A Eulogy to Organic Spaces

You came into this world perfect. Like a newborn, you had your wrinkles, incontinence and smelly burps, but you were perfect – for real people created you, played amongst you, intertwined their lives with yours. The messiness made you organic, authentic, precious.

Precious – for but a few of you exist anymore.

Like Arab Street, you were never the brightest of spaces. But its dim lanes tell stories of laughter; lazy afternoons; dancing in the rain. There is no space for such things in fluorescent-flooded, $50 psf CapitaLand shopping centres.

Like Geylang, you were never the slickest of spaces. But it came into being naturally – the Lorongs’ dirty eating houses and illicit houses of pleasure serve a need – and that is why it thrives. Wannabes like *SCAPE Youth Centre try to create a need, and that is why they falter.

Like Portsdown and Seletar Airbase, you were never the highest earning of spaces. But these countryside residences are the last bastions of children playing on grass and gateside conservations. Biotechnology parks and aviation behemoths, their encroaching neighbours, represent the new occupants: faceless, money churning automatons.

Precious – for big businesses and governments, with their eye only on the bottom line, have steamrollered the rest of you.

They have razed your old places of simplicity, groundedness and personality – and replaced it with a coterie of EPS, labyrinthic carpark mazes and threats of wheel clamp.

They have razed your old spaces for human connection and quietude – and replaced it with identikit Zara, Cathay Cinema and Guardian Pharmacy outlets.

But worst of all, they have razed individual voices and the creative spirit you encourage, and then tell us “Singapore’s OK: we are one of the cleanest and richest nations in the world”.

Without you, we are really one of the poorest.