Abstract
Today, cities depend on global food systems that
prioritize urban needs over that of other regions.
These food systems are part of a model of urbanism
that works towards increasing disconnection in the
food ecosystem – ecologically and
sociopolitically. By discussing our varied
experiences with a community food initiative in
Singapore, Foodscape Collective, we reflect on the
collaborative aspect of making, and finding, our
place – viewing placemaking as a process of civic
sense-making and identity-formation. Through a
collaboratively written set of perspectives, we
suggest how civic urbanism through dialogical
placemaking renews our relationships with food and
agriculture, by weaving together imaginaries of a
more inclusive and circular food system.
Keywords: Place-making,
prefiguration, network, community, food
systems
Introduction
Food has figured in Singapore's post-war, postcolonial
independence as a cultural anchor in times of
disorientation. It has been part of the
transformation of relationships between people,
physical spaces, and with people's relationships
with food itself – as both commodity and wholefood.
In this chapter, we look at the act of producing
food in Singapore as a political act of civic
urbanism. We argue that discussions about food
practices are not only cultural or historical, but
political in the context of neoliberalized economies
such as Singapore: encouraging individual and
collective actions that prefigure a more dynamic
culture of civic urbanism.
Through this, we respond to Cho, Križnik, and Hou's
(this volume) provocation for more discussions on
the role of citizens and civil society, given their
discursive absence in studies of developmental
states within the neoliberal restructuring of
state–market relations. While Singapore's central
planning incorporates new ideas rapidly, this is
premised on the continual repositioning of the state
as provisioner of imaginaries, socialities, and
possibility. We argue, alongside other chapters in
this book, that an overt focus on the state's role
renders people's work of imagining other forms of
citizenship invisible. This chapter focuses on
alternative practices of building collectivity:
building the independence and capacity for people to
contest undesirable futures emerging from
centralized food production networks, while building
collective capacity to surpass the individualizing
frame of neoliberal self-help.
To reflect how plural perspectives and actions may
shape the way a network's work emerges, we have
chosen to write as a group.
