996, p. 424).

In aspiring towards global city status, the Singapore state has not only emphasised building up its total business and human resource capabilities to attract transnational corporations to the city-state, but has also promoted Singapore

as a major engine of foreign direct investments into the rest of Asia through its “Regionalisation 2000” programme (a re-imaging of the city-state from “Singapore Inc. to Singapore International”) (Business Asia, 25 March 1996).

As a space of flows, Singapore’s vision involves not only drawing in elite professionals and specialists from all corners of the globe, but also becoming a springboard for venturing into the region. Another related initiative in the rhetoric of promoting Singapore as a global player is the promotion of Singapore as a ‘wired’ world city, one deeply embedded in global circuits of information flows and equipped with advanced information technology know-how. Transforming the city-state into a knowledge-based economy and information society is a key strategy in Singapore’s regionalisation drive not only to become a ‘brains service node’ for the region, but also in order to create a ‘virtual state’ in which citizens abroad can remain ‘hooked up’ to the nation (Low and Kuo, 1999, p. 58).

The corollary of these major strategies to position Singapore as a significant node in the global space of flows is the development of a highly skilled human resource base not only capacious in the “hardware” such as technological infrastructure, but also the “software—the ideas and knowledge of its people” (the words of the Prime Minister, Goh, 1999a). Besides investing heavily in information technology and human capital to meet global competition, the state has emphasised the strategy of “gathering global talent” and “making Singapore a cosmopolitan city” (Prime Minister Goh, quoted in The Straits Times, 30 August 1997). This emphasis was stated as early as in the 1997 National Day Rally, where the Prime Minister (The Straits Times, 30 August 1997) explained in some detail:

Gathering talent is not like collecting different species of trees from all over the world to green up Singapore. It is more difficult but absolutely crucial to sustain Singapore in the long term. Singapore depends on a strong core of talent, in business, government and politics. adaptable … In the information age, human talent, not physical resources or financial capital,

is the key factor for economic competitiveness and success. We must therefore welcome the infusion of knowledge which foreign talent will bring. Singapore must become a cosmopolitan, global city, an open society where people from many lands can feel at home.

We need strong links with every major economy, not just our close neighbours. Therefore we must incorporate into our society talent from all over the world, not just Chinese, Malays, or Indians, but talented people whatever their race or country of origin—East Asians, South East Asians, South Asians, Arabs from the Gulf and Middle East, North Americans, Europeans, Australians, even Latin Americans and South Africans. They can be businessmen, bankers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, engineers, architects, musicians, academics, technicians, or skilled workers. They will bring with them the migrant’s spirit and vigour to strive and build a better life. Our economy and society will benefit from their vibrancy and drive. Some will integrate into our society and settle here. For them we hope this spirit will eventually evolve into one of loyalty and rootedness to Singapore. But even those who do not stay permanently will make a contribution while they are here. In short, the vision is to create ‘an oasis of talent’ in the city-state which will serve as a hub for business, information and knowledge skills anchoring global networks linking the world’s three economic growth engines of Asia, Europe and the Americas (The Straits Times, 16 October 1997).

The kernels in the Prime Minister’s speech have been very quickly translated into strategic policy thrusts and implicit ‘best practices’ for Singapore. First, even during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the state reiterated its stand that Singapore was “determined to remain open and to welcome foreign talent” (The Straits Times, October 1998). Some of the incentives put in place to attract foreign talent include fast-track employment pass applications (two to three weeks) for foreign professionals, easing restrictions on measures such as allowing foreign husbands to qualify as dependants and offering subsidised state housing to foreign professionals and skilled workers.

Other strategies include the launch of the Contact Singapore programme which involves establishing Singapore centres in major cities around the world as contact points to encourage an inflow of foreign talent into Singapore. Foreigners holding employment passes have increased from 50 000 in 1996 to about 100 000 in 1999, a considerable rate of increase comparable with the doubling in overall foreign worker population from 300 000 to 600 000 during the same period, bringing the total foreign population to 700 000 out of a total population of 3.9 million (The Straits Times, 1 May 2000).

Secondly, ‘going regional’ remains a key strategic thrust in expanding the reach of the Singapore economy even during terse periods like the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.

Thirdly, globalising strategies of drawing in foreign talent on the one hand and encouraging Singaporeans to ‘go regional’ on the other inevitably bring into play a whole series of presences (of foreigners in our midst) in and absences (of citizens abroad) from the nation-state. As a result, not only are the spatial boundaries of the nation-state rendered permeable, the national ideology of ‘one people, one country’ needs to be recast anew to take into account new spatialities. While the project of nationbuilding and forging national identity among Singaporeans— which has been a key prong of state programmes since independence—has not been diminished, the cultivation of ‘an oasis of talent’ requires a reorientation of outlook from internal concerns to outward visions. In the words of George Yeo (1997, pp. 59–60), Minister for Information and the Arts, the mental and cultural spaces of Singaporeans need to be reconfigured:

What we need … is a culture that is outwardly oriented. What we need is a Singapore mentality that is global and cosmopolitan. This requires Singaporeans to feel secure about themselves. If we are big-hearted, we will welcome foreign talent into our midst. If we are small-hearted, we will always find reasons to be unhappy with them … If Singapore is reserved for Singaporeans alone,

we would have a very small Singapore. In a Small Singapore, Singaporeans who are talented would emigrate to greener pastures. If, instead, we promote the idea of a Big Singapore, then even the Singaporeans who live many years overseas would not want to give up their citizenships. The opposite would happen. Others would clamour to join our ranks. What we must strive for is a Big Singapore mentality.

These ‘best practices’ to globalise the citystate have been the subject of public discussions in the press as well as in forums spearheaded by the Singapore 21 Committee. The need to welcome more foreign skilled workers into the country to fuel the engine of growth has generated considerable debate as to whether migrants will “make the pie bigger or take away the icing” (The Straits Times, 30 August 1997). Proponents argue that the logic of importing talent is “irrefutable” given that Singapore’s small size will never produce enough to maintain a competitive edge in the face of escalating regional and global competition. The strategy is to “draw foreigners to help us compete against others” (The Straits Times, 16 October 1997), erasing the divides between nationalities to fuel the competition between places. Others point to the country’s roots as an immigrant society, extending the argument either historically by locating Singapore’s success in the ancestral genealogy of “immigrant forefathers” on whose toil the country was built, or by pointing to the number of former non-Singaporeans (i.e. ‘immigrants’) who now hold leadership positions in various fields in Singapore society (The Sunday Times, 27 July 1997).

According to a newspaper survey (The Straits Times, 6 June 1998), while most (76 per cent) Singaporeans supported “the Government’s drive to bring in talent from abroad while encouraging local firms to go regional” on the grounds that it will “bring economic benefits” and make Singapore “more exciting culturally” and “ more interesting to live in”, a minority (23 per cent) were against the policy for fear of economic, social and political problems.

It has been argued that the onslaught of alien values will fray the country’s social fabric; competition for space and amenities will heighten; and that policies intended to attract such talent will result in preferential treatment of noncitizens. Citizenship will not only lose its advantages, but citizens will lose out altogether. Furthermore, if foreigners admitted are mainly skilled workers able to command high salaries, there will be no room for the local population, especially “those stuck permanently at the bottom” of the socioeconomic ladder (The Straits Times, 30 August 1997). In short, not only would expatriate workers with skills and qualifications bring competition right to the doorstep at a time when Singaporeans are losing jobs as a result of the Asian crisis, incentives to woo foreigners would erode, if not obliterate, the difference between citizens and non-citizens. In particular, some have argued that “foreigners” who become Permanent Residents enjoy “all the privileges of citizenship and none of the responsibilities” (The Straits Times, 27 June 1998).

2.2 Unskilled Immigrant Workers: The ‘Underbelly’ of Global Cities

To date, ‘foreign talent’ which deserves a place in Singapore society is defined primarily by their ability to fill particular economic niches— that is, they must be “the right kind of people who can contribute to our economy” (Wong Kan Seng, Minister for Home Affairs, quoted in The Straits Times, 13 September 1997). The government has been careful to add that this call to absorb ‘foreign talent’ to create a more creative, cosmopolitan Singapore is not tantamount to opening the floodgates, but will be a highly selective process. Of the categories of foreigners to be brought in to fill the gaps identified in government pronouncements, selectivity is also exercised in terms of the degree of permanence accorded to each group. At the bottom of the pecking order, unskilled workers such as domestic workers and construction workers are relegated to the most transient of categories—work permit holders— subject to the ‘use and discard’ philosophy. In the words of Wong Kan

Seng, Minister for Home Affairs, these are “low skilled workers … they only come here to earn a decent living, go home and have some savings for their family”, thus obviating the need to create any form of social support facilities which may encourage a more permanent presence (The Straits Times, 13 September 1997).

However, it must be noted that the global city is not only a crucial node in the development of new geographies of skilled professional and managerial workers (Findlay et al., 1996), but also is sustained by low-skilled, low-status migrants, the new ‘helots’ in Cohen’s (1987) words, who service the needs of the privileged in both residential and commercial settings (Sassen, 1991). Indeed, it has argued that low-waged immigrant- sector labour is not a residual category in the economy of the global city, but a basic precondition, enmeshed in processes which represent “the under-belly of globalisation” (Chang and Ling, quoted in Stasiulis and Bakan, 1997, p. 121). As earlier noted, the number of foreign workers (the term usually applies to the unskilled and semi-skilled as opposed to ‘foreign talent’ which is reserved for the highly skilled) had escalated at the same rate as skilled expatriate workers. State policy with regard to foreign workers is conceived to ensure that they are no more than a transient workforce, “a buffer to even out the swings of the business cycle” (The Straits Times, 17 November 1988) and subject to repatriation during periods of economic downturn. To dampen the rising demand for foreign workers, stringent legislation has been put in place not only to restrict their number and ensure their shortterm migrant status, but also to govern their employment.³

First, all employers of foreign workers must pay a monthly levy, which has risen rapidly over the past few years to stand currently at S$345 for a domestic worker and S$470 for a construction worker. A second mechanism through which migrant workers are regulated is through a stringent allocation system which also puts the onus of responsibility surveillance to ensure acceptable behaviour by the workers on the employers as

opposed to the state. In the case of domestic workers, allocation is based on criteria such as employers’ household income and, for second maids, adequate justification in terms of the need for care-givers for children, invalids or the elderly. For foreign maids, 2-year work permits are normally renewable up to a maximum of 8 years; renewals after 8 years of employment in Singapore are considered on a case-by-case basis. The work permits are issued on the condition that the women do not marry Singaporeans or become pregnant; furthermore, they must undergo a 6-monthly medical check-up to test for pregnancy and venereal diseases. Every employer is required to pay a security bond of S$5000 to the government; the bond is forfeited should the maid fail to comply with any of the conditions.

Since 1 March 1997, employers are also required to purchase a personal accident insurance policy of at least S$10 000 for the maid (with beneficiaries being the maid or her next-of-kin) (The Straits Times, 24 January 1997). In the case of construction workers, the government has expressed concerned over the low productivity of the construction sector and its heavy dependence on foreign workers. It has recently introduced a package of measures aimed at reducing the demand for foreign construction workers. This includes legislation for ‘buildability’ for construction projects (measured by efficiency and labour productivity) as a requirement for building plan approval and a new work permit allocation system whereby permit entitlements are given to main contractors. Main contractors will then manage allocations to sub-contractors and undertake to provide accommodation and find alternative employment for foreign workers abandoned by sub-contractors. Employers found to have abandoned their workers would also forfeit the security bond of S$5000 for each worker while those who have defaulted on levy payments would forfeit an additional security bond.

Clearly, much of the state rhetoric about the creation of a cosmopolitan society with a ‘Big Singapore mentality’ which welcomes foreigners is not intended to be all-encompas

passing. There are definite limits to cosmopolitanism in Singapore’s vision of a global city. To date, public discourse on foreign workers has focused on issues such as the social problems of foreign worker enclaves and the impact of maids on the Singapore family (The Straits Times, 16 July 1998) rather than their incorporation into the social fabric of the global city. In the case of domestic workers who are sequestered in the confines of their employers’ homes for most or even all days of the week, their exclusion from the material spaces in the public sphere … also signals the lack of a foothold on the metaphorical spaces opened up in recent public discourse on potentially more inclusive notions of citizenship and civil society (Yeoh and Huang, 1999, p. 1164; see also Yeoh and Huang, 1998).

2.3 Tourists: Visualising a Tourism Capital

A third category of transnational people are tourists. Singapore’s quest to be a global tourist centre is encapsulated by the STB’s (Singapore Tourism Board) vision to develop Singapore as a ‘tourism capital’ (STB, 1996a). The STB explains that all great cities acquire the status of a ‘capital’ by exerting their hegemony in fields like finance, business, communications, fashion and religion. In the new millennium, Singapore aspires to a pivotal position in tourism by serving three roles: a destination for visitors, a location for tourism investments and a tourism gateway to south-east Asia (STB, 1996a, p. 4). To be a tourism capital, three interrelated ‘best practices’ are undertaken requiring Singapore to redefine its urban and tourism planning philosophies and realign its regional policies. The first best practice is to redefine the very parameters of ‘tourism’. In the new millennium, tourism will refer not only to the business of attracting visitors, but also attracting capital and entrepreneurs to invest in the country. Although it has successfully served as a destination for over three decades, Singapore’s tourism future is less assured because of regional competition and local resource constraints. An ambitious plan is required where economic wealth is generated not just through the capricious flows of visitors,

flows of visitors, but also through stable investment streams. Transnational flows of visitors are therefore to be augmented by the transnational flows of capital, expertise and corporate elites. Singapore is thus to be developed as a destination, tourism business centre and tourist hub.

The redefinition of tourism to include ‘investments’ as well as ‘people’ has implications for local urban planning. A second best practice, therefore, is to reconfigure Singapore’s tourism base to be dually attractive to visitors, investors, capitalists and tourism-related enterprises. To make Singapore both “visitable” and “investable” (Kotler et al., 1993, p. 2), the urban environment will have to develop what Zukin (1995) calls symbolic landscape cues of urban vivacity and cultural dynamism. In the light of this, the STB has outlined a wide-scale urban enhancement scheme in which 11 “experiential themes” were selected to accentuate Singapore’s cultural and aesthetic resources, while also focusing urban redevelopment in strategic sites. For example, the “Night Zone” theme highlights the need to develop Singapore’s nocturnal food and entertainment spots, while “Ethnic Singapore” emphasises the importance of multicultural diversity through the revitalisation of Chinatown and Little India (STB, 1996a, pp. 30–31). A total of S$300 million has been committed to thematic development over the next 4 years (Property Review, 1998, p. 21).

Developing a tourism capital also entails repositioning Singapore’s role in the regional urban hierarchy. In this third best practice, the STB adopts a transborder tourism approach by “going beyond her physical boundaries, to participate in the growth of the Asia Pacific region” (STB, 1996a, p. 17). Through this strategy, Singapore will no longer be just a beneficiary of tourism inflows, but also its primary generator.

The transborder approach encourages businesses in Singapore to expand to the rest of southeast Asia and it also encourages visitors to travel to neighbouring locales after visiting Singapore. As the gateway to the region, Singapore positions itself as a primal node in the regional hierarchy of south-east Asian cities.

node in the regional hierarchy of south-east Asian cities. Presently Singapore hopes to harness its strengths in air and sea port development to serve as a cruise hub for the region (Kumar and Lee, 1991; Peisley, 1993). By attracting international visitors to south-east Asia via Singapore, the city-state benefits from the influx of cruise tourists as well as the chance of becoming an investment centre for cruise- and shipping-related companies (Hsu, 1995).

Singapore’s tourism best practices above are cogently summarised by the STB’s stated intentions to “redefine tourism”, “reformulate the tourism product” and “reconfigure new tourism space” (STB, 1996a). However, we argue that this vision of a tourism capital is highly contested and that there are inevitable challenges to be considered. First, the notion of urban thematic development has been negatively perceived as a form of tourism promotion rather than as an avenue to enrich Singaporean lifestyle. Indeed, thematic enhancement is not a new phenomenon as witnessed by past conservation efforts in the Civic and Colonial District in the 1980s. Much of the fruit of earlier thematic programmes has been the subject of research, and a disconcerting finding from these studies is that both tourists and Singaporeans feel the government’s efforts have been mainly dictated by tourist demands. This has resulted in elitist landscapes devoid of a local sense of place (see, for example, Kong and Yeoh, 1994; Teo and Huang, 1995; Chang, 1996, 1997).

Recent debates on the STB’s proposed plans for a revamped Chinatown exemplify deepseated antagonisms towards tourist-linked projects. Unveiled in 1998, the STB’s plans to create themed streets (such as Food Street or Tradition Street); elemental gardens (featuring the five elements of Chinese mythology); and a village theatre featuring staged operas and performances have been vociferously attacked in the press and public forums for creating an Orientalist caricature of Chinatown, sanitised for foreign consumption. Against an upswell of local criticism, the STB was forced back to the drawing-board to reconceive a blueprint that speaks directly to Singapore’s immigrant Chinese past

blueprint that speaks directly to Singapore’s immigrant Chinese past. Under its new plans, the elemental gardens have been erased and an interpretative centre celebrating the stories of the local inhabitants— including disenfranchised coolies and immigrants—will be constructed. The STB explains that the new Chinatown will be a “magnet for locals” and ongoing consultations with the public will be conducted to ensure that the place “delivers an experience that is authentic and heartfelt for Singaporeans and residents here” (cited in The Straits Times, 29 December 1998). This approach of consciously integrating local needs in tourist projects must similarly inform the development of other thematic sites like Pulau Ubin and Little India in order to be accepted by Singaporeans (Begam, 1997; Chang, 2000).

Secondly, Singapore’s ambition to be a tourism gateway presupposes an unchallenged hegemony which is clearly not the case given the tourism– politics of the region (Low and Toh, 1997; Chang, 1998). Rival cities like Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, and those afar like Hong Kong, are investment centres in their own right and compete aggressively as spatial sponges for tourism investments. For example, under its ‘Amazing Thailand’ policy, one of Bangkok’s professed roles is to be a tourism gateway for Indo-China. Bangkok is already a popular investment node for travel-related companies with investments in Cambodia and Vietnam, and its central location along international air routes rivals Singapore’s as a transport hub. With the opening of new airports in ‘secondary cities’, alternative gateways are constantly being churned up in the forms of Kuala Lumpur, Macau, Hong Kong and Bangkok (Bailey, 1996). Indeed, Singapore’s quest to be a nodal city in the urban regional hierarchy is highly contested because of the constant threat of ‘dehubbing’ by rival localities, and the fluctuating fortunes of neighbouring countries.

The challenges sketched above compel us to acknowledge the local repercussions of Singapore’s global tourism ambitions. The desire to attract tourists to the country and to serve as a gateway to the region certainly engenders widespread transformations of local landscapes and a reconfiguration of Singapore’s position in the regional hierarchy of cities.

and to serve as a gateway to the region certainly engenders widespread transformations of local landscapes and a reconfiguration of Singapore’s position in the regional hierarchy of cities. As a tourism capital negotiating the transnational flows of people and capital, the Singapore state must be prepared for the challenges of regional competition from other would-be tourism capitals, as well as the voices of dissent emanating from the grassroots. Reconciling local and regional tensions with Singapore’s international ambitions becomes an imperative in a globalising city-state.

2.4 Creative Specialists: Creating a Symbolic Economy through the Arts

The STB’s goal of attracting tourism investments constitutes only one aspect of the EDB’s (Economic Development Board) larger goal of spearheading a ‘lifestyle services cluster’ in Singapore. According to EDB, five sectors constitute this cluster:

(1) tourism and leisure services;

(2) the arts;

(3) media services;

(4) medical services; and

(5) education services (EDB, 1995, p. 34).

The aim is to develop Singapore as a ‘global city with total business capabilities’ in tertiary sectors while simultaneously promoting the ‘softer aspects’ of life. These ‘software’ businesses serve as a form of ‘cultural capital’ which imbues places with an image of social vibrance and a high quality of life (Bianchini, 1991; Zukin, 1995). Developing a thriving cultural industry is also key to fulfilling the symbolic function of projecting the country multifariously as a global city, an exciting tourist destination, a viable investment venue and a good home in which to live. Three interrelated best practices are implicit in Singapore’s quest to cultivate a creative lifestyle industry.

The first best practice is to market Singapore as a ‘Global City for the Arts’, targeting sophisticated cultural tourists. In an era of niche marketing and tourism specialisations (Poon, 1989), arts tourism allows Singapore to focus on a particularly high-yield and long-staying

(Poon, 1989), arts tourism allows Singapore to focus on a particularly high-yield and longstaying market, a niche group which futurologist John Naisbitt (1990, cited in Kotler et al., 1993, p. 327) predicts will become the world’s largest leisure consumers. Towards this end, many arts attractions and events have been staged in Singapore such as Tresors—the International Arts and Antiques Fair; Broadway productions of Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables; as well as popular entertainment events ranging from DisneyFest to pop, jazz and new-age music concerts. Marketing these events regionally has attracted Malaysians, Indonesians and other Asian tourists. For example, tourist presence at Phantom of the Opera contributed S$1 million in revenues alone (The Peak, 1997, p. 98) while Tresors 1996 attracted 50 tourist ‘arts packages’ constituting 200 hotel room nights (STB, 1996c, p. 38). Capitalising on Western art forms, Singapore hopes to attract a burgeoning Asian market by providing an alternative to Western cultural hubs such as New York and London.

Apart from targeting tourists, a second best practice is to develop Singapore as an arts business hub. Replicating its successful hub concept in manufacturing, finance, transport and communications, a similar ambition is envisioned for arts and culture. Hence, new incentive schemes, subsidies and infrastructure have been developed to fuel the arts as a source of jobs, revenues and investment (EDB, 1995; STB, 1995; Rajendra, 1998). Education in the arts was revised in 1998 to produce practitioners to meet the labour needs of the nascent industry (The Straits Times, 21 September 1998). Ambitious plans have been drawn up to develop new venues for the performing arts, museums and galleries.

The third but perhaps least obvious best practice is the EDB’s deployment of the arts as a vehicle to negotiate transnational communities. This negotiation process takes two forms: attracting global talent and retaining local community. On the one hand, the arts function as a cultural magnet to attract all forms of foreign expertise, expatriates and talents to work and live in Singapore. This includes creative specialists as well as foreign talents in other sectors lured by Singapore’s vibrant cosmopolitan

talents to work and live in Singapore. This includes creative specialists as well as foreign talents in other sectors lured by Singapore’s vibrant cosmopolitan ambience. On the other hand, a lively cultural scene also serves as a social glue, retaining local residents by offering an improved standard of living rivalling the best of other global cities. The ‘global city for the arts’ vision therefore fulfils economic goals and socio-political agendas. In an era where people flows are as fluid as capital flows, the cultural industry takes on the symbolic role of “strategic place marketing” to satisfy the needs of its key constituencies comprising citizens, investors and workers, as well as to attract potential new businesses, tourists and residents (Kotler et al., 1993, p. 18).

The material bases of Singapore’s cultural production have provoked two main strands of local debate. The ‘symbolic economy’ of the arts is criticised because the arts and culture are being nurtured in Singapore for their economic worth rather than for their own intrinsic value. For example, the concept of arts hubbing emphasises massive infrastructural development, the import of foreign cultural specialists and recognises the needs of tourists. The benefi. ts to local practitioners and experimental arts groups, and the attention to smaller-scale development projects are less visible. A vocal critic of the hubbing concept is T. Sasitharan, then Artistic Director of The Substation who explains (cited in Rajendra, 1998, p. 10):

The hub model works for sea and air ports. It will not do for culture and the arts. It will retard the growth of our indigenous arts development and in the long run will be detrimental to Singaporean artists. Adoption of the hub model has led to the development of infrastructure over the development of manpower and skills—it emphasises hardware over software. And I believe it will not be sustainable.

One example of hardware emphasis is The Esplanade—Theatres by the Bay, which is the most expensive infrastructural development in the arts. To be completed over several phases from 2001 onwards, The Esplanade comprises several theatre and performance spaces costed about own intrinsic value. For example, the concept of arts hubbing em

performance spaces costed about S$6400 million. This massive undertaking reinforced the country’s keen interest in hosting hallmark events and foreign entertainment acts, but locals questioned the benefits that Singaporean practitioners would enjoy. Emphasising infrastructure (‘hardware’) without a concomitant cultivation of local manpower (‘software’) would run the risk of developing a city with all the trappings of a global hub but without a bedrock of local talent to fuel the ambition. Jonathan Benavides, Director of Andres Contemporary Art, had this to say of the government’s mindset:

I think the problem in Singapore is that they [the government] see art as trade, the way you see watches, furniture or plants. So, it’s just a trade and everything goes through the same procedure and I think that’s wrong; that’s wrong because art is culture. I always think Singapore is like a human body that is done up—all the buildings are there, the money and the infrastructure and the security and so forth and then the arts come to fi. ll a part of this body. And I think that’s one of the problems; the art business is not the same as selling watches (personal interview, 12 March 1998).

Cynics regard The Esplanade as the government’s way of boosting the arts scene by attracting blockbuster foreign acts rather than providing a seedbed for home-grown artistes. For example, the cancellation of plans to build the smaller theatres, according to Guarav Kripalni General Manager of Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT), is an unfortunate slap in the face for local arts practitioners:

It is a shame that they [the government] scrapped those smaller theatres, as they are needed to build up a vibrant local arts scene. So what you have now is the 2,000 seat auditorium. How many local theatre groups can fill a 2000 seat auditorium? SRT and maybe Action Theatre. Of these two and only over an extended period of time can we fill the 2000 seat auditorium. SRT can only do this once or twice a year. We need to do smaller shows the rest of the time because of our budget (cited in Lee, 1999, p. 26)

The rush to develop Singapore as a global city for the arts has therefore prioritised mega events, hallmark infrastructure and the ‘borrowing’ of international artistes. More must certainly be done at the grassroots level to stimulate local talent and to provide modestly scaled infrastructure. Cynics, however, question whether “a vibrant arts scene could ever be the result of government blue-prints” and whether an artistic society can be fostered through an economics-driven programme of change (Harvard Asia Pacific Review, 1996/ 97, p. 80). It has also been questioned whether the current climate of liberalisation is the outcome of social progress or simply a knee-jerk response to the exigencies of tourism promotion and capitalist accumulation (The Substation, 1996).

The goal of developing Singapore as a cultural and entertainment capital peopled with creative talents, tourists and skilled migrant workers has certainly raised important questions of local identity in a globalising city-state. Indeed, the quest to embrace Western art forms and entertainment events as part of Singapore’s cultural resource base has prompted many to question the place (or lack thereof) of Asian arts and creative expressions in the country. The desire to promote Western art forms may run the risk of marginalising local talents, rendering Singapore as a global city for the ‘borrowed arts’. In its quest to be a global cultural hub, local best practices must be questioned anew and realigned along international standards. The direction taken by the government to liberalise is a prudent first step, but more should be done to give creative specialists a freer hand to shape Singapore’s cultural and artistic landscape (Sasitharan, 1996).

3. Conclusion

As Singapore aims to be a ‘global city’ as well as the ‘best home’ for its citizens, the tensions between its global aspirations and local assertions have to be constantly renegotiated. Amidst these negotiations, the Singapore state has been active in the forging of a vision for the future (often acronymised as ‘Singapore 21’) which continues ‘the Singapore story’ (a catchphrase which encapsulates another state

as ‘Singapore 21’) which continues ‘the Singapore story’ (a catchphrase which encapsulates another state construction tracing Singapore’s trajectory of success from the past to the present) into the new millennium, envisaged as an age which brooks no retreat from the forces and consequences of globalisation. To position the city as an international hub for business, information and knowledge, as well as a springboard for venturing into the region, Singapore’s economic architects have developed a concerted effort to augment the pool of transnational talent. This includes both foreigners and Singaporeans who are equipped to respond to globalising and regionalising forces with the finesse of navigating between being ‘home’ and ‘away’ at the same time. Global cities, however, are not constituted solely by transnational elites; instead, the growth of the managerial and professional labour-force is predicated on the lowwage service and manufacturing jobs that service the expanding, highly specialised service sector (Sassen, 1991, p. 315).

While this is so, fears of the ‘peripheralisation of the core’ have meant that globalising cities such as Singapore have introduced stringent, finely calibrated policies regulating the inflow of low-skilled transnational migrants on a ‘use and discard’ principle. Singapore’s best practice in tourism has been to redefine the very parameters of ‘tourism’ such that both visitors and investments are being catered for. The planning implications are multifold as ‘strategic tourism marketing’ is no longer confined to beautifying the city, but also provides the requisite infrastructure to facilitate capital investment and wealth creation in the region. In the area of culture, Singapore aspires to be a ‘global city for the arts’. An economistic approach is adopted, deploying culture as a multipurpose tool to attract niche tourists and skilled talent, to develop new service sectors and to upgrade the quality of lives of Singaporeans. The planning implications have been to develop the cultural infrastructure, to market Singapore as a pleasant place in which to live and work and to realign local rules of governance in tandem with international standards.

As mentioned earlier, the processes of globalisation and transnationalisation in Singapore are certainly not new. In fact, as King (1997, p. 8) asserted, colonial cities in the 19th century were the first globally multiracial, multicultural, multicontinental societies in the world. What are novel, however, are the particular configurations of activities and people in cities; the intensity of interconnections between communities; as well as the types of problems which are emerging. Hannerz’s (1993) paper on cultural flows in world cities presents a framework to identify different transnational activities and people in Singapore. The 1990s marks a dawning in the country’s role as a global city in many areas—for example, in finance, business, tourism, culture and the arts. We argue that Singapore’s global city status has informed its configuration of people and activities comprising corporate elites, immigrant populations, world travellers and creative specialists. This particular configuration is in turn the outcome of local policies, reflecting the government’s overarching strategy of ‘bringing the world to Singapore’ (EDB, 1995) as well as its more recent efforts to create a ‘better home’ through the Singapore 21 initiative. The distinctive character and problems of global cities emerge from their disparate communities comprising transients, sojourners, immigrants and citizens, and their interactions with each other. In many ways, Singapore has always been a community of locals and cosmopolitans, of insiders and outsiders. As an immigrant society, the earliest challenge of independence was to create a cohesive community among disparate ethnic groups.

The challenge of a transnational society is to quell tensions between multiple local and foreign groups in what Short (1996) calls a ‘new urban order’, and what Appadurai (1990) describes as a fluid, fractured and shifting ‘ethnoscape’.

While not new, these issues have been thrown up in sharp relief by the rapid influx of ‘foreigners in our midst’: from 9 per cent in 1980, the proportion of foreigners has jumped to 14 per cent in 1990 and reached 24 per cent in 1999 (in other words, 1 in 4 residents in Singapore is a ‘foreigner’) (The Business Times, 21 March 2000). Perhaps the most obvious tension lies in the local–foreign divide.

residents in Singapore is a ‘foreigner’) (The Business Times, 21 March 2000). Perhaps the most obvious tension lies in the local–foreign divide. While national identity is arguable in a nascent state in Singapore, it is clear that the onslaught of globalisation debates in recent years has honed a sense of who the ‘locals’ are, in counterpoint to the ‘foreigners’. This is evident in the polarisation of ‘local’ and ‘foreign’ in the various debates on the privileges of the citizen vis-a-vis the non-citizen and the portrayal of the ‘cosmopolitan’ versus the ‘heartlander’, terms which have gained currency as a means to define the ‘local’. In the words of the Prime Minister, while ‘cosmopolitans’ are international in outlook, skilled in banking, information technology, engineering, science and technology, and able to navigate comfortably anywhere in the world, ‘heartlanders’ are parochial in interest and orientation, make their living within the country, and play a major role in maintaining core values and social stability (Goh, 1999b). Even as Singaporeans tussle with how to define themselves, they have also to come to terms with the foreigners in their midst.

Singaporeans’ attitudes towards foreigners have been expressed in three ways (The Straits Times, 21 September 1997): ‘looking up to them’ (the colonial mentality that the expatriate is always right); ‘looking down on them’ (antagonism towards foreign domestic and manual workers); and ‘fear of them’ (fear of their physical presence and their ‘taking our jobs, our children’s places in schools, and marrying our daughters’). None of these attitudes helps to resolve the tensions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ or to provide a certain ‘emotional thickness’ (to paraphrase Amin and Thrift, 1992) to cope with the true breadth and depth of cosmopolitanism. The entrenched divides between insiders and outsiders have been most prominent in debates on how the economic pie is to be shared, but is also manifest elsewhere. In envisioning a global city of flows, another issue which has to be grappled with is the whole notion of ‘home/ citizenship’. Marked by significant citizenabsences and non-citizen-presences, citizenship and the rights to participate in the public sphere within the global city-state can no longer be defined solely on the basis of presence in a residential community or place (Staeheli and Thompson, 1997). The category ‘citizen’

sphere within the global city-state can no longer be defined solely on the basis of presence in a residential community or place (Staeheli and Thompson, 1997). The category ‘citizen’ (and its converse ‘non-citizen’) has to be dismantled and reconstructed to remain relevant to the reality of the kaleidoscopic ethnoscape of the global city, perhaps by associating rights and responsibilities to different degrees of permanence rather than binary categories of citizen–non-citizen. This will be a difficult political manoeuvre, given the anxieties about foreigners who invade the terrain of citizenry (for example, those in the ‘in-between’ Permanent Resident category who enjoy certain ‘citizen privileges’, or foreign workers who are given access to ‘community’ resources) embedded in the Singaporean psyche. It is also unclear how notions of the ‘global citizen’ and ‘cosmopolitan living’ will dovetail with the on-go ing project of nationbuilding based on the racial arithmetic of the four foundation ‘races’ as closed categories, a formula with little room for foreign others.

At a different end of the spectrum, citizen absences also have to be addressed. The idea of the ‘virtual state’ predicated on information networks binding Singaporeans wherever they are in the world to their ‘home’ has been mooted.

Recent debates on the question of ‘overseas voting’, however, suggest that the teasing apart of ‘nationality’ and ‘place’ has yet to be resolved. Against the state’s claim that “overseas voters are a small minority and do not justify having a complicated voting system for them to cast their ballots” (The Straits Times, 14 October 1998), several non-resident citizens have argued that not only does this amount to treating Singaporeans overseas as ‘secondclass’ citizens, it also contradicts the state’s go-regional, go-global push. Two such ‘absent’ citizens wrote:

For the many Singaporeans who have responded to the authorities’ call to go global and for the many who are thinking of it, official responses so far on overseas voting are of no help. If we leave Singapore,we will be considered lesser citizens. If we stay in Singapore, we will never be able to acquire the necessary knowledge and gain the relevant experience to help our country become an international play-

considered lesser citizens. If we stay in Singapore, we will never be able to acquire the necessary knowledge and gain the relevant experience to help our country become an international player (The Straits Times, 21 October 1998).

Finally, an issue which lies at the heart of the global city vision which has been given far less attention in public discourse is the interconnections and interdependence of the different transnational streams whose itineraries meet in the global city. We have already argued that the sustenance of the elite workforce including ‘foreign talent’ is predicated on the services of the low-wage, low-skilled sector. The pool of creative specialists in the arts and culture will also attract other groups of transnationals, namely international and regional tourists.

We have already argued that the social reproduction of the elite workforce including ‘foreign talent’ in the global city is predicated on the services of the low-wage, low-skilled sector which often comprised other foreigners. The failure to give emphasis to the interdependence of the two groups of transnationals is partly the failure to take into account the significance of the reproductive sphere in the production and sustenance of the global city. The large inflow of foreign domestic workers into the global city is a response to the developing crisis in the reproductive sphere as more local women are encouraged to enter the paid workforce in a globalising economy as well to the demands for (lowly) paid domestic service by the global (highly paid) expatriate labour-force which sustains the multinational business space in the city (Yeoh et al., 2000).

There is a need to acknowledge the different transnational flows outlined above as interdependent categories, and to understand global cities as meeting places for multiple communities whose intersection in place reflects their symbiotic though not always conflict-free relationship with each other. It is in this light that we conclude there is no standard ‘best practice’ for ‘model cities’ because the configuration, intensity and problems of transnational communities are different from place to place. Nevertheless, as the Singapore case testifies, sitespecific ‘best practices’ have been and will

different from place to place. Nevertheless, as the Singapore case testifies, site-specific ‘best practices’ have been and will always be forged in cities with an eye towards being cosmopolitan, creative and humane all at the same time. How successful they are will provide the ground for further debates and analyses.

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ZUKIN, S. (1995) The Cultures of Cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell

Bagan

Thazi

Mandalay

Inle Lake

Pyinmara

Chiang Mai

Pyay

Bago

Rangoon

Moulmein

Nam Tok

Kanchanbur

Nakon Pathom

Hua Hin

Chumphon

Bangkok

Surat Thani

Pedang Besar

Butterworth

Hat

Ipoh

Kuala Lumpur

Bangkok

Hanoi Nong Khai

Aranyaprathet & Poiphet

Vinh

Haiphong

CAMBODIA

Hue

Danang

Yat

Sungai Kolok

Khota Bahru

Gua Musang

Saigon

Nha Thang

Lumpur

Gemas Tampin

Johor Bahru

Singapore

Tanjung Balai

HarbourFront Passenger

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

HarbourFront Passenger Terminal

Telok Senimba (WaterFront)

Sakupang Nonguapura

Teluk Sebong

Pulau Lobam

Tanjung Pinang

Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal

Tanjung Pengelih

PULAU BATAM

JOHOR, MALAYSIA

PULAU BINTAN

Ferry route, Singapore , Malaysia and Indonesia

1957 to 1980

1980 to 1990

1990 to 2000

2000 to 2005

2005 to 2010 Singapore Land Reclamation from 1957 to 2010

Land Reclamation from 1957 to 2010

Total reclaimed land = 710.3 - 581.0 = 129.3 sq km

Total area for Carparking provision

Car lots = 557,799 x (4.8x2.4=11.52) = 6,425,844.84sqm

Lorry lots = 7,724 x (3.2x12.63=40.416) = 312,173.184sqm

*Lorry lot width = 3+3+3.3+3.3+3.3+3.3/6 = 3.2

*Lorry lot length = 9.3+7.5+14+12+19+14/6 = 12.63

Motorcycle lots = 148,105 x (2.4x0.8=1.92) = 284,361.6sqm

Total area for parking provision = 6,425,844.84 + 312,173.184 + 284,316.6 = 7,022,379.264sqm = 7.022km2 7.022

Total rail length = 147.7km

Average rail width = 10m

14.77km2

Total area = 14.77km2

Total MRT rail area, Singapore

38.22km2

Total road (asphalt) coverage

Road in-length kilometre as at 2009 = 8.848km

Average road width

3.7+3.7+5.5+5+3.7/5 = 4.32m

Total area = 8.848 x 4.32m = 38.22km2

57.3 sqkm

Total industrial area in Singapore

JTC industrial estates, business parks, Singapore Science Park, One North, Port.

Total Industrial Area, Singapore

77.078km2

Total HDB coverage (1 storey only)

Number of HDB units as at 31st March 2009

1-room flats = 19,652

2-room flats = 29,431

3-room flats = 220,545

4-room flats = 337,020

5-room flats = 209,069

Executive, Studio & HUDC = 68,179

Total area

1-room flats = 19,652 x 30m2 = 589.560m2

2-room flats = 29,431 x 45m2 = 1,324,395m2

3-room flats = 220,545 x 65m2 = 14,335,425m2

4-room flats = 337,020 x 90m2 = 30,331,800m2

5-room flats = 209,069 x 110m2 = 22,997,590m2

Executive, Studio & HUDC = 68,179 x 110m2 = 7,499,690m2

Total area for HDB housing = 77,078,460m2 = 77.078km2

Total Military Area : 83.34km2 83.34km2

Agriculture sites 1960

Total area of agriculture land.

183.63 sq km

Agriculture sites 1980

Total area of agriculture land.

13.0km2 Total agriculture land area

Kranji Reservoir

Sarimbun Reservoir

Murai Reservoir

Poyan Reservoir

Tengeh Reservoir

Jurong Lake

Ulu Pandan Reservoir

NEWATER DESALINATION

Seletar Reservoir

Sungei Seletar Reservoir

Pulau Tekong Reservoir

Upper & Lower Peirce Reservoir

MacRitchie Reservoir

Bedok Reservoir

Marina Reservoir

Water Supply: “Four National Taps”

Water Supply: “Four National Taps”

NEWATER DESALINATION

Imported water from Malaysia via water pipeline

Water Supply: “Four National Taps”

Water Supply: “Four National Taps”

LOCAL CATCHMENTS IMPORTED WATER

Bedok WRP 4%

Changi WRP 46%

Jurong WRP 11%

NEWATER DESALINATION

Kranji WRP 46%

Seletar WRP 3%

Ulu Pandan WRP 24%

WRP - Water Reclamation Plant

Total Volume of Used Water Treated in 2009 = 516 mil cubic meters

Water Supply: “Four National Taps”

Water Supply: “Four National Taps”

LOCAL CATCHMENTS IMPORTED WATER

Hyflux Desalination Plant at Tuas capacity to provide 10% of national demand (110,000m3/day)

Seawater Reverse Osmosis

NEWATER DESALINATION

Water Supply: “Four National Taps”

Water Supply: “Four National Taps”

water consumption 2006 = 509 000 000 cubic metres

Water Supply: “Four National

Water Supply: “Four National Taps”

Agrotechnology Park

Location of Agrotechnology Parks

Agrotechnology Parks are modern agriculture estates developed with the necessary infrastructure for farming. There are a total of six such parks. To date, these parks occupy a total land area of 14.65 km² and nearly 7 km² have been allocated to over 200 farms for the production of livestock, eggs, milk, aquarium and food fish, vegetables, fruits, orchids, ornamental and aquatic plants, as well as for the breeding of birds and dogs. The modern farms in the Agrotechnology Parks develop, adapt and showcase advanced technologies and techniques for intensive farming systems, and for export of high value and quality products and services to other tropical countries in the region.

Lim Chu Kang

Murai Sungei Tengah

Mandai Nee Soon Loyang

Land allocation for various farming activities

Chicken = 31.6kg / per year

Fish = 16.4kg / per year

Vegetable = 83.8kg / per year

Fruits = 69.1kg / per year

Mutton = 2.1kg / per year

Duck = 19.1kg / per year

Pork = 4.0kg / per year

Beef = 2.7kg / per year

(Source: http://www.lta.gov.sg/corp_info/doc/MVP01-1%20%28MVP%20by%20type%29.pdf)

Motorcycle lots: 148,105 approx.

Motorcycle parking lot size: 2400 x 800mm = 1.92sqm

Total area allocated for Motorcycle parking lots = 284,361.6sqm

Car lots: 557,799 approx.

Car parking lot size: 2400 x 4800mm = 11.52sqm

Total area allocated for Car parking lots = 6,425,844.48sqm

Lorry lots: 7,724 approx.

Lorry lot size: 3.2 x 12.63 = 40.416sqm

Total area allocated for Lorry parking lots = 312,173.184sqm

Singapore land area 710.3 sqkm

Singapore’s carparking provision

Motorcycle: 284,361.6sqm

Car: 6,425,844.48sqm

Lorry: 312,173.184sqm

Total = 7,022,379.26 = 7.022sqkm

0.98% of Singapore’s land area

(Source: http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10221p.nsf/0/d4a0f107613b79944825766200236310/$file/Key%20Statistics.pdf

Singapore’s carparking provision

Licensced Farming Area in Singapore

Airports (height restrictions of 60-90 AMSL)

Average mean Temperature 30.393

Average mean Temperature 28.065

Petrolchemical

PRIMARY ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY SECTORS 2005

ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION BY SECTORS 2005

Total Refuse Disposed Of (’000 tonnes)

Landfill (’000 tonnes)

Incinerated Waste (’000 tonnes)

Pulau Semakau

Area 350 ha

Opened April 1999

Initial Capacity 63 million m�

Cost S$630 million

Remaining Area 55% approx.

Initially, it had an area of 70 ha and a coastline of more than 3km. To create the landfill, space between Pulau Semakau and Pulau Sakeng was enclosed. The Semakau Landfill receives incinerated ash and other non-incinerable waste from the Ulu Pandan, Tuas, Tuas South and Senoko plants.

During the construction of the landfill, 13 ha of mangroves were destroyed. 400,000 mangrove saplings were planted by the NEA on 14ha of mud-beds to replace them. To safeguard against leaching, a 7km confinement bund surrounds the landfill site. It is lined with an impermeable membrane and a layer of marine clay to prevent the leakage of waste water.

Singapore’s Recycled Waste 2008 & 2009

*Retail space figures do not include F&B establishments

Retail sales per square metre of floor area rose by 3.4% to $12,200 in 2008. Retail sales per sqm generated by retailers of general merchandise, personal goods and household equipment ranged from $9,600 - $11,600.

Shop Space in Singapore (Net Leasable Area, excluding F&B & Entertainment)

* Retail Categories

General Goods:

Department stores

Department stores cum supermarkets

Supermarkets

Mini-marts, convenience stores and provision shops

Non-specialised retail trade in stores

Cosmetics and toiletries

Pharmacies and drug stores (Western)

Chinese medicine shops

Pharmaceutical and medical goods nec

Textiles

Wearing apparel for adults

Children and infants’ wear and products

Footwear

Bags, luggages and travel accessories

Sewing and clothing accessories

Textiles, clothing, footwear and leather goods

Sporting goods and health equipment

Musical instruments and scores

Record albums, cassette tapes, laser discs and compact discs (including VCDs, DVDs)

Toys and games

Computer games and consoles

Jewellery

Costume jewellery

Watches and clocks

Sporting, recreational goods and personal effects

Spectacles and other optical goods

Cameras and other photographic goods

Books, magazines and stationery (including newsvendors)

Optical and photographic goods, books, magazines and paper products

Transport Equipment

Motor vehicles except motorcycles and scooters

Motorcycles and scooters

Tyres and batteries

Spare parts and accessories for motor vehicles

Petrol service stations (petrol kiosks)

Bicycles, tricycles and baby carriages (incl. spare parts)

Other transport equipment nec (e.g. motor boats, sail boats)

Household Equipment

Furniture (including mattresses, cushions)

Furnishings (e.g. curtains, carpets, pillow cases)

Lighting and lighting accessories

Crockery, cutlery and kitchen utensils

Household electrical appliances and equipment (e.g. vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators)

Radio, television sets and sound reproducing and recording equipment

Household appliances, articles and equipment

Pagers, handphones and other telecommunications apparatus

Calculators, typewriters and other office equipment

Computer hardware and accessories and computer software (except games)

Computer and office equipment consumables (e.g. diskettes, computer cards, printer ribbons)

Others

Fruits and vegetables

Meat, poultry, eggs and seafood

Confectionery and bakery products

Health food

Liquor and soft drinks

Cigarettes and other tobacco products

Food, beverages and tobacco in specialised stores

Paints

Hardware (e.g. chains, changkols, axes)

Construction materials, hardware, paint and glass nec

Antiques, works of art, handicrafts, collectibles and gifts

Cut flowers (including wreaths)

Artificial flowers and plants

Aquarium fishes (including food and accessories)

Pet birds and animals (including food and accessories)

Handicrafts and fancy goods, flowers, plants and pet animals

Joss paper and other ceremonial products

LP Gas

Security and fire-fighting equipment

Other specific commodities nec (e.g. jute bags)

Retail sale of second-hand goods in stores

Mail order agencies

Other non-store retail sale (e.g. sale via door-to-door canvassing and vending machines)

(e.g. refrigerators) and telecommunications equipment computer (e.g. stores glass nec and gifts accessories) accessories) and pet door-to-door

** Types of Malls

Singapore land area 710.3 sqkm 77.078km2 (10.85%)

Total area for HDB housing (on 1 storey) = 77,078,460m2 = 77.078km2 (refer to page 41)

Estimated 3,000,000 Singaporean stays in HDB

1 Singaporean will get = 77,078,460m2 / 3,000,000 = 25.69m2

When each Singaporean gets 25sqm

5000 x 5000mm = 25sqm

25sqm unit for 1 Singaporean

25 x 4 =100sqm unit for 4 Singaporeans family

Usable greenery = 5.03km2

Carparking = 7.022km2

Licensed Farm = 10.73km2

MRT = 14.77km2

Cross Border Eco Connection = 17.58km2

Reservoir = 27.9km2

Road area = 38.22km2

Total area = 338.97km2

Area coverage = 338.97/710.3 x 100% = 47.72%

Military = 83.34km2

HDB = 77.078km2

Industrial area = 57.3km2

PROBE #2: CONSTRUCT OF CITIES

DENSITY & SCALE: A HYPOTHETICAL RUBANISED CITY THE SIZE OF SINGAPORE

by Tay Kheng Soon

Plot Ratio Fallacy

Conventional land-use planning methodology is based on two-dimensional allocations of land space mapped to accommodate the competing needs for residential, commercial, industrial and open spaces. Planning also has to take into account transportation and the provision of drainage and utility services. All these are expressed in the “plan” or plans.

In this essay, I will not comment on the political and economic aspects that are also important in planning but focus only on how density is perceived and planned for. Because of the need to control developments, plot ratio is used. Developers may only build according to the prescribed density as defined by plot ratio. Plot ratios are defined as the gross floor area expressed as a ration against the net site area. Therefore a plot ratio of 3:1, for example, means that only a gross floor area of 3 times the net site area is permitted. Once the surrounding roads, open spaces and other spaces are added, the plot ratio mathematically drops.

Typically, the plot ratio 3.5:1 of a typical recent HDB neighbourhood drops to 1.5:1 when one calculates the plot ratio across the entire new town. This would include all the other developments such as schools, the town centre, the parks and the drainage reserves and the roads etc. Plot ratio as a means of development control is thus not useful as a planning tool to visualize the impact and quality of the end result. Unless every plot includes the centre line of all perimeter roads and other adjacent infrastructure, it is not possible to gross up the floor areas island- wide to make a judgement, as to the end effect, from the mathematically incoherent method of plot ratio as it is presently defined

So this is the first deficiency in existing urban planning methodology. The main

deficiency is that there is no grasp of the total volume of floor space at any moment in time. This is very important because if we know the total volume desired or allowed, a dynamic decision process can be put in place because it is immediately intelligible that building more in one place means building less in another. This means that local factors can play a bigger part in affecting planning decisions. For example, if a site is found to have great historical and sentimental value, the intended floor space there can be redeployed elsewhere, setting off a dynamic but rational review process. As it is, there is a tendency to optimize everywhere, and because the gross is never known at any one time, the planning process becomes rigid and non-responsive.

A Hypothesized City the Size of Singapore

The proper way to get a grip on the mathematics of space is important, and the methodology has to be different. The new method for this City starts by computing the gross floor area of all buildings of every type, and expresses this as a percentage of the total land area. This gives the mathematical quantum on which to decide where to locate the floor space, with the ability to always know what the overall effect elsewhere is or can be. In Singapore this is easy because the total land area is absolutely definable. Singapore is approximately 700 square kilometers or 700,000,000 m2. If the per-capita floor area is 50m2 and the population is 5,000,000 the gross floor area is 250,000,000m2. Expressed as a ratio against the total land area, the gross floor area is 250,000,000/700,000,000 or 0.036, approximately 1/3 of the land assuming that all the buildings are one storey high. If they are 2 storeys the ratio is 1/6, if 4 storeys the ratio is 1/12.

Now of course buildings must have spaces between them for light, ventilation and service roads etc. Let’s say the spaces between the buildings are 100% of their foot prints; this means that the coverage of all the 4 storey buildings would decrease from 1/12th to 1/6th of the whole island.

Still a very attractive proposition since the remainder of 5/6th of the island can be given to large parks, highways, military training areas, seaport and airports.

On this basis, the hypothetical planning of an island, the same size as Singapore could be Rubanised with 200 Ruban settlements each accommodating 25,000 people with mixed uses for living, working, learning, playing, farming and healing at different ratios of mix, with as many varied designs to match the mix as architects can imagine.

Each Ruban settlement will be no larger than 1 km in diameter to ensure walkability, and every such settlement will be surrounded by farms, green spaces and forests which act as buffers to the adjacent Ruban settlements. Where desired, these Ruban settlements could be placed adjacent to increase connectivity, but being circular there would still be pendantive green spaces between them.

Jumping to the world scale mathematically is also possible and such an exercise raises even more provocative questions. The following illustrates: this is a question of how humans should dwell on planet Earth. This question gets ever more important as global population grows. The mathematics of human settlement needs to be done to clear the mind on what are the dimensions of the issue. We need to calculate the quantities involved.

There are 19 million square kilo-meters of net arable land on planet Earth. This figure excludes water bodies, steep hill slopes and other unsuitable topographical features for the cultivation of crops. Next, we need to estimate the total floor area needed for dwellings, commercial, civic and all other floor areas needed to sustain the global population. These areas are aggregated to compute the total footprint of human needs expressed as a percentage of arable land. This is necessary because unfortunately there is no accurate census of floor area globally. Such data is vital but unavailable. The only way now is to estimate it. To do this, we need an estimate of per-capita gross floor area.

My estimate for affluent Singapore is 50m2 so it seems reasonable if we assume an average of 35m2 per person globally for the world’s poor. We now need to address a relevant population group of the poor, which we assume to be 4 billion people: three billion in poor rural areas and one billion in urban slums. We thus get a total of 140,000km2 of gross floor area occupied by the poor. Divided by 19 million square kilometres, the footprint (land coverage) on the arable land is therefore 140,000km2 divided by 19,000,000km2 or 0.8 percent, and this is assuming all buildings are one storey high. If they were averagely 2 storeys high, the land coverage impact would be halved to 0.4 percent.

Refinements of these calculations is vital such as to account for existing buildings and percentage of new ones etc. also estimates of obsolete ones and the impact of class differentials in floor space occupation etc. The complexity increases once we simulate the change dynamics caused by development activities and distortions caused by programmatic inefficiencies. Still the rough numbers already raise many challenging questions to orthodox thinking. As it stands, the numbers already mean that there are huge options in human settlement types than currently thought and mega urbanisation is wrong thinking. There are of course many fine points. We need to add roads, drainage canals. Infrastructure requirements, spacing between buildings, local parks etc. even if we triple the foot-print to account for these, and the gross curtilage of settlements increases to a mere 1.5%, still rather insignificant. There are other variables like building on hills rather than on flat farm lands or on stilts over water bodies. The options and answers increase. Clearly, decentralized human settlements are only limited by availability of connecting roads and other utility services. Establishing stand alone infrastructures such as local water treatment and supply, electricity from wind, solar and biodiesel can increase the spread of small dense urbanised settlements away from the big cities. Clearly then the pattern of small dense urbanised rural settlements will fan outwards from the big cities initially-

but increasingly extend into the remotest areas eventually.

What is mathematically clear has yet to affect current planning thinking rules as they are by orthodox methodologies and presumed certainties. The issue of the speed of change is always restricted by institutional barriers. In the case of planning it includes academia that still fails to consider the mathematics of three-dimensional planning methodology. This essay is not a mere provocation. It is a challenge to rethink city planning and living.

LAND AREA & POPULATION COMPARISONS

VENICE

LAND AREA= 7 km2

Land area = 7km2

POPULATION= 4567

Population = 4,567

POPULATION DENSITY= 652/km2

Population density = 652/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

LAND AREA & POPULATION COMPARISONS

MANHATTAN

MANHATTAN

LAND AREA= 88km2

Land area = 88km2

POPULATION= 2,410,672

Population = 2,410,672

Population density = 27,394/km2

POPULATION DENSITY= 27394/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

LAND AREA & POPULATION COMPARISONS

BARCELONA

BARCELONA

LAND AREA= 102km2

Land area = 102km2

POPULATION= 1,623,126

Population = 1,623,126

Population density = 15,913/km2

POPULATION DENSITY= 15913/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

LAND AREA & POPULATION COMPARISONS

PARIS

PARIS

LAND AREA= 105 km2

Land area = 105km2

POPULATION= 2,184,735

Population = 2,184,735

Population density = 20,807/km2

POPULATION DENSITY= 20807/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

LAND AREA & POPULATION COMPARISONS

ROME

ROME

LAND AREA= 346 km2

Land area = 346km2

POPULATION= 738364

Population = 738,364

Population density = 2,134/km2

POPULATION DENSITY= 2134/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

LAND AREA & POPULATION COMPARISONS

TOKYO

TOKYO

LAND AREA= 578 km2

Land area = 578km2

POPULATION= 3,379,566

Population = 3,379,566

Population density = 5,847/km2

POPULATION DENSITY= 5847/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

LAND AREA & POPULATION COMPARISONS

HONG KONG

HONG KONG

LAND AREA= 1104 km2

Land area = 1,104km2

POPULATION= 7,153,920

Population = 7,153,920

Population density = 6,480/km2

POPULATION DENSITY= 6480/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

LAND AREA & POPULATION COMPARISONS

LOS ANGELAS

LOS ANGELES

LAND AREA= 1291 km2

Land area = 1,291km2

POPULATION= 10,592,655

Population = 10,592,655

Population density = 8,205/km2

POPULATION DENSITY= 8205/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

BANGKOK

Land area = 1,568km2

Population = 12,000,000

Population density = 5,258/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

LAND AREA & POPULATION COMPARISONS

LONDON

LONDON

LAND AREA= 1610 km2

Land area = 1,610km2

POPULATION= 7,665,210

Population = 7,665,210

Population density = 4,761/km2

POPULATION DENSITY= 4761/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

SHANGHAI

Land area = 6,340 km2

Population = 13,054,060

Population density = 2,059/km2

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

LAND AREA= 704 km2

Land area = 704 km2

POPULATION= 4,943,488

Population = 4,943,488

POPULATION DENSITY= 7022 /km2

Population density = 7,022/km2

PROBE #3: CONSTRUCT OF UTOPIA

DISPLACING SINGAPORE

by Peter Schoppert

« ‘I have neither desires nor fears’, the Khan declared, ‘and my dreams are composed either by my mind or by chance. Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives a question of yours. Or the question it asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx.» - Italo Calvino, Dialogue of Marco Polo & the Great Khan, Imaginary Cities

When this place meant something, many years ago, there was a boulder that stood on a sandy spit at the mouth of the Singapore River. Two meters tall, the boulder had been split in two, one face carved to receive an inscription. Of the inscription we know very little, for only fragments remain. It was an Indic script, marking the island’s relations with the powerful port kingdoms of the Malay World: Majapahit probably, the Empire of the Bael Tree, or perhaps the old Sumatran kingdom of Srivijaya.

Five hundred years ago, or a thousand, Singapore was one of the many ports that grew, flourished, and faded back into an ignominy of mud and mosquitoes, in time with the tidal ebb of trade, of power, of the varying charisma of princes and admirals. In the ninth century Singapore was Dragon’s Tooth Gate, a far port on the Chinese maps; in the 13th, she sent a tribute of elephants to the Great Khan.

In the 14th, judging from the old Annals, and from a few bits of celadon and a gold bracelet found on the Forbidden Hill that backs the river, Singapore was home to a prince, or princes. But we know little of these princes and their realm: was Singapore the temporary encampment for renegade prince on his way to found Malacca? Or was it a thriving city on its own, capital to three, or even five, generations of rulers, center of the Malay World, before Malacca? The Annals are ambiguous, yielding to many readings. Scholars are divided, or at least, resigned

to uncertainty. Propagandists prefer not to dig too deeply. Archaeologists have nowhere left to dig: few patches of soil in Singapore remain undisturbed.

The Singapore Stone was the surviving witness to this history, to all the wealth and transience of old Temasek, of Sri Tri Buana, Parameswara and Iskandar Shah, the World Conqueror.

Munshi Abdullah, dedicated, compromised chronicler of early British Singapore, and the man who tutored Raffles in Malay, records how wise men from all of Singapore’s communities claimed the Stone for their own:

«The Indians declared that the writing was Hindu but they were unable to read it. The Chinese claimed that it was in Chinese characters. I went with a party of people, and also Mr Raffles and Mr Thomsen, and we all looked at the rock. I noticed that in shape the lettering was rather like Arabic, but could not read it…»

Some applied colored powders or lampblack to the stone, some took rubbings, some made castings, in an effort to better discern the outline of the blurred and worn characters. We will never know which wise man was closest to the truth, because in 1843 the Singapore Stone was broken up to make way for the house of the Harbormaster.

The few surviving pieces of the Stone—placed for safekeeping, or as a curiosity, on the veranda of the Governor’s Mansion—were hacked up by laborers for gravel a few years later, to pave the driveway. Three fragments remain to this day: two in Singapore’s History Museum, one catalogued but impossible to find, somewhere in the storage of the Calcutta Museum.

Singapore is a land that has misplaced its most ancient monument. Who is the wise man who will claim the emptiness that remains?

The city churns. It changes constantly. Its citizens are persuaded that their survival depends on constant, never-ending labor-

and effort. And while they are champion traders and makers of things, those efforts depend on far-off markets, on the fortunes of strangers. The only labor which is in their own hands, and for which they pay themselves from their own substantial savings, is home improvement: the building and rebuilding of roads, bridges, tunnels, barracks, godowns and quays, office blocks, factories, slaughterhouses, hospitals, emporia, bomb shelters, airfields, schools, mansions, under- and overpasses, pathways and playgrounds, and drains deep enough to float a fleet. The busstops are made with Ibeams and granite.

The city is constrained onto an island, and so all this ceaseless, nervous energy works upon itself, over and over again. Buildings are improved, upgraded, extended, torn-down and replaced, after brief years of service. Fortunes are made; roads are widened. New maps for new towns are overlaid completely on top of the old ones. The hills have been flattened, the swamps have long since been drained, and the coastline expands without cease, swelling into the sea, forcing a redrafting of all the maps, new surveys of all the boundaries.

The past continually makes way for a future that has no time to ripen into a present. And the citizens never imagine the city that awaits at the end of all that labor.

«If you ask ‘Why is Thekla’s construction taking such a long time?’, the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer, ‘So that its destruction cannot begin.’ And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffolding is removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, ‘Not only the city.’» - Italo Calvino, Cities & the Sky 3, Imaginary Cities

Threatened by an approaching thunderstorm, we pick over the piles of earth. The construction site is idle. We have a few hours to retrieve what material we can from the excavated soil. This is Pulo Saigon. Once a waterlogged island, a bit of mud and mangrove, it has become part of the ware-

house district that crowds both banks of the Singapore River along its short navigable length.

In the days ahead, the area is to be excavated, or rather, excised. Tunneling works willbring a new roadway from the north, under the Singapore River. At Pulo Saigon the tunneling will meet a long southwards running open cut, a huge trench forty meters wide, a hundred deep and 1500 meters long. After the excavations are complete, and tunnel joined to trench, the open cut will be covered over, forming a new surface over the underground roadway.

We are here on a salvage expedition. One of Singapore’s amateur archaeologists, perhaps its only, had come across some stones while examining the newly cleared site. The stones are interesting, but hard to read. They could be axes in the “smash-and grab” style of the later Neolithic. Or they could simply be oval-shaped rocks. Most examples of these axes are ambiguous at best. The prehistorian’s craft is a difficult one, worked at the margins of legibility. On the basis of these finds though, and given the site’s proximity to the river, Singapore’s only professional archaeologist thought it worthwhile to request permission to survey the site, and to rescue what material he could from the first layers of soil that had been cleared away.

The Public Works Department, and the contractor who controlled the site did indeed grant a window of time in which to work: three hours on a Sunday afternoon. And this is how we few volunteers find ourselves here, picking our way between the lorries, cranes and excavators marshaled for action for Monday, when the earth will be moved in earnest.

The piles of earth are full of material, rich in detritus. As the afternoon wears on, we don’t find any hand-axes, no prehistoric stones, nothing of the Neolithic. We do find plenty of colonial glass, and shards and shards of 100-year-old Qing blue-and-white, the rice bowls of Singapore’s coolies, who arrived from the same places their crockery did: Swatow, Amoy, Canton.

We find fine-grained granite, from Southern China too, brought here as ships’ ballast, and used as paving stones, or discarded.

We find European stoneware, old gin bottles, and badly-fired old bricks, their centers still black with carbon. We find pieces of grey and black earthenware which could be a thousand years old, or a hundred, so common is this type of vessel to Southeast Asia.

And then, as large pregnant rain drops begin to fall around us, as the clouds loom lower, Chor Lin finds something else. Pieces of celadon, green glaze on a heavy stoneware body. Six hundred years old and made in China when the Mongols ruled, these pieces are contemporary with the fragments found downstream and across the river, on the Forbidden Hill. This is hard evidence that 14th century Singapore was a large, thriving city, with settlements on both banks, and this far up the river. One piece, two, three, then four, and then we scramble away, drenched and afraid of the lightening strikes that seem now to move between the cranes.

The next day, the bulldozers have their way, scrambling all traces. Four broken shards, from piles of disturbed soil. According to the standards of the archaeologist, this is meaningless, random information. We have found nothing.

Three months later, I walk across a traffic island on a freshly-made exit ramp for the new Ayer Rajah Expressway. The island has not yet been landscaped. The turf has not yet been laid. I notice shards of blue and white. I pick them up: Qing blue-and-white, the rice bowls of two generations earlier. The excavated earth we picked over weeks earlier has been trucked out and distributed around the island for landfill, bearing with it all its evidence, all its history, all its burden.

«…It is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either-

erase the city, or are erased by it.» - Italo Calvino,Thin Cities 2, in Imaginary Cities

Singapore is a city that has misplaced its most ancient monument. Perhaps that is just as well, for no monument could be big enough to accommodate all of Singapore’s meanings and memories. No monument could be subtle enough in design to encompass all the comings and goings that this city has known.

But what about the landscape? The shape of the land, its forms and outlines, and buildings, corners, vistas, all of this read in the light of history, of experience. Isn’t this a kind of monument writ large, a visual reference point for everyone’s memories? Think of the long avenues of Manhattan, the seven hills of Rome, the Golden Horn, Parisian boulevards, Beijing’s precise orientation, its Drum Tower hill. In a sense, Singapore has misplaced this dimension of itself too, rubbed it smooth, made it featureless. The bodiless dragon, all head and no heart, Singapore, the imaginary city, has somehow succeeded in displacing its own landscape.

Since the founding of the modern settlement, nearly 200 years ago, alteration of the island’s coastlines and topography has been something close to an obsession. Sir Stamford Raffles personally directed the first landfill operations in late 1821, on the southern bank of the Singapore River, two-and-a-half years after founding his treaty port. Munshi Abdullah said it was like “men going to war”. Raffles wrote to England that

«I have had everything to new-mould from first to last; to introduce a system of energy, purity, and encouragement; to remove nearly all the inhabitants, and to re-settle them; to line out towns, streets, and roads; to level the high and fill up the low lands…»

Raffles’ successors followed in the same vein, driven by a vision of a hundred-year-effort to impose a Western rational will on an Asian landscape, on Oriental peoples, on the myriad threats implied by, and excused by, a tropical climate. Independence thirty-five years ago brought different motivations,

different rhetoric, but similar results, the continual remaking of the land.

If Singapore could be said to have a single landmark, it would be its skyline, seem from the sea. The vista has attracted attention for years, since draftsmen recorded its profile in all the illustrated journals of empire. But there have been three generations, in some cases four, of buildings in the prominent spots along the waterfront and river. One edifice has replaced another, and another, and so on. It is difficult, often impossible, to find the traces of one skyline in the contours of another seen 40 years later or earlier.

Today, some 18% of Singapore’s total area is reclaimed land. The Tian Hock Kian Temple, built on the beach by Hokkien sailors thankful for safe crossings, is now not one but three miles from the Straits, separated from the sea by the city’s current financial district, and further on, the reclaimed land that will be its financial district in thirty years. Most of the seaside villas of Singapore’s Jazz Age rich were torn down for condos years ago. The few that survive are now a mile from the seashore, separated by housing blocks, markets, shopping centers, the highway to the airport and a park. The islands off the southwestern coast of the island have been joined together to form an new island industrial site; the bays of the northwest have been sealed off and turned to reservoirs. At the eastern and western ends of the island, xxx square miles of land have been added, industrial estates, housing, an airport, requiring the import of tons and tons of soil.

What is the genius loci of a place where the land beneath your feet is imported? Still, this is no diatribe, (though it may be as exaggerated). So what if Singapore has no landscape, in any full sense of the word? Perhaps it is better to be lost than found. Who needs all the bloody ballast of land and destiny? Singapore is about routes, not roots: an intersection point of the trajectories of a thousand journeys. Singapore is the sum of a hundred diaspora: at night, it seems everyone is dreaming about somewhere else.

This essay by Peter Schoppert was first published in Lucas Jodogne’s Singapore: Views on the Urban Landscape, Antwerp: Paragon, 1998 (ISBN:908-5325-101-4).

A fortress city based on Michelangelo’s fortification designs and built in 1593. The city is meant to be self-sustaining and has an elevaiton of -27m

Area (km2) = 13.32

Population = 5400

Density (pers/km2) = 405.405

Density: 405 pers/km2, Palmanova

Palmanova (Citta Stellate)

Density: 405 pers/km2, Palmanova

Renaissance Star Fort | Palmanova | Vincenzo Sarmozzi

Area (km2) = 13.32 x 11 = 146.52

Area Coverage = 146.52 / 710.3 x 100% = 20.63%

Population = 5400 x 11 = 59,400

Density (pers/km2) = 405.405

Density: 405 pers/km2, Palmanova

11 Palmanova

Area (km2) = 13.32 x 61 = 812.52

Area Coverage = 812.52 / 710.3 x 100% = 114.39%

Population = 5400 x 61 = 329,400

Density (pers/km2) = 405.405

Density: 405 pers/km2, Palmanova

61 Palmanova

Broadacre City, Frank Lloyd Wright

A suburban concept proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright, he conceived a vision where every family (5 members) would be given 1 acre (4,000m2) plot of land

Area(km2) = 10.24

Population = 5,000

Density(Pers/km2) = 488

Description: Residential lot would be divided into 165ft x 264ft (50x80m), 12 x 15 storey towers housing 33 apartments each, and everywhere is within walking distance. Automobiles are only used to travel from one city to another.

Density: 488 pers/km2, Broadacre City

250 Broadacre City

Area (km2) = 10.24 x 250 = 2560

Area coverage = 2560/710.3 x 100% = 360.41%

Population = 5,000 x 250 = 1,250,000

Density (Pers/km2) = 488

Density: 488 pers/km2, Broadacre City

Cité Industrielle

Integrating residence, factories, schools, hospitals into a city, the plan allows for expansion of each zone to occur.

A variety of low-density housing is provided, emphasizing the horizontality of this scheme.

Area (km2) = 16

Population = 35 000

Density (pers/km2) = 2187.5

1 : 60000

Area (km2) = 16 x 11 = 176

Area Coverage = 198 / 710.3 x 100% = 24.78%

Population = 35,000 x 18 = 630,000

Density (pers/km2) = 2187.5

Density: 2187 pers/km2, Cite Industrielle

11 Cité Industrielle

22 Cité Industrielle

Area (km2) = 16 x 22 = 352

Area Coverage = 352 / 710.3 x 100% = 49.56%

Population = 35,000 x 18 = 630,000

Density (pers/km2) = 2187.5

Density: 5000 pers/km2, Mirage City

MIRAGE CITY, ARATA ISOZAKI

ARATA ISOZAKI- MIRAGE CITY, ZHUHAI GUANDONG, CHINA

Mainland

Resort development

Residential/Business/ Commercial

Central district

Dwellings on the water

Residential/Business/ Commercial

Artifical Island

Area= 4km2

Population= 20,000

Density= 5000

Building typology modeled after ‘ke jia’ and ‘si he yuan’

Density: 5000 pers/km2, Mirage City

12 Artifical Island Population= 240,000

Density: 5000 pers/km2, Mirage City

Density: 6000 pers/km2, Mesa City

MESA CITY, PAOLO SOLERI

PAOLO SOLERI- MESA CITY

Area: 350km2

Total Population : 2,000,000

Density: 5714

Village size: 0.8km2

Village population: 3,000

Production/Marketing belt

Refuse/ Regeneration belt

Theological complex

Reservoir

Indigenous village

High-density dwelling

Axial Park

Centre for advanced study

Secondary/primary schools

Ground villages

Density: 6000 pers/km2, Mesa City

Area occupied: 350km2

Total Population : 2,000,000

Density: 6000 pers/km2, Mesa City

Density: 8000 pers/km2, Garden City

Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City

Area (km2) = 28 x 4 = 112

Area Coverage = 112 / 710.3 x 100% = 15.8%

Population = 896 000

Density = 8000

Density: 8000 pers/km2, Garden City

Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City

Area (km2) = 28 x 6 = 168

Area Coverage = 168 / 710.3 x 100% = 23.7%

Population = 1 344 000

Density = 8000

Density: 8000 pers/km2, Garden City

Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City

Area (km2) = 28 x 10 = 280

Area Coverage = 280 / 710.3 x 100% = 39.4%

Population = 2 240 000

Density = 8000

Density: 8000 pers/km2, Garden City

Chandigarh, New capital of India

The new capital was designed to accomodate an initial population of 150,000 in its first phase and an ultimate one of 500,000.

Area (km2) = 22.82

Population (as planned) = 500,000

Density(Pers/km2) = 21911

Description = Following a social structure, with the highest paid officla staying nearer to the Capitol. The greater the distance of a sector from the Capitol, the high the density. Population varied from 5,000 to 20,000 people per sector..

Density: 21911 pers/km2, Chandigarh

10 Chandigarh

Area (km2) = 22.82 x 10 = 228.20

Area coverage = 228.20/710.3 x 100% = 32.13%

Population = 500,000 x 10 = 5,000,000

Density (Pers/km2) = 21911

Density: 21911 pers/km2, Chandigarh

Area (km2) = 22.82 x 11 = 251.02

Area coverage = 251.02/710.3 x 100% = 35.34%

Population = 500,000 x 11 = 5,500,000

Density (Pers/km2) = 21911

Density: 21911 pers/km2, Chandigarh

11 Chandigarh

Density: 23073 pers/km2, Paris

19th Century Paris | Baron Haussmann

Area (km2) = 86.68 x 3 = 260.4

Area coverage = 260.4 / 710.3 x 100% = 36.6%

Population = 2 million x 3 = 6 million

Density = 23 073.37

Density: 23073 pers/km2, Paris

3 Haussmann’s Paris

Area (km2) = 86.68 x 4 = 346.72

Area coverage = 346.72 / 710.3 x 100% = 48.8%

Population = 2 million x 4 = 8 million

Density = 23 073.37

Density: 23073 pers/km2, Paris

4 Haussmann’s Paris

Area (km2) = 86.68 x 10 = 866.8

Area coverage = 866.8 / 710.3 x 100% = 122%

Population = 2 million x 3 = 20 million

Density = 23 073.37

Density: 23073 pers/km2, Paris

10 Haussmann’s Paris

Brasilia, Capital of Brazi

The city was conceived and planned by Lucio Costa, with an intention to move the capital of Brazil from Rio de Janerio to Brasilia.

Area(km2) = 20.77

Population (as planned) = 500,000

Density(Pers/km2) = 24,073

Description = Being planned for 500,000 inhabitants, Brasilia’s population has grew since several satelite towns were created along the periphery of the city.

Density: 24073 pers/km2, Brasilia

Area (km2) = 20.77 x 9 = 186.93

Area coverage = 186.93/710.3 x 100% = 26.32%

Population = 500,000 x 9 = 4,500,000

Density (Pers/km2) = 24.073

Density: 24073 pers/km2, Brasilia

9 Brasilia

Area (km2) = 20.77 x 12 = 249.24

Area coverage = 249.24/710.3 x 100% = 35.09%

Population = 500,000 x 12 = 6,000,000

Density (Pers/km2) = 24.073

Density: 24073 pers/km2, Brasilia

12 Brasilia

Barcelona Eixample

Once Barcelona’s walls were down in 1850,Ildefons Cerdà introduced a grid-iron plan which he named it Exiample, to connect the city with other outlying towns.

Area (km2) = 7.46

Population 2008 = 268,189

Density (Pers/km2) = 35,948

Description = North-west and South-east oriented for maximum amount of sun, light and ventilation. Block sizes 113.3 by 113.3 metres, 12,370 sqm to be built-up, and 800 sqm (0.06%) were to be garden, average 5 to 9 storeys

Density: 35948 pers/km2, Barcelona

24 Exiample

Area (km2) = 7.46 x 24 = 179.04

Area coverage = 179.04 / 710.3 x 100% = 25.20%

Population = 268,189 x 24 = 6,436,536

Density (Pers/km2) = 35,950

Density: 35948 pers/km2, Barcelona

33 Exiample

Area (km2) = 7.46 x 33 = 246.18

Area coverage = 246.18/ 710.3 x 100% = 34.65%

Population = 268,189 x 33 = 8,850,237

Density (Pers/km2) = 35,950

Density: 35948 pers/km2, Barcelona

39 Exiample

Area (km2) = 7.46 x 39 = 290.94

Area coverage = 290.94 / 710.3 x 100% = 40.96%

Population = 268,189 x 39 = 10,459,371

Density (Pers/km2) = 35,950

Density: 35948 pers/km2, Barcelona

Process of Urban Growth

1:250 000

Tokyo

Area (km2) = 275

Population = 10 mil

Density = 36 363.63

Density: 36363 pers/km2, Barcelona

Kenzo Tange’s

Bay Project

Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay Project

Area (km2) = 275 x 0.65 = 178.75

Area Coverage = 178.75/ 710.3 x 100% = 25.2%

Population = 6.5 mil

Density = 36 363.63

Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay Project (Using Singapore’s political boundary)

Area (km2) = 275

Area Coverage = 275 / 1398.3 x 100% = 19.7%

Population = 10 mil

Density = 36 363.63

Density: 36363 pers/km2, Barcelona

Area (km2) = 275

Area Coverage = 275 / 710.3 x 100% = 38.7%

Population = 10 mil

Density = 36 363.63

Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay Project

Area (km2) = 178.75 x 4 = 715

Area Coverage = 715 / 1398.3 x 100% = 51.1%

Population = 26 mil

Density = 36 363.63

Density: 36363 pers/km2, Barcelona

Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay Project

1: 9000

Algiers Plan Directeur

Le Corbusier’s 1942 master plan, a summation of ideas from Obus plans A, B and C, reveals the organisation of Algiers that addresses multi-racial integration and geometrical order. Distributed Unités d’Habitation amidst greenery,limited within 4km radius from city centre at the Casbah. The linear order is imposed by an automobile highway that runs through the coast.

Area (km2) = 32.5

Population (projected) = 1.3 million

Density (Pers/km2) = 40 000

Number of storeys 58

Building height 216 m

Density: 40000 pers/km2, Algier Plan Directeur

Area (km2) = 32.5 x 5 = 162.5

Area coverage = 162.5 / 710.3 x 100% = 22.87%

Population = 1 300 000 x 5 = 6 500 000

Density (pers/ km2) = 40 000

Density: 40000 pers/km2, Algier Plan Directeur

5 Algiers Plan Directeur

6 Algiers

(fronting the sea and connected to greater cosmopolis)

Area (km2) = 32.5 x 6 = 195

Area coverage = 195 / 710.3 x100% = 27. 45%

Population = 1 300 000 x 6 = 7 800 000

Density (pers/km2) = 40 000 Density: 40000

Plan Directeur

8 Algiers Plan Directeur (fronting the sea and connected to greater cosmopolis)

Area (km2) = 32.5 x 8 = 260

Area coverage = 260 / 710.3 x100% = 36. 60%

Population = 1 300 000 x 8 = 10 400 000

Density (pers/km2) = 40 000

Density: 40000 pers/km2, Algier Plan Directeur

Le Corbusier’s Contemporary City for Three Million

Area (km2) = 49.21

Population = 3 million

Density (pers/km2) = 60 963.22

Density: 60963 pers/km2, Contemporary City

Le Corbusier’s Contemporary City for Three Million

Area (km2) = 49.21

Area Coverage = 49.21 / 710.3 x 100% = 6.9%

Population = 3 million

Density (of precedent model) = 66 043.49

Density: 60963 pers/km2, Contemporary City for Three Million

2 x Contemporary City for Three Million

Area (km2) = 49.21 x 2 = 98.42

Area Coverage = 98.42 / 710.3 x 100% = 13.8%

Population = 6.5 million

Density = 66 043.49

Density: 60963 pers/km2, Contemporary City for Three Million

Area (km2) = 49.21 x 6 = 295.26

Area Coverage = 295.26 / 710.3 x 100% = 41.5%

Population = 19.5 million

Density = 66 043.49

Density: 60963 pers/km2, Contemporary City for Three Million

6 x Contemporary City for Three Million

1: 6000

Algiers Obus Plan A

Obus Plan A includes the linear skyscraper that suggests a dimension for the housing provided under the viaduct (that was later replaced by the highway).

Area (km2) = 0.237

Population = 62 976

Density (Pers/km2) = 265 722

Number of storeys 33

Building height 140 m

Building Footprint 0.179 sq km

56 Linear Skyscrapers

Area (km2) = 0.237 x 56 = 13.27

Area coverage = 20.38 / 710.3 x100% = 1.87%

Population = 62 976 x 56 = 3 526 656

Density (pers/km2) = 265 808

Density: 62976 pers/km2, Algier Obus

104 Linear Skyscrapers

Area (km2) = 0.237 x 104 = 24.65

Area coverage =24.65 / 710.3 x100% = 3.47%

Population = 62 976 x 86 = 6 549 504

Density (pers/km2) = 265 808

Density: 62976 pers/km2, Algier Obus

PROBE #4: CONSTRUCTING VISIONS

Michael Lee, Butter Building, from the series “Office Orchitect”, 2011 Paperboard 49 x 49 x 79 cm

Michael Lee, Rollercoaster Longhouse, from the series “Office Orchitect”,2011 Paperboard, 22 x 49 x 79 cm

Michael Lee, Csengi Prism, from the series “Office Orchitect”, 2011

Paperboard 49 x 49 x 79 cm

Michael Lee, Petronas, from the series “After Humans”, 2011 Giclée on archival matt paper, 52.5 x 42 cm

Michael Lee, Cropped City (after M Night Shyamalan), from the series “Second-Hand City”, 2011 Paperboard 49 x 49 x 79 cm

Michael Lee, era-SERS (after Liu Thai Ker), from the series “Second-Hand City”, 2010 Giclée on archival matt paper, 123 x 123 cm

HYDROPOLIS

by Eudora Tan Ee Teng

Singapore contends not only for land but also for freshwater to feed the thriving population of 5 million and counting. Water storage is an eminent lack of the nation and forces a dependency on neighbouring resources to supply its needs and in the recent decade, on high technology to refine used water for drinking. With a tropical locale that promises heavy rainfall of about 1600 mil m3 each year, its inability to retain its precipitation volume also threatens the urban landscape and its infrastructure. The thesis observes an imminent crisis of the sustainability of Singapore’s water provisions and postulates an alternative morphology of the city to capitalise on the nation’s only natural resource – the rain. It then reconsiders how the urban morphology may be conceived and engaged with to optimize water storage.

Singapore is, historically and physically, a water state, as are water cities such as Venice and Amsterdam. Yet the proximity and engagement with water within the Singapore urban fabric is limited and dismissed as a purchased product out of pipes and taps. The thesis imagines the alternative landscape as one that allows water to seep into the urban fabric, and be retained, replacing existing road-drain infrastructure with a system of variegated waterways teeming with life. With water retention as primary strategy, the intervention is an incision into the city, taking the 54 sq km of roads and drainage canals to serve as water storage.

The alternative hydrology of the city drives this surgical tabula rasa, bringing a two-tiered system of transport canals at lower topography and aqueduct circuits above to channel or withhold water collected at higher topographies. Previously subsumed only into pipes and dissolved into gutters, water resurfaces as Singapore’s nouveau identity as it actively engages with the city as transportation channels, wetland park, recreational pools, bridge etc.

The new garrison state city of Singapore is at once confronted by the sheer monstrosity of its own consumption yet this hydropolis promises a landscape of water sovereignty, ecology and sustainability – Singapore’s much desired dominion over hydrology, discipline over nature, her fulfilled vision of the clean, green and blue.

TETRIS CITY

by Felicia Toh Wei Ching

Singapore has conventionally been masterplanned in line with Tony Garnier’s Cite Industrielle influences, which segregates a city into disparate urban functions on a horizontal plane. This results in the death of the street at certain times of day, because activity and occupation is not continuous but a series of interrupted pulses by a single dominant program. Shenton Way is a good example of this.. This thesis proposes an anti-masterplan approach which generates a city from the bottom up. Diversity of programs are encouraged to thrive within a 1km by 1 km square, to allow pollination of influences amidst the congestion. Sited on Marina Bay, Singapore’s prime financial and commercial district, this landscape of extreme diversity is a melting pot for entrepreneurship and an authentic street culture to arise.

There are several strategies proposed to achieve this. A Diversity Calculator and Spread Calculator encourage Developers firstly, to sell their GFA to diverse program owners, and secondly, to embed these programs throughout the building in interesting permutations, instead of classifying similar programs into a typical podium-mall typology.

Space is sold differently in Tetris City. Instead of conventionally selling space only on a horizontal plane, program owners have the freedom to determine the volumetric configurations of the space they need. For instance, factory owners can have higher ceiling heights for the placement of chutes and lower heights elsewhere for their assembly area. A theatre owner can also determine the height of his proscenium relative to the foyer. These different programs stack atop each other, creating gaps where courts, gardens and light can filter into the block. This allows the city to develop through micro growths instead of top down from a master-plan. It is a city of aggregation, not one of imputation and amputation.

Tetris City is imagined as the antidote to Singapore’s sterility. It is based on micro growth, not a master plan, which allows life in its various forms to bubble up from the ground up in unconventional and unrestricted ways. as Manhattan has its Meat-Packing District and Tokyo has Harajuku, perhaps every city needs a little chaos; its own edge of signature quirk. Tetris City is envisioned as a landscape of extreme difference encapsulating all the desires and energy of its inhabitants.

by Tan Bing Hui

From the Greek sitos which means food, and topos for place, so it means ‘food-place’. As opposed to utopia (‘good place’, or ‘no place’) a term used since Plato to describe an ideal and therefore unattainable community, utopia is the nearest thing to a cross-disciplinary tradition of thought about the problem of dwelling, city planning and architecture. However, utopia is usually an unrealistic approach because of its aim and intention to attain perfection. Contrary to that, Sitopia is a practical alternative

- Carolyn Steel, Hungry City: How food shapes our lives

Sitopia has formulated a methodology of imagining and manifesting a new form of configured productive landscape through the concept of agrarian urbanism. This new model will integrate the autonomy of agriculture into the contemporary urban landscape, and will become a guiding principle for strategic and purposeful architectural operation on shaping the earth and to consider the correlation of inhabitants and the land, vegetation and the hydrological cycle. The intent is to manifest a multi-functional environment which will include agriculture, markets, stores and most importantly, for its aesthetics and visual attractive-ness. In this vision, inhabitants not only feed themselves, but are also given a direct stake in building a cohesive nation, society and communities based on food in sustaining the nation of Singapore and the population through participating in resource management by reducing energy consumption, waste, pollution, producing food, and last but not least, re-establishing our relationship with the land.

Expressway

Length: 161km

Setback: 30m

Total Area: 9.66km2

Arterial Roads

Length: 627km

Setback: 15m

Total Area: 18.810km2

Collector & Local Roads

Length: 2567km

Setback: 7.5m

Total Area : 38.505km2

66.975km2, 9.42% of Singapore land area for setbacks

Le Corbusier - Contemporary City

GreenBufferRoadSetback