SHAPING EMOTIONAL CONSTITUTIONS THROUGH URBAN ENTREPRENEURIAL LANDSCAPES – A CASE STUDY OF THE JURONG LAKE DISTRICT

Abstract

This thesis seeks examine urban entrepreneurialism through an emotional lens. In particular, it focuses on how urban entrepreneurial landscapes are configured to influence people’s emotional constitutions regarding urban entrepreneurialism. Using the Jurong Lake District as a case study, this thesis comes in a two-part analysis. The first examines the manipulation of the Jurong Lake District through place promotion and urban transformation, and its role in shaping the development of emotional constitutions that favour urban entrepreneurialism. In light of these manipulated entrepreneurial landscapes, the second investigates the actual emotional constitutions of the locals, why such emotions emerge, and how they strengthen or weaken support for urban entrepreneurial plans. Complementing literature on the contestations within an entrepreneurial mode of governance, this thesis elucidates the strategic aspects of urban entrepreneurial landscapes’ emotional configurations and also exposes the ‘truths’ beneath these emotionally-appealing landscapes, indicated by the people’s emotional constitutions and experiences. This thesis therefore makes wider contributions to the field of urban planning by adopting an emotional lens to chart new avenues in understanding the contestations and complexities behind entrepreneurial urban transformations.