The Singapore Mall Generation: History, Imagination, Community ed. by Liew Kai Khiun

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Singapore Mall Generation: History, Imagination, Community ed. by Liew Kai Khiun Linda Lim and Pang Eng Fong The Singapore Mall Generation: History, Imagination, Community, edited by Liew Kai Khiun. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2022, 304pp. ISBN: 978-981-5009-39-2 This collection of 10 essays and a foreword by 12 academics, arts and cultural studies researchers and practitioners, traces ethnographically the evolution of Singapore malls and their place in shaping memories and communities. It focuses on ‘older’ malls of the 1980s and 1990s, whose strata-title ownership—where different entrepreneurs own particular spaces in the mall—enabled and encouraged what might be termed a ‘bottom-up’ evolution of shop types and ancillary mall activities according to the eclectic interests of individual shop-owners, local customers and other mall participants. Most interestingly, the book peels back the veneer of shopping malls as primarily icons of the materialist consumption which dominates Singapore’s proudly pragmatic society, to reveal a more complex reality. Mall merchandising both facilitated and was shaped by community and artistic ‘fringe activities’ that spontaneously emerged to eventually define both the character and the commercial appeal of particular malls. Unintended and unplanned, art installations, indie music, dancing, and various youth and migrant worker subcultures sprung up to occupy the interstices and sometimes the main thoroughfares of certain malls. Lodging themselves in the collective memory of both locals and transients, many downtown malls like Far East Plaza, Peninsula Plaza, Takashimaya, Lucky Plaza, Tanglin Shopping Centre, and Orchard Towers can claim to be part of the national heritage. The book mentions, but does not explore in depth, the more recent transformation of Singapore’s malls as strata-title ownership gives way to S-REITS (real estate investment trusts) owned and operated by GLCs (government-linked corporations) and large global or foreign conglomerates. These employ a ‘top-down’ model of planned use, thematic unity and price-point conformity aimed at maximizing rental revenues. This usually means modernist architecture housing the luxury transnational chains found in other expensive global cities catering to a target market of high-end and international customers. Rising rental costs, together with competition from online shopping preferred by young people who also increasingly socialize and find recreation online, exacerbated by the remote working trend which reduces downtown and even suburban ‘foot traffic’, are already eroding the commercial fortunes of heritage malls and erasing their evocative past. The redevelopment of Funan Centre from a hub selling computers and component parts into a gleaming glass palace (with dedicated space for community-oriented activities), and a wide selection of eateries, provides an example of corporate ambition in line with new values, but not with people with fond memories of the old Funan. This reflects the ambivalence in [End Page 141] many Singaporeans’ hearts — we are captivated by the new while longing for an imagined simpler communal past. As economists who personally experienced the entire trajectory of Singapore’s malls, and as members of what the authors call ‘the mall generation’, we would have liked to see more analysis of the reasons for, impact, and implications of this transformation in the context of Singapore’s entire socio-economic development. What has been the relative role of ‘top-down’ public policy and corporate globalization versus ‘bottom up’ market forces and local entrepreneurs in mall evolution? Looking to the future, what are the commercial as well as cultural implications for national identity, heritage and the ‘Uniquely Singapore’ branding once purveyed by the Singapore Tourism Board? Perhaps the lack of thematic unity, beyond nostalgia, among the book’s chapters is an unconscious reflection of respect for the messy yet vibrant, spontaneous ‘co-creation’ of ‘authentic’ localized spaces and voices that inhabited Singapore’s malls in our recent past. Linda Lim University of Michigan Pang Eng Fong Singapore Management University Copyright © 2022 Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society