Hong Xinyi, Straits Times 10 Oct 08;
A FEW months ago, I had dinner with a friend who was about to leave for the United States to pursue a master's degree. We ordered so much food that the waiter actually tried to get us to cancel some items.
But it looked like I wouldn't be seeing her for a while - her husband, also a Singaporean, works in the tech industry in the US, and they plan to relocate there permanently - and so we resolutely went ahead with our over-ordering.
I mentioned a series of articles I was working on at the time about iconic places in Singapore. The conversation turned to the massive construction site that will soon become the Sentosa integrated resort (IR).
'They're not building things that will become places people care about,' my friend said ruefully. She didn't think she would be too homesick when she emigrated. 'You get used to new places. Home is wherever you want it to be.'
More recently, I hitched a ride with a fellow reporter back to the office after we both attended a contact lunch where the conversation revolved endlessly around the then-upcoming Formula One race. Once we were safely in the car, she muttered: 'I am so sick of hearing about F1. I can't wait for it to be over. These things are just for rich people to enjoy, what's it got to do with us?'
These are, of course, highly unscientific samplings of murmurs of discontent about two of Singapore's most prominent tourism initiatives.
And they are not very fair complaints either, one might argue.
Many retail experts believe the IRs and the F1 night race will create jobs and provide a crucial cushion for Singapore's slowing economy, driving up revenues for various businesses while creating valuable buzz for the city-state's image.
And so far, so good. The Straits Times reported that 'the maiden Singapore Grand Prix drove up takings by 20 to 30 per cent for many businesses, especially those in food and beverage, entertainment and hospitality', despite poor takings for businesses in the immediate circuit area. And the organisation of the race's logistics has attracted glowing praise from movers and shakers and the international press.
However, in the light of recent global market meltdowns, it is worth pondering how such glamorous endeavours, catering to high net-worth individuals, will play to the average Singaporean in the months and years to come.
It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
Planned during a long run of regional and global prosperity, projects like Orchard's new megamall, the MillionaireAsia Private Aviation Show and the Volvo Ocean Race will now be rolling into town as the world grapples with credit-crunch fears.
In the March issue of Metropolis magazine, American writer Joel Kotkin proposed that cities should shift away from attracting affluent residents with 'glittering new culture and sports palaces, convention centres'.
Instead, he suggests, focus on elements like 'the cultivation of blue-collar industries such as manufacturing and warehousing...By providing good incomes for working- and middle-class residents, these industries can form the basis for an urbanism that is more sustainable over the long run than the increasingly narrow economies that have characterised most urban centres in the last few decades'.
Of course, he is writing about large cities supported by even larger hinterlands, which does not apply to Singapore. But this almost counter-intuitive, even old- fashioned vision of a more organic and internally-driven model of growth is nevertheless striking.
If it is true that home is an increasingly fluid notion for today's global citizens, then perhaps the key to standing out is not to import things that can also be found elsewhere, but to nurture what is intrinsic and unique.
Personally, I like eternal cities: not ones that are frozen in time, but ones where changes are firmly rooted in the city's own traditions and idiosyncrasies, with identities beyond the vagaries of what hip jet-setters consider cool at any particular moment.
As for a home that morphs from casino kingdom to race circuit to aviation playground to marina central with the influx of each new tide of revellers - it seems to me that such a city, hollowed out for easy access to shallow new identities, will be very difficult to love.
Which is why I am looking forward to the release of more details about the third phase of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts' (Mica) Renaissance City plan.
Speaking in March this year, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lee Boon Yang announced that $115 million will be spent over five years to encourage the creation of distinctive home-grown content, make the arts financially viable and bring culture to the heartland.
Not that these targets have nothing to do with stimulating GDP growth, I'm sure.
But it would be nice, after months of hearing about expensive race cars and visiting celebrities, to revisit the notion that this is not just a place that hosts events. Given world enough and time, new ideas can take root here, perhaps ideas that will provide as yet unheard of ways for a city to flourish.
