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Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 November 2022
Abstract
Within a traditionally subdued civil society,more citizens have stepped forward to addressconcerns about the impact of neoliberaldevelopment policies on Singapore's heritage andcommunities. Queenstown is Singapore's firstsatellite town with residential housing andamenities, while Geylang is known for itsred-light district, illicit activities, andlow-cost housing for migrant workers. Usingwalking tours to promote place-based communityheritage in Queenstown and Geylang respectively,volunteer groups MyCommunity and Geylang Adventures offer contrasting yetcomplementary accounts on how the residents andthe broader public can be activated to participatein heritage preservation and local–migrant workerintegration. Their civic activism contributestowards a distinct form of bottom-upnation-building and an alternative framework inunderstanding evolving state–society relations inSingapore.
Keywords: Civic activism, communityheritage, walking tours
Introduction
The Singapore Story has been synonymous with a strongstate dominating economic development and socialengineering, while suppressing nongovernment formsof collective organizing and protests (Ooi, 2009;Tan, 2016). Public recognition of the rulingPeople's Action Party's (PAP) ability to makeSingapore into a developed country through a‘pragmatic mode’ of governance has not onlylegitimized its political dominance, but alsonurtured an uncritical citizenry mindful of theconsequences of being marked as political dissidents(Tan, 2007: 3). Relatedly, Singaporeans arecognizant of compromising their personal freedoms inexchange for the state to drive economic growth andsocial stability (Liow, 2011). With this ethos ofpragmatism justifying the ‘demolish-and-build’ modeof urban renewal, society hardly questioned thedestruction of culturally significant landscapes andbuildings, nor the estrangement between the localsand migrant worker community whose contribution toSingapore's progress has gone relativelyunrecognised.
In recent years, among sociocultural transformationssimilar to those experienced in other developedsocieties, a more active civil society has emergedwith citizens aspiring for greater agency over theirsociocultural and political environment. During thegeneral elections in 2011, the legitimacy of the PAPgovernment was checked when it had a dip of 10% withits worst performance record of 60.1% of the votes(Bayan, 2011). There had been an increasedvisibility of citizen-initiated protests, occurringboth online and offline, which reflected thepublic's desire for more participation in differentsociocultural and political issues.
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