By Geh Min For The Straits Times 4 Mar 13;
THE heated debate over the Population White Paper arose partly from unease over a future projected population of 6.9 million.
But a more important underlying issue needs to be aired too: What is Singapore to its citizens, including its leaders? Is it home, hotel or a corporation like an economic entity?
Without a shared sense of home, we will not achieve social cohesion in our compact city-state.
It will then not matter whether we have five, six or seven million people. Life will be stressful and even intolerable.
Our founding fathers had a vision to link people and place - Home Ownership for Everyone.
But have we expanded this sense of ownership beyond our own doorsteps? We have some way still to go, given the recurrent apathy and anti-social behaviour such as littering.
Increasing signs of the Not In My Backyard (Nimby) syndrome and road rage imply the expanded sense of ownership is selfishly rather than socially motivated.
Still, more educated and articulate Singaporeans with a strong sense of national identity are speaking up. They want to make a difference and can be frustrated by the lack of avenues for doing so.
The debates over Chek Jawa, the Railway Corridor and Bukit Brown exemplify this trend, and should be viewed positively, as a sign of growing nationhood.
Social and spatial justice
IN A country as land-scarce as ours, spatial justice is as important as social justice in creating a level playing field in jobs and educational opportunities.
The Government's public housing policy, for example, strives for spatial justice. The People's Action Party's early policy of acquiring land at low rates to be redeveloped for low-cost housing put vast tracts of land - and housing units - within reach of the masses, serving spatial justice.
Beyond housing is a need to equitably allocate land for transport and other essential amenities for industry and investment, and for nature and recreation. Maintaining a good balance is challenging.
In Singapore, the state is by far the biggest land owner, thanks to the Land Acquisition Act, which gives the state wide powers of acquisition. The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is both the arbiter and implementer of land use: the trustee that acts for the people.
How should the URA determine use of land?
Property and environmental lawyer Joseph Chun argues that the concept of the Public Trust Doctrine might be useful here. He said: "When applied to the state, it draws a distinction between ordinary land generally owned by the state as a corporate entity as though it were a private landowner; and public trust land held by the state as the sovereign as though it were a trustee for specific purposes in the common interest of the public."
This distinction - the state as corporate landowner and as trustee landowner - is crucial. To be fair to the Government, it has indeed been a wise steward in maintaining this difficult balance. Environmentalists such as myself will argue that one failure is the disproportionate number of private golf courses allowed here - they consume huge land tracts when only a small minority benefit.
But can a future government continue to be a wise steward for our increasingly scarce land? There is no systematic use of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) to measure the impact of any development plan. Nor is there requisite information about what most Singaporeans want when it comes to land use.
Particularly worrying is the proposal in the White Paper to build infrastructure and amenities well in advance of a 6.9 million population. The notion of building "ahead of demand" might sound appealing to those jostling for space on crowded trains today.
But do we really need to set aside valuable land and taxpayers' money to provide for this hypothetical increase?
When land becomes scarcer and population density increases further, how will the state maintain the precarious balance between land use for the public good and private developments and amenities affordable only for the affluent? Even expanding our roads and highways could be a form of spatial injustice as cars are one of the least efficient and most inequitable forms of transport in a land-challenged country.
Consider, for example, the lack of proper housing amenities for foreign workers. These construction workers, cleaners and domestic workers contribute enormously to making Singapore "clean and green" and creating a "quality living environment". Yet, until recently, little thought seems to have been given to providing them with decent housing or recreational amenities.
A sense of continuity
WHEN physical landscapes change, something is lost irrevocably. A sense of continuity is essential to general well-being.
A rapidly changing society like Singapore needs to conserve as much of its natural and man-made heritage as possible, to preserve shared memories and to keep familiar landmarks.
For instance, the strong reactions over landmarks such as the Railway Line and Bukit Brown suggest that Singaporeans have a growing need for visible and palpable connections to a shared past.
A rapidly changing landscape might be a developer's dream and provide entertainment for transients and tourists, but it is a stressful nightmare for those who choose to make Singapore home.
Mr Chan Chun Sing, the Acting Minister for Social and Family Development, said recently that while "it is important to preserve Singapore's heritage, this has to be balanced against the need for redevelopment" as this "adds new buildings and new areas, which in turn allows future generations to create new memories".
He noted that since previous generations gave up some of their memories for us to be where we are today, "it is also incumbent on us to pay it forward".
But memories are not a commodity to be bartered or traded. The value of heritage is that subsequent generations can add fresh layers to treasured memories to enrich the narrative further - not trade old memories for new ones.
Heritage and national values cannot be transmitted by textbooks and political rhetoric alone. A society is defined as much by what we choose to preserve or destroy as by what we create.
A society that places no visible value on continuity will create future generations who are adrift on market forces rather than one anchored by a shared nationhood to country and fellow countrymen.
How will such a place produce people who are prepared to invest emotionally, to stay long term, to start a family and to make sacrifices to defend their country? It would be much easier to trade one country for another.
Singapore has evolved from a nation by chance to nationhood by choice. Let us not deteriorate into a city-state of convenience: a hotel rather than a home.
stopinion@sph.com.sg
The writer is a consultant ophthalmologist and immediate past president of the Nature Society.
Related links
Reclaiming the Public Trust in Singapore by Joseph Chun
Associate Member, Exco, Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Law
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=918737
