Global cities spaces

(1. The text is an article written by David Lamb and published in September 2007 in the Smithsonian Magazine. It is entitled Singapore swing ». The picture is a photo of Boat Quay taken by night, so the text will probably be about night life in Singapore or about fashionable places to visit in Singapore.)

1. The narrator may be an American journalist. He has just arrived from the USA after a non-stop 18-hour flight from Newark (New Jersey) . It is three o’clock in the morning and since he is jet-lagged, he decides to leave the hotel and take a walk at Boat Quay. The adjective that best defines how people see Singapore today is « trendy » (I. 24).
2. The narrator obviously had a vision of Singapore as a city where people never have fun and where many things are forbidden, whereas what he discovers is a very trendy and fashionable place.
3. Before 1965, Singapore used to be a colonial city in the Tropics, where there was a lot of malaria and where adventurers with « pith helmets and panama hats » (I. 29-30) and Today, Singapore is still a place where people can have fun, but the population has changed and so has the environment. Everything is very modern.

1. Words linked to multiculturalism: « ethnic groups » (I. 44), « integrated » (I. 42), « racially harmonious » (I. 42), « quota systems » (1.42), « a representative mix of Chinese, lndians and Malays » (1.45). The Singaporean government has always tried to create an integrated and harmonious society in its city where people from different ethnic groups live together by implementing quota-systems for public housing for example.
2. On the one hand, Singapore has become a « perfect’ society » (1.48) in the sense that everything is very clean and efficient. There is almost no crime and people are respectful of their environment. But on the other hand, it is a very controlled society, where there are almost no individual freedoms and where there is no real creativity.
3. « Singapore was admired but not envied » (I. 51) probably means that people are impressed by the apparent perfection of the city. They appreciate going to a clean and safe city for a holiday or on business, but they probably wouldn’t like their own freedom to be restricted as much, that’s why they don’t « envy » it (I. 51).

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