Emergence of a cosmopolitan space for culture and consumption: the new world amusement park‐Singapore (1923–70) in the inter‐war years1

Abstract

The New World Amusement Park‐Singapore is a significant aspect of the country's urban and cultural history. Its value as an active component in, and as a significant facilitator of, Singapore's emergent urban mass culture, in the context of British colonial rule, is largely uncharted. This paper offers, through examining archival records, building plans and oral history transcripts, an account of its genesis and its cultural dimension. New World was a product of deliberate design, in its multifaceted and complex existence as a site for architectural and planning experimentation, a quasi‐public space, an endless programme of entertainment forms, and a shrewdly run business. Most importantly, the New World is an exemplary crucible of colonial modernity in Singapore of the inter‐war years. Through its varieties of leisure industry and its spatial formation, it was the nexus of modern consumption and ‘mass culture’. As a site for the production and cultivation of new cultural forms and social types, New World exhibited the roles of architecture, urban space and event‐planning in fostering and enabling the most tangible expression of a cosmopolitan mass culture in the colonial setting.