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4. Re-Branding Singapore 119 4 RE-BRANDING SINGAPORE: Cosmopolitan Cultural and Urban Redevelopment in a Global City-State Yes, in the 21st century, Singapore will be a great cosmopolitan city. A vibrant economy. Good jobs. Cultural liveliness. Artistic creativity. Social innovation. Good schools. World-class universities. Technological advances. Intellectual discussion. Museums. Night-clubs and theatres. Good food. Fun places. Efficient public transport. Safe streets. Happy people. This is not a hotchpotch of images concocted to tantalise you. It is a vision within our reach. (Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Straits Times, 20 December 1996.) INTRODUCTION Once again, Goh Chok Tong’s colourful and tantalizing image of Singapore in the new millennium has all the hallmarks of the PAP’s developmentalism, efficiency, and orderliness written over it. At the same time, it also speaks of a new kind of Singapore which is lively, innovative, fun, and exciting. The idea of Singapore as “cosmopolitan city”, although not new, is an interesting proposition as a national response to globalization.1 In Chapter 3, I discussed the first distinct policy aimed at developing Singapore into a global city, The Next Lap. That policy was generally confined to the material dimensions of going global: finance, transport, expertise and so forth. However, by the late 1990s the government clearly realized that becoming competitive globally also required a shift in cultural terms. The new global economy demands entrepreneurial and creative workers with the social skills to succeed in a transnationalized workforce of professional cosmopolitan elites. And cities wanting to attract global capital in this new economy, and the professionals who come with it, have to be interesting and attractive enough places. In this chapter I investigate the Singapore state’s cultural policy strategies. 04 Nation_Culture Ch 4 7/4/07, 12:58 PM 119 120 RESPONDING TO GLOBALIZATION This chapter begins by examining the idea of “cultural development” and the government’s management of “culture” in the Singapore context. I define cultural development quite broadly, to include not just arts policies but also urban development policies and certain public education programmes. I want to argue that the government has pursued cultural development especially in the early 1990s with two key goals in mind. The first was to promote Singapore as a Global City for the Arts and Culture, and the second was to move towards enhancing the quality of life of Singaporeans. In the late 1990s however, the government began employing the term “cosmopolitan Singapore” in promoting the city-state as well as in its nationalistic discourse. The idea of a “cosmopolitan” Singapore has become further linked to three additional objectives. It seeks to create a “Singapore brand” to attract global capital; it is addressed to Singaporeans wishing to emigrate to encourage them to stay; and aims to persuade skilled foreigners to come and live in Singapore. Following my discussion of these three objectives, I then consider some recent cultural policy strategies outlined by the government, to make Singapore a cosmopolitan city, in particular, The Renaissance City Report (2000) and the national Speak Good English Campaign (2000). This is followed by an examination of how the concept of the cosmopolitanism has been politically appropriated to reinvent and “re-brand” the Singapore citystate as a cosmopolitan global city in an increasingly globalized world. In light of these reflections, I advance two main arguments in this chapter. First, while in Western contexts the term “cosmopolitanism” is used to describe the characteristics and outcomes of free-flowing, interconnected transnational relationships, in Singapore it has been harnessed by the state in the pursuit of economic success and hegemony. It is therefore, a tool to contain globalization, to manage it, rather than a description of some natural outcome of it. The second important argument is that there is a fundamental contradiction in the state’s promotion of Singapore as a “global city” on the one hand, and its nation-building aims on the other. Singapore is at once a world city and a nation-state. Can the government make Singapore a cosmopolitan, exciting and fun world city and produce a “global” sense of place for its citizens but nevertheless bind them to the nation? What implications does this have for Singapore’s broader nation-building aims? Chapter 4 closes by reflecting on the paradox associated with Singapore’s vision of creating a cosmopolitan city. I argue that the particular form of cosmopolitanism for which the government is striving is also one which fundamentally undermines the unique place-orientation 04 Nation_Culture Ch...

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