SHAPING TREESCAPES OF SINGAPORE: THE COMMERCIAL LANDSCAPING INDUSTRY AND THE MAKING OF URBAN GREEN SPACE

Abstract

In Singapore’s ‘City in a Garden’, diverse and dense tropical greenery envelope most public spaces. These vegetations maintain Singapore’s urban liveability and enable place-making within the spatially confined city-state. Much of Singapore’s forested areas are secondary, cultivated throughout Singapore’s history and subject to routine and extensive management. Neoliberal-developmentalist discourses govern most environmental management projects and public-good provision. Consequently, the cultivation and maintenance of green spaces are undertaken by a commercial landscaping industry, steered towards ‘efficient’ and ‘productive’ environmental management by the state. My project seeks to understand the knowledge/power dynamics between state agencies and these companies, how these have shaped Singapore’s public space, and how these practices could shaped Singaporeans’ everyday interactions with urban natures.