Place Making, Policy Making: Opportunities and Challenges in Planning Chinatown

USP Undergraduate Journal | 34 to this place so that Chinatown as a whole becomes Place Making, Policy more than just a collection of buildings in the same vicinity. An understanding of this process will o!er Making: Opportunities alternative perspectives beyond historical and cultural explanations of the signi"cance of Chinatown, and and Challenges in provide insights to how this signi"cance can be Planning Chinatown sustained. While Gupta focuses on the capabilities of objects and buildings to evoke feelings, especially through Wong Yi Fong prior experiences in that location, Wood (1997: 58) believes that place making “involves a continual process of shaping identity and expressing social rban planning has always required a relationships.” He argues that the sense of belonging multidisciplinary perspective, one that to a place does not solely arise from feelings towards Utakes into consideration the social, places, but also from feelings towards the people economic and political implications of policies. In within these places. #ese arguments situate place the case of Singapore’s Chinatown, the process of making as a “stimulant-response” process, where policy making is made more challenging because the presence of certain “stimulants” can conjure of Chinatown’s complexity as compared with other particular responses; it is thus a matter of "nding districts of Singapore. Chinatown serves numerous the correct combination of “stimulants” in order to functions: as a historic cultural site for Chinese, achieve the desired feeling of community. I propose as the second most visited free-access site for that while Gupta and Wood have identi"ed the tourists after Orchard Road (STB 2008b), and as critical elements of place making, namely the physical entities and the social activities, the process itself is Representation Constituency. Consequently, there more interdependent and iterative. As illustrated in "gure 1, the relationship on the implementation of policies in Chinatown. between physical entities and social activities is an This is further complicated by the lack of a single interdependent one: physical entities determine and constrain the type of social activities that take holistic plans for Chinatown; instead, there are place because of the provision of infrastructure, multiple governmental agencies, each with some e.g., stage (entity) for performances (activity). Yet, jurisdiction over particular segments of Chinatown. simultaneously, activities also shape and in$uence At a recent brainstorming and planning session the physical entities of the location, e.g., the increase entitled “Boosting the Chinatown Experience,” in performances, whether it is because of festivals, the merits and faults of past policies, concerns and autonomous interest groups or governmental obstacles currently faced by stakeholders, and the encouragement, leads to the demand for the challenges and considerations of policy makers construction of stages. #ese elements, hence, are for future development were discussed. Jointly constantly in$uencing the development of each other. organized by the Singapore Tourism Board, Kreta Ayer-Kim Seng Citizens Consultative Committee #e physical entities such as iconic buildings like and the Chinatown Business Association, the the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Mandarin road varied scope of discussion seemingly adjures an signs and red street lantern decorations, together equally diverse strategy in policy making. However, with the social activities such as the congregation of a diverse strategy necessarily lacks cohesion if elderly playing chess, shopkeepers peddling wares and residents in their daily routines, create and contribute to the “feelings of belonging” to Chinatown. #is consolidate Chinatown through “place making” so intangible sense of attachment is the purpose of place as to better reduce problems of communication making. #is sense of community should not only and contestation. be felt by its members, i.e. residents and shopkeepers, but should also to an extent be identi"able by visitors Concept of Place Making to the area, who should be able to tell when they are within the spatial boundaries of Chinatown. Place making is the process of “how feelings of belonging to an imagined community bind identity However, this is not a unidirectional in$uence. #e to spatial location such that di!erences between sense of this Chinatown community created by the communities and places are created” (Gupta 1992: aforementioned elements will also in turn a!ect the 10). It is this process that imbues Chinatown with physical entities and social activities, e.g., the feeling meaning, inducing people to develop feelings speci"c that certain elements are acceptable while others Volume 4, Issue 1, Jan 2012 | 35 Figure 1. #e process of place making: the interaction between the elements of a location and their relationship with the sense of community, as in this case, Chinatown. are “transgressions” and “out of place.” Although it the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the is possible that these transgressing elements can be Singapore Tourism Board (STB), which are typically negotiated into and eventually accepted as part of uninvolved in other local residential communities. In the community over time, the critical point to note a!ecting the physical entities and the social activities here is the interdependency of the three elements of through policies, they therefore play an important place making: any change e!ected to any element part in the place making processes of Chinatown, can simultaneously bring about changes to the other and the resulting attachment that the community has elements. Hence, in crafting policies, the e!ect of for the spatial location. Before the discussion of the place making processes in “rippling beyond” the agencies’ place making processes, it is useful to "rst intended targets of the policies should be recognized. examine the objectives of these government agencies If there were no de"nitive area in which to evaluate and their vision for Chinatown. the place making processes, as in the case of Chinatown now, the e!ects of the policies might be Urban Redevelopment Authority overlooked, lost, or even negated. #e URA is Singapore’s national land-use planning The Role of the Government authority. In addition to being responsible for the management of land-use, it directs the conservation While place making processes can be solely of national monuments and historic areas. Chinatown initiated by the community in an organic fashion, is under the jurisdiction of the URA, which means Singapore’s Chinatown is in a uniquely complex that land-use in Chinatown is subject to URA’s situation because of the numerous functions it serve, zoning interpretation (URA 2008a). As a designated and the corresponding varied groups of stakeholders. historical conservation district by the URA, buildings #ere are speci"cally two major functions that in Chinatown are also subject to the conservation can be considered “national interests,’ in that they principles, which describe the degree of modi"cation have larger implications on the country beyond the allowable on these buildings, even if they are community itself: (1) a cultural historic site, and (2) privately owned. At the same time, there are speci"c a major tourist attraction. Hence, this warrants the monuments within Chinatown that are listed by overt involvement of the government agencies like URA as being under the Preservation of Monuments USP Undergraduate Journal | 36 Act, such as the !ian Hock Keng Temple at Telok STB, however, has based its demarcation of Ayer Street and Lai Chun Yuen !eatre at Trengganu Chinatown on the activities that are carried out, Street (URA 2008b). As such, it can be seen that the both historically and in the modern context. !e URA is generally more concerned with the physical three districts that it names are the Historic District, entities of Chinatown. the Greater Town and the Hilltown (see #g. 3). !e Historic District comprises of the area where the #rst Singapore Tourism Board Chinese immigrants settled, the Greater Town, or Dua Poh as it was known in the 1960s, is the area !e STB is Singapore’s economic development of commerce and trade, and Hilltown is the area of agency specialising in tourism, and is responsible more recent development, with the emphasis of green for the marketing of Singapore as a tourist spaces and rejuvenation through youth involvement destination. STB also handles the management of in urban planning. tourist attractions and the regulating of tourism businesses. As a result of the historical and cultural As such, the main signi#cant di"erence between elements of Chinatown, it has become a popular the two government agencies’ mapping of Chinatown tourist destination, attracting an estimated 35% of is URA’s exclusion of the area bounded by Upper the 10 million tourists in 2008 alone (STB 2008b). Cross Street and Upper Pickering Street, and the area !is has thus led to the involvement of the STB in bounded by Kreta Ayer Road and Smith Street. !ese the planning and development of Chinatown. For areas are characterized by the lack of shophouses and example one policy implemented by the STB was generally consists of shopping complexes, residential the Chinatown Experience Guide Plan, which aims $ats and buildings recently constructed in the last to “recall, capture and express the spirit that infused twenty years. the Chinatown of old, and to transform Chinatown into a busy and

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