Stephanie Wong Soon YenGEOGRAPHY2018-06-292018-06-292016Stephanie Wong Soon Yen (2016). REMEMBERING, IMAGINING, EXPERIENCING THE HAWKER CENTRE. ScholarBank@NUS Repository.https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/144127For many locals, hawker centres are more than just a convenient locale offering a variety of affordable food. Industry experts, government representatives and many individuals have discussed their concerns about the future of the hawker centre too, expressing their attachment to the hawker centre. This thesis aims to examine how hawker centres are remembered, imagined, experienced and represented. In order to understand place, we look at the interactions between dominant image-makers in society (i.e. government) and individuals, and how they negotiate the construction of place. Hence, this thesis will first examine the representations of the hawker centre by the government to establish the top-down place identity of the hawker centre propagated by the government, before investigating how these dominant images affect how individuals imagine, experience and feel about the hawker centre. Here, the role of memory and nostalgia in fostering place attachment will be highlighted. Subsequently, this thesis will also show how nostalgia can be manifested in the landscape and harnessed as a strategy for the hawker centre. What constitutes this hawker centre experience? What place meanings are ascribed onto the hawker centre landscape? How is it imagined, constructed and represented, and by whom? How will memory and nostalgia affect the place-making process of the hawker centre?place identity, place attachment, memory, nostalgia, material landscape, hawker centresThesis