Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Master Narrative and the Lived City – Half a Century of Imagining Singapore
- Part I (De)-Constructing Master Narratives of the City
- Part II The Arts as Prisms of the Urban Imaginative
- Part III The City Possible in Action
- Conclusion
- Index
- Publications
Introduction: The Master Narrative and the Lived City – Half a Century of Imagining Singapore
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Master Narrative and the Lived City – Half a Century of Imagining Singapore
- Part I (De)-Constructing Master Narratives of the City
- Part II The Arts as Prisms of the Urban Imaginative
- Part III The City Possible in Action
- Conclusion
- Index
- Publications
Summary
Abstract
This chapter outlines how imaginative representations of the city, told through the images they convey or evoke, form collective expressions of human agency in placemaking and the (re)shaping of urban space. Of equal importance are polemical developments that play integral roles in influencing conditions for artistic and social (re)production in Singapore. In foregrounding society-space relations and the city, we argue that physical spaces are subject to a multitude of social imaginings, which are then projected back into urban space to convey individual and shared meanings, identities and purposes. Such diverse ways of conceptualising space, which can sometimes be born out of resistance, present another mode of understanding and experiencing the lived city.
Keywords: master narrative, the lived city, civil society, creativity, conviviality, SG50
The city as we imagine it, the soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city.
− Raban 1974: 10Igniting the Terra Imagina of a Terraformed City
Singapore's accomplishments in city-building over half a century has propelled this ‘little red dot’ to become a top-ranked global city and one of the richest countries in the world, having ranked third in 2015 (ATKearney 2016). What has been stylized by the state and designated actors as the Singapore Model is construed by its advocates as a template for urban planning under state capitalism (Shatkin 2014). So persuasive is Singapore's success story and so ripe is its planning formula for exportation that overseas private developers, hoping to emulate its achievements, actively seek local government support to create clone cities abroad. Defining this is Singapore's meticulously constituted long-term master plan overseen by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) aimed at ensuring sustainable development, coupled with a successful Housing and Development Board (HDB) public housing programme directed towards home ownership for its citizens. These powerful agencies of a state that directly owns over three-quarters of the land in the country, along with tight regulations limiting public assembly and other uses of space, present the crucially indisputable fact that the government exercises substantial control over how Singapore's material space is shaped and used.
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- Information
- Hard State, Soft City of Singapore , pp. 11 - 34Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020