Singapore is renowned as a global business and financial centre, an international hub of air and sea transport, and Asia's leading convention city. In the new millennium, the government has envisioned a new role for the city-state as a 'Renaissance City' and 'Global City for the Arts'. This vision is premised on Singapore becoming an investment base for leading arts, cultural and entertainment enterprises in the region, the theatre hub of Southeast Asia, and an entertainment destination for tourists. This article examines the challenges and accomplishments in Singapore's quest to be a Renaissance City. Drawing on literature on 'global cities' and concepts relating to 'globalization' and 'localization', it argues that the key challenge facing Singapore is how best to 'go global' and 'stay local' at the same time. Developing a Renaissance City entails a balancing act between globalizing local sensibilities on the one hand, while localizing global best-practices on the other. This global-local nexus can be approached in three ways: (1) by striking a balance between the economic and humanistic objectives of the arts; (2) by importing world-class arts talents and exporting home-grown skills; and (3) by globalizing local peculiarities in line with best practices from around the world. The need to balance global standards with local interests is not easily achieved, however, making Singapore's 'Global City for the Arts' vision one of its most ambitious goals to date. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000.

In creative cities, new enterprises emerge all the time catering to the changing needs and lifestyles of visitors and local communities. Reputable institutions, cultural activities, iconic buildings as well as small, local businesses all play a role in `branding' the creative city. This study presents one such small enterprise in the form of historical shophouse hotels in Singapore. These shophouse inns are locally owned, housed in architecturally unique buildings and are regarded as emblems of Singaporean identity. It is argued that the urban vernacular, exemplified through the hotels, is a dynamic concept evolving over time, across place and for different groups of people and users. First, the paper explores how the shophouse vernacular provides a platform for the celebration of Singaporean identity by new boutique hoteliers. Secondly, a critique is presented of the commodification of the shophouse as modern hoteliers (business and budget inns) jump onto the heritage bandwagon to create new urban spaces of identity. Finally, contestations are discussed, as different people consider different vernaculars to be worthy of a place in the transforming city. As Singapore evolves as a creative city, the multidimensionality of the vernacular provides a fitting emblem to showcase the creative possibilities of historical buildings, traditional architecture and urban environments.

This paper explores Singapore' s Little India historic district as an example of a contested urban landscape. Speci® cally, it argues that Little India is a site of struggle betweeǹ insider' and`outsider' groups. Using primarily Relph's notion of`insideness' and`outsideness', and other concepts dealing with spatial resistance and domination, different groups of people with differing degrees of attachment to Little India are identi® ed. The insider± outsider cleavage is interrogated from three perspectives: the relationship between tourists and locals; ethnic tensions between Indian and Chinese communities; and, interaction between planners and users of the urban landscape. In exploring the myriad insider± outsider dynamics, it is contended that who represents an`insider' and who is considered an`outsider' is open to negotiation. This is because different people possess differing conceptions of`insideness', in turn giving rise to varying senses of attachment and belonging to place. This paper critiques existing tourism writings which focus predominantly on the relationship between tourists and locals, and it argues that in any tourist destination the tourist± local con¯ict is only one aspect of a much larger struggle over place. For this reason, urban tourism studies must focus on the wider arena in which the tourist± local interaction is set.

Transnational practices and networks of capital, labour, business and commodity markets, political movements and cultural flows are both the products of, and catalyst for, contemporary globalisation processes. An important site where the analytical lens can be trained to examine the way in which the material processes and discourses of globalisation and transnationalism intersect lies in dominant cities of the world urban hierarchy. As key nodes in the economic, social and technological networks spanning the world space economy, these 'global cities' are also places in themselves, where the social, cultural and economic fabric is not only woven out of local elements, but also clearly involves a high density of transnational relationships. In this paper, we examine debates in Singapore focused on four categories of transnational flows: the transnational business class comprising highly mobile, highly skilled professional, managerial and entrepreneurial elites ; a large group of low-waged immigrants filling unskilled and semi-skilled niches in the urban service economy; expressive specialists who enliven the cultural and artistic scene; and world tourists attracted by the cosmopolitan ambience. Specifically, we give attention to the interdependence among these categories and assess the challenges which have to be addressed in Singapore's bid to develop 'best practices' for a 'cosmopolitan and creative' global city epitomising the essence of transnationalism while at the same time remaining a 'home' distinguished by a strong sense of local identity and community.

The transformation of urban landscapes is as much a physical process as it is a symbolic one. Material changes in the form of demolition and redevelopment are often accompanied by changes in the image and identity of places, as well as the personal and collective memories associated with these places. Focusing on the Singapore River, we explore how waterfront redevelopment has rendered certain activities, people and place memories invisible, to be replaced by other landscape elements and their associative identities. Through ‘creative destruction’ and ‘destructive creation,’ the waterfront's transformation is evident in three areas: its built environment (‘builtscapes’), activities and events (‘eventscapes’) and displays of public art (‘artscapes’). We contend that landscapes reflect the tensions between ‘remembering to forget’ and ‘forgetting to remember’ in ‘New Asia‐Singapore,’ a city attempting to blend modern Asian dynamism with tradition and heritage.

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In developing tourist attractions, government planning authorities and entrepreneurs face a challenging task trying to cater to the interests of foreign visitors while meeting the needs of the local community. This paper presents the case of tourism development as a dynamic process in which the “tourist–local divide” is negotiated and the welfare of both groups monitored. This argument is empirically developed with the aid of two case studies on heritage tourism in Singapore: the adaptive re–use of old shophouses after their conversion into boutique hotels, and the re–invention of street activities as tourist sites. The commoditisation thesis advanced by many tourism writers is critiqued. I argue that heritage development is geared towards Singaporeans as much as it is towards tourists, and the effects of commoditisation are not always negative for the host community. Rather than a static object, heritage is an ever–changing product influenced by the combined effects of economic development, tourism and socio–cultural forces at the local scale. For this reason, the notion that commoditisation leads to “inauthenticity” is re–evaluated and a more optimistic prognosis on heritage tourism is offered.

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