تغییر فضاهای سنگاپور

This paper interrogates the socio-spatial environment that is emerging in Singapore with its development of a globalised economy. Using the case studies of two of the city’s dichotomised spaces – the spectacular downtown and gentrified heartland – the paper seeks to examine the resulting spatial reconfigurations, challenges and unintended consequences. While the common assertion is that state-led planning is effective at the macro level, at the micro level against the accelerated change and emergence of the multi-layered package of spaces of globalisation, the planning of the city is no longer limited to physical planning. Like many emergent economies of the global south, the challenge of how to expand emerging sectors, support Singapore’s economic aspirations and meet social objectives remains.

The contemporary city has often been described as a city of growing heterogeneities, contentions, fluxes and inconstancies. Marcuse (2002), for example, uses the concept of the ‘layered city’: layers of residence, work, etc. to identify the plurality created by the class, occupation and ethnicity of urban residents across time and space. Sandercock (2003) and King (1996, p. 2) similarly describe the contemporary city as being made up of “different genders, ethnicities, ideologies, races, classes, sexual orientations, theoretical differences of every shape and form”. Others, such as Amin and Graham (1997, pp. 417–8), have proposed “the multiplex city” where “multiple spaces, multiple times and multiple webs of relations” co-exist to connect the local to the global. Far from a uniform trend, there is active debate that globalisation is a fragmented, incomplete and contradictory process (Giddens, 2000, Guillen, 2001 and Rennstich, 2008). This paper aims to build upon this growing body of urban studies to document and examine the change that is manifesting over space and time in Singapore. Singapore offers a particularly instructive case. The city is deeply embedded in the process of globalisation. It is regarded as ‘multinational articulations’ in Friedmann, 1986 and Friedmann, 1995 world city hierarchy, and has been ranked as the world’s most global country (A T Kearney/Foreign Policy Magazine Globalisation Index 2006). Since 2005, the number of non-residents in its population has grown sharply, from an average annual growth rate of 9% in 1990 to 19% in 2008, and currently one in four of the population is non-resident. By contrast, the average annual growth rate of Singapore residents (comprised of Singapore citizens and permanent residents) over the same period is 1.7% (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2009). While Singapore’s globalisation process has been the subject of substantial analysis, this analysis has largely been focused on its economic globalisation (see, for example, Yeung and Olds, 1998 and Yeoh, 2006) and the sociological issues of globalisation and transmigration (see, for example, Velayutham, 2007 and Khondker, 2008). Turning on the spatial planning lens, this paper probes the ways in which global to local urban spaces are emerging as Singapore seeks to further its vision of a global city. The state’s lead role in Singapore’s economic and urban development has been described elsewhere (see, for example, Perry et al., 1997, Dale, 1999 and Wong et al., 2008). Arguably, Singapore’s small land area (700 sq km) and state developmentalism have facilitated comprehensive planning without it being hampered by provincial authorities or sectoral interests. But, the challenge of how to expand emerging sectors, support the country’s economic aspirations and meet environmental and social objectives remains. Foremost among these are the conception of public interest and issues of social justice and their concomitant tension, which theoretical arguments continue to preoccupy planning intellectuals (Fainstein, 2008). With the rise of internationalisation, modern globalisation and technological advances, various trajectories of socio-economic development are being inscribed on the urban landscape that are not simply consequences of urban policies but also of socio-cultural networks and patterns of wider urban engagements. Marcuse (2002), expressing a view popular among global city theorists, asserts that directly linked with the dynamics of globalisation and structural transformation of the economy are processes of ‘blurring’ and (dis)embedding. Locations and boundaries between ‘working world’ and ‘living world’, between work and leisure hours are becoming fluid and increasingly functionally and spatially inter-related. How are these ideas transforming the Singapore cityscape? This paper is organised in five sections. The section following the introduction summarises the conceptual aspects and introduces Singapore’s ethnic heterogeneity and approach to dealing with diversity. Section 3 examines the changing economy and society and how Singapore is reconfiguring its physical spaces in its engagement with globalisation. Two case studies are highlighted in Section 4 to give a sense of the local variations in the emerging spatial scales and outcomes. The concluding section draws some implications for Singapore’s future urbanscape. Like many emergent economies of the global south, Singapore has to provide answers to how the city, with its limited land and resources, can accommodate the increasingly diverse voices of global integration to bring about harmonious living.

This paper has examined some of the emerging trends, processes and spaces of Singapore’s urban restructuring in the current global era. In many ways, Singapore’s urban development trajectory appears similar to many other global cities where contemporary consumption is increasingly planned as an integral part of good urban living. At the same time, it is a narrative of state developmentalism driven by strong planning and official discourses on how Singapore will develop as a global city. The narrative urges a spirit for entrepreneurialism in a liveable and vibrant business city. The state, in making its plans, has included a spatiality designed to strengthen urban developments exhibiting commodification for commercial consumption. A range of these commodities, including gentrified neighbourhoods and mega-projects, is fast appearing in the urban landscape, whose apparent target consumers are the international visitors and more well-off among the local population. Following the rhetoric of developed post-industrial cities, many of these mega-projects are inclined towards the homogenising consequences of spectacular place-promotion practices, raising a challenge to the Singapore-style development discourse that favours non-ostentation and social integration. Even though the design narrative for the new Marina Bay downtown is about national performance and engagement – an interactive place to live, work and play – the investments, especially in superlative, spectacular consumption spaces, may promote a divide between the city centre (global) and its hinterland of ordinary people (local). Will it result in marginalising the lower income groups who may feel out of place in the spectacular consumption spaces? The sustenance of the spectacular strategy demands closer investigation. The time for review is now before the developments have been completely built. As Steger (2005, p. 22) argues, “Knowing what’s to come would avoid the parable of the blind scholars and the elephant” and would suggest path forward for academics and planners “to try to take conceptual possession of globalisation as though it were something ‘out there’ to be captured by the ‘correct’ analytical framework”. A collective identity is a social construct and trust relationship that requires time and a common place to develop. The feeble acculturation of the local and recent trans-migrants with its implication for national identity is a potential fissure. While much has been written about consumer-led urban development, the spread of urban consumer culture in Singapore hints at certain disquietness and challenge as exemplified by the current wave of gentrification through en-bloc sales where existing residents are moving out, sometimes under social tension and fear. Against the global economic transformation and changing nature of the city, a key question is the logic of location. In particular, as theorists of globalisation have variously argued, there may be little persuasion to dwell in the city if its spaces become increasingly exclusive rather than inclusive, globally homogeneous rather than locally distinctive (Appadurai, 1997, Brownill and Darke, 1998 and Guillen, 2001). The risk is ‘brain drain’ and a weak sense of belonging, challenges that Singapore also faces. Thus, as Thornley and Rydin (2002) put it, planning of cities in the global era is no longer limited to physical planning but also encompasses the economic (issues of employment and wealth creation), social fabric (issues of identity and belonging) and more. A corollary of this proposition is that planners need to design the city and formulate policies that would strengthen place identity, accelerate growth of community and yet adaptable to the needs of a highly mobile and global society. Extending beyond the case of Singapore, what needs to be further theorised is the role of state developmentalism in shaping and structuring the economy and landscape out of current globalisation induced imaging, accumulation and regulation dilemmas. More than ever, as Hundt (2005, p. 258) reminds, renewed cooperation between the state and business is “crucial to the economy’s well-being” in global capitalism.