As we draw this account of Singapore's geography to a close, it is appropriate to draw some tentative conclusions. First, in most books of a similar genre written about other countries, some observations are usually made between how people from different regions have their own unique cultural identities [?].

This is especially so when the region [?] in question has experienced a long and rich history. For example, it does not take too long before a visitor to Britain is able to discern differences between someone from south England and someone from the north.

However, to carry out a similar exercise in the Singapore context would be foolhardy, not only because Singapore's regions have not had the benefit of a long history as individual regions, but most obviously because Singapore is so small, and mobility [?] among the population so high, that it is doubtful that such regional identities will ever be established.

In other words, I do not believe that we will ever come to a point any day soon when we will be able to identify a person from say, Mandai, simply by the way he speaks and behaves. In fact, I daresay that Singaporeans tend to identify themselves not by their region (if they ever think about it at all), but by their socio-economic background (which has only a nebulous link to the concept of the region).

All this might change, however, when Singapore is divided into ten to fifteen administrative communities [?] after the General Election. Each community would be headed by a Community Development Council (CDC), which would co-ordinate and lead the existing grassroots organizations, namely the Residents' Committees, the Community Centre Management Committees and the Citizens' Consultative Committees (CCCs).

Among the CDCs' duties would be to manage applications for Medifund, public assistance, Edusave bursaries and scholarships, other scholastic awards and study loans. CDCs would have to raise their own funds, which the Government would match threefold.

CDCs would comprise both residents of public and private housing, and their chairmen need not be Members of Parliament. The exception is if the chairman also chairs a town council of more than 150000 voters, then he would need to be an MP, and indeed he would be appointed as mayor by the Prime Minister.

The purpose of creating the CDCs is to return to the old community spirit of mutual help (gotong royong and kongsi) - to create a sense of ownership - in order to strengthen bonding and enhance social cohesion within local communities.

Communitarianism (where the state acts on behalf of her members) and community (that sense of shared responsibility which prevailed for centuries in villages across Asia, where individuals act for the whole) are not contradictory. In fact, given Singapore's geographical constraints, communitarianism will continue to be the primary agency of resource allocation.

Nevertheless, even today for instance, some shopkeepers sponsor scholarships and bursaries, and contribute to CCC welfare funds. Initiating the CDCs is merely an extension of moves which started with the setting up of town councils and the devolution of the HDB's responsibilities to MPs and grassroots leaders.

As an aside, small pockets do exist in Singapore which cater to distinct ethnic groups. For example, High Street Centre serves the local Russian community, Golden Mile Complex serves the forty thousand Thais (because the buses from Haadyai terminate there), Peninsula Plaza serves the Burmese, Sembawang Shopping Centre serves American sailors, and Lucky Plaza serves the sixty thousand Filipinos. The point to note, however, is that these pockets have been grafted on the landscape [?], instead of having evolved naturally.

Second, the unit of analysis used throughout this book is that of the 'region' [?]. Yet this approach is not without its problems, chief of which is that of scale. In a book of this size, it is impossible for one to paint a portrait which does justice to every region and its constituent areas. There are many picturesque places in Singapore, some even with truly distinct identities of their own, which have not been catalogued in this volume. Holland Village springs to mind, but there are others.

Third, as the millenium draws to a close in Singapore, we will see an increasing number of businesses moving away from the South-Centre in a general decentralisation [?]. Land uses will change. The South-Centre will retain its command of the highest land values on the island, but increasingly, space in the Regional Centres [?] will be regarded at a premium. Land uses which cannot shape up will have to ship out.

An especially clear example of this is that of the Fraser & Neave soft drinks factory. When the company first started operations in Singapore in 1883, its factory was located in the heart of town at Battery Road. Increasingly squeezed by rising land rents, it moved to River Valley Road in 1954. In the early nineties, it was obliged to relocate its premises for a second time, this time moving all the way to Tuas. At its old site at River Valley will stand the spanking new Valley Park condominium.

This pattern is being repeated throughout the island. Industrial land uses are giving way to upper-middle income residences. What is interesting is that this trend is a reversal of that which is taking place in most other developed countries, where the upper-middle class value a suburban [?] location more than a central one. In fact, it is usually residential land uses which are outbid by industrial ones.

A business which is bucking the above Singaporean trend is that of the Ikea furniture store. When the business first arrived in Singapore, it was at a peripheral location in Sixth Avenue. It then moved to an area of higher population density and greater accessibility at Katong. In 1995, it moved again, this time to an even more central location at Alexandra. It is obvious that Singaporeans seem to have a penchant for Scandinavian furniture.

Having read this far, we are now in a good position to see the geography of Singapore holistically, and not just in terms of discrete subtopics. The recent development of many residential properties in Upper Bukit Timah, near the nature reserve, affords a good case study to bring together several seemingly disparate strands in geography.

Following from our discussion on decentralization, the Upper Bukit Timah area was once used for industry, such as the Amoy Canning Factory. These land-uses are giving way to as many as twenty thousand new homes for the middle-class.

The impact of this new tide of construction activity on the nature reserve is as yet indeterminate. The Bukit Timah Expressway already separates the reserve from the Central Catchment. Singapore would do well to learn some of the lessons of the Amazon (although some would argue this to be a foolish comparison, given that the reserve is only 162 hectares in size!).

The nature reserve is part of our national heritage, and the debate will continue to rage as to the development of the area. It should not escape us that this mirrors the tussle regarding issues of urban conservation as well.

Finally, the increase in the built-up area around the reserve will also cause an increase in the temperature of the microclimate, exacerbating the urban heat island effect. The margins of the rainforest will thus have higher rates of evaporation.

We began this book by imagining ourselves to be in an aircraft flying out of Changi airport. Now think for a moment, where would we be headed?

Having completed the grand tour of each region [?] of Singapore in the course of reading this book, some might be tempted to say that we might be going nowhere, we've seen all there is to see, and that there is nowhere else to go. This is one point of view.

Subscribers to this view, point to the fact that Singapore is such a small, no, miniscule, place, that there is an all-pervasive feeling of being hemmed in, that there really is nowhere to go to escape from it all. And yes, it must be said that if adequate avenues for escape do not exist, the spatial constraints (unsolicited, I might add) imposed upon us by our country do represent a very real source of psychological stress for many members of our population.

Yet, for those of us who tend to say that the glass is half full, there is an alternative perspective to the matter. Yes, we have completed the grand tour. But an even grander tour awaits us, beyond Singapore's shores. If, after having read this book, you have acquired a taste for geography and would like to savour more of its delights, there exist many fieldwork possibilities in the ASEAN region [?].

In fact, as we close the book, it would be useful to remind ourselves of the limitations of merely having focused on Singapore. At the end of the day, Singapore is still just a tiny dot on the map. It is impossible to do full justice to Singapore's geography without at least mentioning our context in the wider ASEAN region.

Malaysia's recent launch of its Multimedia SuperCorridor provides a clear example. Conceived in late 1994 (in view of countries with more competitive labour [?] costs such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar and China) and encompassing the new $5 billion international airport at Sepang (ready in 1998), Kuala Lumpur city centre and the new $11.2 billion administrative capital at Putrajaya (which includes the so-called Cyberjaya city housing a hundred thousand residents and a further 150000 workers), the Corridor hopes to attract teleservices, gateway services, remote data services and programming, inter alia, by the turn of the millenium.

By 1998, the Malaysian Prime Minister's department will be paperless when it moves to Putrajaya, and all schools in the Corridor will be connected to the Internet.

On the surface, the Corridor would seem to mirror the two Singaporean technology corridors. However, once one realizes that the Malaysian Corridor will measure fifteen kilometres by sixty kilometres, Singapore's diminutive size and economic vulnerabilities become sharply apparent. The entire Corridor is larger than Singapore.

The Corridor will be marketed and managed by a one-stop agency - the Multimedia Development Corporation. Among its many aims, the Corridor hopes to become, by 2000, a regional centre for telemedicine, and a collaborative cluster of universities (such as the National University of Malaysia and the Agricultural University of Malaysia) and corporate R&D centres, taking full advantage of distance learning.

Similarly, as a remote manufacturing co-ordination and engineering support hub, it will enable companies in high-cost countries to access plants across Asia as a virtual extension of their domestic operations. The entire area will be serviced by a $2.8 billion fibre-optic network that will link the Corridor directly with ASEAN, Japan, the United States and Europe, Phase One of which will be ready by February 1998. At ten gigabits per second, this network will carry information a trillion times faster than conventional copper lines.

In order to attract investment from chip designers, electronic publishers, Internet Service Providers, software engineers, content localizers, telemarketers, entertainment firms (such as television and movie production houses) and other multimedia companies, five- to ten-year tax breaks for companies coming in before August 1997, relaxed visa requirements and guarantees for intellectual property rights have been announced. There will also be a free flow of information and no restrictions on foreign ownership and employment. Every application to do business there is processed and returned within a month.

Singapore will be able to enjoy synergy and spin-offs from the Corridor's development, and some local firms are already sizing up business opportunities.

Source: The Business Times

As another example, by the turn of the century, the travelling time by train to cover the four hundred kilometres between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur will have been reduced from six hours to under four hours, thanks to a diesel-powered tilting train cruising at 120 km/h (admittedly not all that fast when compared to the Eurostar cross-Channel service or the Shinkansen in Japan). This train service might even be linked to the MRT network, for easy transfers.

There are also plans to introduce a fast electric train service between Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Aranyaprathet, Poipet, Sisophon, Phnom Penh, Lok Ninh, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Kunming. From Kunming, a northern corridor would lead to Beijing and, either through the Korean peninsula or Ulan Bator, to Europe via the trans-Siberian railway. Trains from Kunming could also reach Europe via Urumqi and Kazakhstan. A southern corridor would access Europe via Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and the Middle East.

Source: the Straits Times

Before this vision can be realized, however, many details need to be worked out. For example, it is still not clear where exactly in Singapore the station will be sited. Malaysia, which owns two hundred hectares of the fifty-metre-wide zone along the forty kilometres of track in Singapore (under the Singapore Railway Transfer Ordinance of 1918), sees the existing sixteen-hectare Tanjong Pagar terminal as the obvious choice, but Singapore has put forward alternative sites at the Newton MRT station, Suntec City and Marina South. The issue is still moot.

Trains offer many advantages over other modes of transport. For example, in terms of distance travelled, trains are cheaper, can carry more goods and are less labour-intensive. An intercity train is three times as energy efficient as an aircraft and six times as efficient as a car with one occupant. Rail is cleaner too: for every tonne of goods moved a kilometre, two-thirds less nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide, and ninety percent less organic compounds, are emitted as compared to trucks.

Compared to air travel, trains do not require such a lengthy check-in and check-out process and railway stations are often situated in the hearts of cities. Similarly rail is much more space-efficient: two tracks can carry as many people in an hour as sixteen lanes of expressway.