UNPACKING THE 'GLOBAL CITY' IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

In recent years, with the proliferation of discourses on 'global city' and globalization, the term 'Global City' has achieved a heightened focus. In a climate of accelerating globalization, inter-city competition for capital investments and skilled professionals has intensified. Under immense pressure to facilitate 'global city formation', city or national governments and urban planners produce discourses on 'global city' to catalyse and accelerate material globalizing processes. Discourses on 'global city' therefore have material implications for society and space. Given that globalization is embedded with uneven and unequal tendencies, favouring some places and people over others, the discourses on 'global city' have often accentuated existing social and spatial polarization in globalizing cities. Unpacking the 'Global City' in Singapore is necessary and relevant as Singapore hastens its pace to globalize. Daily, barrage of discourses on 'global city' or 'world-class city' is being produced by the Singapore government and urban planners to facilitate and shape the formation of a 'global city' in Singapore. In view that urban planning in this developmental city-state has an exceptional amount of power, planning discourses are capable of generating and shaping social and spatial transformations in a globalizing Singapore. Via an analysis of planning discourses, alongside national speeches, this thesis will attempt to explore how urban planning in Singapore has incorporated the emergence of the 'new middle class' of skilled professionals into its plans, and if urban planners ameliorate, accentuate and/or encourage social and spatial divisions to form. In addition to the analysis of urban planning discourses, this thesis will also elucidate how 'global cities' are constructed both discursively and materially.