Introduction to Study

Abstract

The author provides a background and a context to the study of public space in Singapore, an Asian ‘development city-state’ and regional hub in the global space of flows. The introduction presents possible alternatives and interpretations to the well-established notions of public space, especially those featured in the western discourse of democratic-rationalist public space. The reader would find a review of the general discourse on public space, a focused discussion on thinking about models of public sphere as established in the modern western discursive discourse of Jurgen Habermas, the subsequent arguments that are based on that discourse, and how these have implications on our current conception and definition of public space. The author suggests that the western discourse on public space is inadequate to explain how public space functions in the context of a city in Asia, which has a different cultural, social and historical orientation than cities arising from the European tradition. These differences include overlapping phenomena, such as the relationship of the state and its citizens, the rise of civil society, the forging of identities of “invisible” foreign workers and the forms of changing spatial practices. The chapter concludes with an overview of the selection of the case studies presented later in the study using conceptual “frames” that piece together the different aspects of processes, parti (form), program and (spatial) practices that come together in the production of public space.