Ernest Lee

Spatially Planning Singapore: A Bibliography

A dominant ‘Singapore story’ has identified 1819 and 1965 as pivotal moments in its national(ist) history. Popular and state-sponsored narratives frequently enshrine these dates as the foundation of ‘modern Singapore’, and the ‘independent’ nation-state, respectively. However, viewing Singapore as a built, populated, and lived city offers a differing analytical and historiographical perspective. The focus of this bibliography is the development of Singapore as a city in the later 20th century, broadly defined as after WWII. Nonetheless, studying the city across a longer time period as a dynamic, evolving and contingent entity quickly leads to deeper questions about periodization, governance, and sovereignty itself. Thinking about Singapore’s urban space and relationships thematically further suggests various continuities, unexpected antecedents, and influences across time, space, and communities.

The literature on post-independence Singapore as an urban, planned space, comprises a diversity of social science and historical writing. These developed around in the later half of the 20th century, with analyses of Singapore’s physical environment, ‘natural’ and built, produced by policymakers, academics, and professionals. These often (but not always) reflected statist concerns with its perceived economic, demographic, political, and infrastructural challenges, alongside its public presentation as a vulnerable, newly independent state. International contributions to research were often developmentalist in nature, as was the output of local universities, who established nascent research bodies surrounding sociology, architecture, and regional studies. This literature tended to employ a ‘high modernist’ paradigm that viewed the conditions of social, cultural, and economic life as instrumentalized outcomes of planning. Urban policy and design, on a macro and micro level, was studied to explain the seemingly-exceptional character of Singapore’s growth, stability, and governance model.

More recently, scholars have taken a revisionist and critical lenses towards a statist understanding of planning. While economistic and technical frameworks remain, approaches ranging from cultural studies, postcolonial theory, environmental history, to queer studies have been employed by scholars within and beyond Singapore. Most literature ascribes a highly ‘planned’, engineered quality to the city, traced to a programmatic colonial regime, and after independence, People’s Action Party (PAP) government. One strand of literature emphasizes how urban planning was intertwined, if not inseparable, from a PAP project to establish and extend its legitimacy and hegemony through spatial and material means. Oral histories, and elite debates have been employed to trace conflict and resistance surrounding planning. Another strand of literature moves away from an overtly-political approach, analysing more ‘imaginary’ modes of the city through cultural artefacts and representations, design features of the built environment, and the relationship between urban and ‘natural’. Some scholars have further pushed for creative alternatives or responses to incumbent plans and imaginaries, both on an analytical and normative/policy level. The boundaries of Singapore’s urbanity, and even its ontology have been challenged through environmental approaches that consider land reclamation, the role of outlying islands, and its linkages to Malaysia. Nonetheless, this bibliography only sketches two broad strands of literature, and neither should be taken as more ‘emancipatory’, ahistorical/unempirical, or even ‘suitable’ for studying Singapore over the other.

Urban studies and theory have been critiqued for the predominance of Western European and North American sites of analyses. The Singaporean city’s own historical trajectory and urbanism disrupts this dominance, offering an alternative to a focus on ‘paradigmatic’ cities and cases. Although alternative ‘Asian’ urbanisms have been explored by scholars, placing Singapore under the scope of comparative analysis has often emphasized the need to analyse the particularities of each city. Theorizing Singapore as a city enmeshed in wider transnational and global processes and trends has complicated both the ‘exceptional’ self-presentation of Singapore, and categories of study like the ‘global city’. While some scholars see aspects of Singapore’s planning as laudable or emulable, other scholars problematize numerous dimensions of Singapore-as-city.  

Studying urbanism in a Singaporean context therefore necessitates interdisciplinary engagement.

NB: This bibliography was first published on the now-inactive Planned City blog. Going forward, this page will be updated here. Latest revision: June 2023.

General Overviews

There are no overviews of Singapore’s urban and planning history spanning two centuries or so. Yeoh (2003) offers detailed analysis up till about 1930, while in the post-independence period is widely covered the edited volume by Heng (2016).  Hancock (1954) and Beamish & Ferguson (1985) are dated, but useful as architectural surveys. De Konick (2017) provides a useful visual means of understanding the urbanization of Singapore.

Bishop, Ryan, et al. Beyond Description : Singapore Space Historicity. Routledge, 2004.

Oswin, Natalie, and Brenda S. A. Yeoh. “Introduction: Mobile City Singapore.” Mobilities, vol. 5, no. 2, Routledge, May 2010, pp. 167–75. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, doi:10.1080/17450101003665002.

  • Introduction to special volume, theorizing Singapore as ‘global city’.

Ho, Elaine, et al. Changing Landscapes of Singapore: Old Tensions, New Discoveries. NUS Press, 2013.

  • Analyses both social and physical landscapes, through historical and geographical perspectives.

Heng, Chye Kiang, editor. 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore. World Scientific, 2016.

De Koninck, Rodolphe. Singapore’s Permanent Territorial Revolution: Fifty Years in Fifty Maps. NUS Press, 2017.

  • Presents in an atlas-like format the urbanization of Singapore. Important visual resource to understand the speed and totality of urbanization.

Yeoh, Brenda S. A. Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment. NUS Press, 2003.

  • Comprehensive, oft-cited monograph, centering around the ordering of and negotiations over ‘private’ and ‘public’ environments. Yeoh, a geographer, draws on urban planning, architecture, history, sociology and other disciplines. 

Beamish, Jane, and Jane Ferguson. A History of Singapore Architecture: The Making of a City. G. Brash, 1985.

Hancock, T. H. H. Architecture in Singapore. Singapore Art Society, 1954.

Wong, Theresa, and Brenda Yeoh. Over Singapore 50 Years Ago: An Aerial View in the 1950s. 2008.

  • Explores a new visual, cartographic way of understanding spatial and urban transformation using declassified RAF survey photos.

Early Scholarship

In the late colonial and post-independence period, the literature on urbanism and planning was produced both by domestic bureaucracies, as well as international agencies and foreign academics and professionals invited to contribute. One influential plan was produced by Abrams, Kobe and Koenigsberger (1963) Tertiary institutions, especially the University of Singapore and Singapore Polytechnic (see Loh 2015), also produced research of a qualitatively different vein. Older texts can often be located within the National Library Board (Singapore)’s collection.

Loh, Kah Seng. “Emergencities: Experts, Squatters and Crisis in Post-War Southeast Asia.” Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 44, no. 6, Brill, 2016, pp. 684–710.

  • Contextualizes the work of Western planning experts across Southeast Asia and its effects on concepts of nationhood, citizenship, modernity.

Abrams, C., Kobe, S., & Koenigsberger, O. Growth and urban renewal in Singapore, 1963.

  • Influential plan by UN experts, endorsed by UN Consultative Review Panel and shaping Singapore’s master planning in the 1960s. Re-hosted on site here, owing to its relative difficulty to locate. 

Loh, Kah Seng. “Rupture and Adaptation: British Technical Expertise to the Singapore Polytechnic and the Transition to a Nation-State.” History of Education, vol. 44, no. 5, Routledge, Sept. 2015, pp. 575–94. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, doi:10.1080/0046760X.2015.1050610

Eng, Teo Siew, and Victor R. Savage. “Singapore Landscape: A Historical Overview of Housing Change.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, vol. 6, no. 1, 1985, pp. 48–63. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9493.1985.tb00160.x.

  • Offers an examination of housing change from its vantage point in 1985, with already-prestigious Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography offering an example of locally-focused scholarship.

Goh, Keng See. Urban Incomes and Housing: A Report on the Social Survey of Singapore, 1953-54. Public Works Department, 1956.

  • Report produced by Goh when he was a civil servant, prior to his electoral victory with the People’s Action Party and position as Singapore’s first Finance Minister.

Hassan, Riaz. Families in Flats: A Study of Low Income Families in Public Housing. Singapore University Press, 1977.

  • Well-cited sociological study examining living conditions and demographics of public housing.

Spiro, Shimon E. “The Relocation of Villagers into Public Housing: Some Suggestive Findings from a Singaporean Study.” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 5, no. 1/2, Brill, 1977, pp. 42–54.

Tay, Kheng Soon. Big Thinking on a Small Island: The Collected Writings and Ruminations of Tay Kheng Soon, Equilibrium Consulting 2021.

  • A recent book that collects the writing of one of Singapore’s most preeminent surviving architects. Haven’t read this yet, but bound to be useful especially in thinking about the 70s and 80s.

Urban Planning

Singaporean state agencies have consistently produced publications, largely for public consumption, surrounding its planning models, the design of estates. More recently, publications have expanded to consider other themes such as heritage, sustainability, aging, and digitization. State planning has also been the focus of scholars, who often recognize both the high degree of state planning and its limits.

Singapore Housing and Development Board. Bukit Ho Swee Estate, 1967.

  • Published in the wake of Bukit Ho Swee fire and example of state’s presentation of new housing estates.

Guo, Remy. Urban Redevelopment: From Urban Squalor to Global City. Centre for Liveable Cities, 2016.

  • Fairly orthodox account of Singaporean development from ‘squalor’ to ‘global’ city. See Critical Approaches section below.

Jacobs, Jane M., and Stephen Cairns. “The Modern Touch: Interior Design and Modernisation in Post-Independence Singapore:” Environment and Planning, SAGE, Mar. 2008.

Chee, Lilian. “Sustaining Publics And Their Spaces: William Lim’s Writings On Architecture And Space.” Public Space in Urban Asia, World Scientific, 2014, pp. 194–199.

  • Discusses the work of William Lim, a prominent architect in post-independence Singapore and his alternative visions for urban Singapore.

Roodt, Rutger. Contextualizing the Tropics — Essay on Tay Kheng Soon. www.academia.edu, https://www.academia.edu/22927891/Contextualizing_the_Tropics_Essay_on_Tay_Kheng_Soon.

  • Examines Tay Kheng Soon, another crucial figure in Singapore’s architect and member of the SPUR architect group in the 1960s and 1970s (alongside William Lim).

Tay, Kheng Soon, Big Thinking on a Small Island: The Writings and Ruminations of Tay Kheng Soon (Word Image Pte Limited, 2021)

  • Long volume collecting Tay’s thinking.

Urban Political Economy

While plenty has been written about Singapore’s development and economic growth in its post-independence period, much of it is from a technical standpoint of disciplinary economics, or a biographic approach from key economic thinkers (e.g Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee). Less work has studied the spatial, geographical and physical dimensions to economic planning and development, despite the situated nature of economic activity and labour.

Haila, Anne. Urban Land Rent: Singapore as a Property State. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.

Pow, Choon-Piew. “Constructing Authority: Embodied Expertise, Homegrown Neoliberalism, and the Globalization of Singapore’s Private Planning.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, vol. 50, no. 6, SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England, 2018, pp. 1209–1227.

Chua, Beng Huat. Political legitimacy and housing: stakeholding in Singapore. Routledge, 1997.

  • One of the earliest works to examine links between political control, capital, and public housing policy, acting somewhat as a revisionist sociological text upon its release.

Seng, Eunice. The Podium the Tower and the People: The Private Development of a Public Complex, c.1965-1970. Hong Kong, 2014. http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/285209.

  • PhD thesis that examines the privatized nature of public complex developments in the immediate post-independence period.

Theatres of Memory: the Industrial Heritage of 20th century Singapore. Pagesetters, 2023.

  • A collaborative volume by Loh Kah Seng, Alex Tan, Koh Keng We, Tan Teng Phee, Julia Toramae. Industrial history volume that highlights many post-independence industrial sites, some of which have de-industrialised since.

Chang, Tien Chin, and Shirlena Huang. “Reclaiming the City: Waterfront Development in Singapore.” Urban Studies, vol. 48, no. 10, SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England, 2011, pp. 2085–2100.

Environmental Approaches

Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew, editor. Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene. Ethos Books, 2020.

Seng, Eunice. “Politics of Greening: Spatial Constructions of the Public in Singapore.” in Singapore’s Vanished Housing Estates, 2017.

Han, Heejin. “Singapore, a Garden City: Authoritarian Environmentalism in a Developmental State.” The Journal of Environment & Development, vol. 26, no. 1, SAGE Publications Inc, Mar. 2017, pp. 3–24. SAGE Journals, doi:10.1177/1070496516677365.

Joshi, Yugal Kishore, et al. “Cleaning of the Singapore River and Kallang Basin in Singapore: Economic, Social, and Environmental Dimensions.” International Journal of Water Resources Development, vol. 28, no. 4, Taylor & Francis, 2012, pp. 647–658.

Critical Approaches – Power, Gender, Race

This section, with some reservations, groups together frameworks ranging from postcolonial to queer approaches. Marxist theory was rarely employed in the early post-independence period, given the Singaporean state’s hostility towards communism – Marxist approaches are therefore scanter in this context.

Oswin, Natalie. Global City Futures: Desire and Development in Singapore. University of Georgia Press, 2019.

  • One of the few works to analyse development and spatiality from queer theory (more specifically, queer geography). Important corrective to various de-gendered readings of Singapore, urbanity.

Loh, Kah Seng. “Dangerous Migrants and the Informal Mobile City of Postwar Singapore.” Mobilities, vol. 5, no. 2, Routledge, May 2010, pp. 197–218. doi:10.1080/17450101003665028.

  • Examines discourses around the clearance of informal housing by colonial and PAP government in postwar Singapore. Arguments expanded in Loh 2013.

Loh, Loh Kah. Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and the Making of Modern Singapore. NUS Press, 2013.

  • Highly detailed study of the 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and wider shifts in public housing that used narratives of disaster, fire, emergency, and modernity to rehouse population. Draws on oral history and archival records.

Clancey, Gregory. “Hygiene in a Landlord State: Health, Cleanliness and Chewing Gum in Late Twentieth Century Singapore.” Science, Technology and Society, vol. 23, no. 2, SAGE Publications India, July 2018, pp. 214–33. SAGE Journals, doi:10.1177/0971721818762860.

  • Analyzes the role of public health bureaucracy, chewing gun in creating a ‘landlord state’ and expanding areas of state responsibility and ordinary possibilities for sabotage.

Evers, Hans-Dieter, and Rüdiger Korff. Southeast Asian Urbanism: The Meaning and Power of Social Space. LIT Verlag Münster, 2000.

Bracken, Gregory, editor. Asian Cities: Colonial to Global. Amsterdam University Press, 2016.

  • Edited volume examining concepts of global city, territorial logics of power to trace the movement from colonialism to globalism. Chapters by Lee (gambling and housing), Gonzaga (street markets and sanitary modernity) directly pertain to Singapore.

Yeoh, Brenda S. A., and Shirlena Huang. “Transnational Domestic Workers and the Negotiation of Mobility and Work Practices in Singapore’s Home‐Spaces.” Mobilities, vol. 5, no. 2, Routledge, May 2010, pp. 219–36. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, doi:10.1080/17450101003665036.

Luger, Jason. “Singaporean ‘Spaces of Hope?’ Activist Geographies in the City-State.” City, vol. 20, no. 2, Taylor & Francis, 2016, pp. 186–203.

Literary, Cultural, Aesthetic Approaches

Perks, Samuel. “‘Here’s to the Grass We Step on!’: Complicating the Spatial Dynamics of the Garden City in Singaporean Historical Fiction.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 53, no. 6, Routledge, Nov. 2017, pp. 673–85. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, doi:10.1080/17449855.2017.1401199.

Wagner, Tamara Silvia. Ghosts of a Demolished Cityscape : Gothic Experiments in Singaporean Fiction, in A. H.-S. Ng (Ed.), Asian Gothic : essays on literature, film and anime. McFarland & Co., Publishers, 2008.

Holden, Philip. “Interrogating Multiculturalism and Cosmopolitanism in the City‐State: Some Recent Singapore Fiction in English.” Mobilities, vol. 5, no. 2, Routledge, May 2010, pp. 277–90. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, doi:10.1080/17450101003665234.

Wee, CJW-L. “The Suppressed in the Modern Urbanscape: Cultural Difference and Film in Singapore.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, vol. 20, no. 4, Duke University Press, 2012, pp. 983–1007.

Watson, Jini Kim. “Seoul and Singapore as ‘New Asian Cities’: Literature, Urban Transformation, and the Concentricity of Power.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, vol. 19, no. 1, Duke University Press, 2011, pp. 193–215.

Comparative Urban Approaches

Goh, Daniel P. S., et al. “Introduction: Doing Asian Cities.” Ethnography, vol. 16, no. 3, SAGE Publications, Sept. 2015, pp. 287–94. SAGE Journals, doi:10.1177/1466138114552936.

  • Introduces a special volume of Ethnography that reflexively engages with the urban context of Asia.

Wetzstein, Steffen. “Comparative Housing, Urban Crisis and Political Economy: An Ethnographically Based ‘Long View’ from Auckland, Singapore and Berlin.” Housing Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, Taylor & Francis, 2019, pp. 272–297.