Contesting Space

Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore

• Author(s): Brenda S. A. Yeoh,
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Pages: 351
• ISBN_10: 9676530859
  ISBN_13: 9789676530851
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Nature / Ecology , Political Science / General , Political Science / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development , Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social , Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Asian Studies , Social Science / Sociology / Urban ,

Description:... The urban built environment of colonial Singapore is conceived as a contested terrain of discipline and resistance between a colonial institution of control - the Municipal Authority of Singapore - and the Asian communities who lived their everyday lives according to their own values, priorities, and resources. The built environment bore the imprint of the disciplinary power of the authorities in their efforts to order, sanitize, and render the city amenable to regulation. At the same time, the spaces of the city were continually reinterpreted by the Asian communities who resisted the imposition of an all-encompassing colonial structure. The result was a built environment which embodied and expressed the tensions and negotiations between the different groups in their attempts to shape the city in their own image.