SINGAPORE: Award-winning architect, Liu Thai Ker, created controversy a few years ago when he said that Singapore’s urban planners need to design the city for a population of 10 million. At a time when some were voicing concerns about the pressures being put on infrastructure from a growing population – largely from overseas – many scoffed when he made that statement.
Today, he stands by it, saying it’s not too late to start planning infrastructure to accommodate a possibly larger population in the future. His motto is: if the economy grows and population grows, we need to be prepared for it.
Liu is the eldest son of artist Liu Kang and planned to follow in his father’s footsteps but circumstances railroaded his plans and he ended up studying architecture instead.
He doesn’t regret it one bit.
His career has seen him influence Singapore’s urban landscape as CEO of the Housing and Development Board (HDB) between 1979 and 1989 and as CEO and Chief Planner of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) between 1989 and 1992. He’s also noted for being a proponent of heritage and nature conservation.
Today, he is the founding chairman of the Centre for Liveable Cities and Senior Director of RSP Architects, leading master-planning and urban design efforts in more than 30 cities.
He went “On the Record” with Bharati Jagdish about why his own efforts to plan for a larger population failed, why having more people in Singapore won’t compromise liveability and why Singapore needs more intellectual thinkers.
They first talked about the factors that have influenced him the most over the years.
Liu Thai Ker: I grew up in the British colony. At that time, we didn’t have nationality. I was just a British subject and later, during the Japanese Occupation, I just felt that if you don’t have a strong country, you cannot really have your own dignity and have a good life. This influenced me greatly and later, when my mother succeeded in persuading me to become an architect, I thought I would. In those days, in the 1950s and 1960s in Singapore, three out of four people lived in squatter colonies. I thought I’ll grow up and help people build houses as an architect. But later, I felt that to be a good architect, I needed to know planning. I went to Yale to study city planning. All of this was designed to prepare myself to be ready to come back to Singapore to contribute to the building of the nation.
Bharati: You grew up in Malaya at a time when things were very different. How did living in a village, in a kampung, influence your work?
Liu: Initially, I lived in my grandparents’ house which was on the outskirts of Muar. It was a kampung environment – lots of vegetables and chickens and pigs and so on. Comparing the kampung life with urban life – with toilets, a clean water supply and so on – of course I wanted to be able to create an environment with those kinds of facilities. But on the other hand, having lived in a kampung and being close to animals, mud and vegetation, I also developed a feeling for nature and that also influenced my work later in life. We moved to Singapore after World War II.
In the 1950s, when the British were still our colonial masters, we had urban slums and squatters and the environment was not very clean. Even with your eyes closed, you’d be able to tell you were at the Singapore River because it smelled, it stank of the pollution and the buildings were old and dilapidated. People were poor.
My parents, despite the fact that they were schoolteachers, were desperately poor and I had to live in an environment that really would be considered by today’s standard, extremely poor. That was motivation for me to try to do something to change my life.
Just after the Second World War when the Japanese surrendered, we lived in Dhoby Ghaut. In the beginning, we had sewage collectors. They would walk through our house and collect the sewage in a bucket, then walk through our dining room and living room back to the truck with all that smelly waste. That is certainly not something that I would like to have in my life. In Muar, we would have to walk 10 to 15 kilometres to a wooden hut to use a toilet.
Bharati: You wanted to change your life, but you once said you wished you had worked to preserve a small part of the squatter areas. Did you ever experience that type of life?
Liu: No, I was a little better off than that but when I was in HDB, I used to visit squatter colonies. One day after the rain, I asked my HDB colleagues to walk with me along Redhill which is now called Redhill Estate. It was a squatter colony and as we were walking on the mud road, rainwater was still flowing down the sloping road. In the water, there was human faeces, pig faeces, rubbish and so on. If you don’t ever get to see the actual environment, it’s very hard for younger generations of Singaporeans to understand where we came from. So that’s still my deepest regret. I should have saved one to three hectares of land which is not a lot compared to the size of Singapore. I should have saved one or two or three hectares of squatter areas, keeping them exactly as they were, including a lack of sanitation, and maybe including a standpipe. Nowadays, when I ask young Singaporeans in their 40s if they know what a standpipe is, nobody knows.
Liu Thai Ker speaking at the opening of the World Cities Summit in 2012. (Photo: Liu Thai Ker)
Bharati: What is it?
Liu: People in the squatter areas had no water supply to their homes, so the Government had to provide drinking water pipes in the area, not to every home, but every few metres, they put one. One pipe would serve a couple of dozen families. Every day, those families had to go to the standpipes to collect the water to bring back to their homes for drinking. So that was the kind of environment I was talking about.
The power of convincing the younger generation through photographs or words would not be as strong as if they saw the real thing. It’s something I only thought about recently. Today’s Singaporeans not only have all these modern facilities, they also have other amenities like schools and sports fields and so on. To let them have a comparison would make them more appreciative of what they have and maybe even also more appreciative of what the Government has done for them. If they are more appreciative, on the one hand, hopefully their attitude towards society would be more positive. And on the other hand, they would also be spurred to say, “Okay, if the earlier generation could make such big changes, why can’t we also carry on improving lives?” I hope it will spur them to make solid changes.
Bharati: You feel younger Singaporeans lack this ability?
Liu: Well, I certainly sound like a grumpy old man but it’s not just my opinion. Without soliciting, I often hear my Singaporean friends, including people 20 years younger than I am, saying that if Singaporeans could be more appreciative of what they already own, they may become happier people so that they would not just complain at the drop of a hat and if there’s something not right, instead of just complaining maybe try to do something about it.
Complaining doesn’t change your life. Noticing the imperfection and trying to do something to fix it would be more useful.
Bharati: You wanted to fix things through your architectural expertise, but I understand you actually wanted to be an artist like your dad. You said your mother persuaded you to become an architect. How did she do this, considering you were quite set on becoming a painter?
Liu: At the age of 17, I was thinking about my future because my parents had absolutely no money to send me to university. Someone asked me to be a substitute teacher in a primary school, so I did that. Some of the students in my class were 19 or 20 years old. They were older than me. Their studies had been affected by the Japanese Occupation. There were many years that they could not go to school. Through those few years of teaching, I accumulated some money. I thought that since my parents had totally no capability to send me to university, despite the fact that I had very good school results, why don’t I just use the money to buy a passage to China and enroll in an art school. I announced it to my parents. I said, “In 2 weeks, I will be gone.” Of course my mother bawled her eyes out and told me not to do anything. She said, “Let me think of something else.” Remarkably, two days later, she found a solution. First, she persuaded me to do architecture because there was some art and creativity involved in that as well. And as an architect, I could lift the family from poverty to a better life. Secondly, at that time, the University of New South Wales had part-time courses, so that meant that I could work and study at the same time. That would make this journey more affordable for the family. So I thought, “Why not?” Frankly, in my mind I was thinking, “Okay, I will do something to make my mother happy, but after finishing university, I will go back to art.” Because of that thinking, when I went to Sydney I enrolled in art school to take art classes half-a-day every week. I did oil paintings, watercolour paintings. But by the time I finished my fourth year of a six-year part-time course, I started to realise that by being an architect I would be useful in taking Singapore out of its backward condition. I realised what architecture and planning could do for a nation. I decided to just spend my energy full-time on architecture.
SINGAPOREANS TOO PRAGMATIC, LACK INTELLECTUAL DEPTH
Bharati: Wouldn’t you say the arts would have been a useful contribution too?
Liu: To me, changing a person’s physical environment was a more immediate mission. But while you are changing a person’s physical environment or city’s physical environment, it doesn’t preclude you from doing art. In fact, if we had better housing, schools and so on, we could actually give the people a better chance to be educated and therefore pursue their intellectual or cultural activities. So I saw the physical environment as a catalyst for culture as well. In the early days in Singapore, because of our utter poverty, the Singapore Government gave priority to physical improvement and cultural development came later.
Liu Thai Ker receiving the Business China Excellence Award in 2014 from Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean. (Photo: Liu Thai Ker)
Bharati: I ask you this also because you were chairman of the National Arts Council at some point. Some artists feel that even then, art should not have been an afterthought. In fact, sometimes, the best art emerges from strife and poverty. As someone with the instinct to be an artist, why don’t you see it that way?
Liu: Yes, actually, I personally feel that there’s a tendency among Singaporeans to see cultural activities as an additional activity, meaning you go into it only when you are free. I don’t think that’s a good idea. You have a point. I totally agree that in a lot of countries, art and culture, art and living are totally integrated. Here, there’s a line drawn between living and art. I wish that this can be integrated. But at that time, I guess for me, it was a matter of choice and under those circumstances, I made the best choice I could. I hope that today, more will be done to integrate art education as part of living rather than something that’s an add-on. At the moment, cultural development tends to be a kind of entertainment. It’s not. It’s really an expression of living a life.
I personally also feel that in Singapore, if we were to stay on the forefront of nations, we not only have to look at further development of art, but also further development of intellectual thinking. I think we tend to be a little too pragmatic. It’s only through intellectual thinking that we can go deeper into a problem. By thinking more deeply, we can have invention.
My job takes me out of Singapore quite a bit. When a job needs to be done, it needs to be 100 per cent. A shallow person will get it 80 per cent done and consider the job done. They meet the basic requirements and don’t look deeply into doing it better. I do find quite a lot of that amongst Singaporeans. But I find when I give people from other countries a job, they might take a slightly longer time getting it done but by the time they come back, it’s 100 per cent done. When you do that, you are making progress, you are making headway that other people don’t make. It’s something I do worry about.
Ours is basically a pragmatic society so if you get the job 80 per cent done and you feel that you can get by with your customers or your boss, you think, “Why not?” But when you do that, you would not go into other areas that people have not thought of.
To me, that is an innovative society. We need more people thinking like that.
This doesn’t mean that we should abandon pragmatism. I think we should have everything – pragmatism, deeper intellectuals and appreciation of culture. We need all that.
Bharati: How do you think we can achieve this?
Liu: I feel that it has to start in school. We should ask more searching questions. I think when there’s a problem, we should not just stop at finding a solution. We should ask ourselves whether there is a way to do a better job than this? We need to have a greater emphasis on studying history and philosophy because through studying philosophy and history, you actually probe deeper into the subjects and that helps with intellectual depth. I was talking to an education expert from Scandinavia and asked him why arts education is important. He said it’s because it helps you imagine things. But he said you can do this in other aspects of education as well. When you teach a student a science subject or any other subject, you must take them through the class, not just by explaining what’s in the textbook, but going beyond that for them to think more deeply into the subject. So I said, “Then can we just do without arts education? If we can teach the other subjects in that way, why do we need arts education?” But he said “no” and said that arts education is very different from the other subjects because other subjects have boundaries. Arts education has no boundaries.
You have to keep probing deeper and deeper. So when we have arts education, we shouldn’t treat it as skills training in the sense that you just learn to play the piano well, or draw an apple. Treat it as an exercise in probing deeper and deeper into the unknown.
I think that can be very helpful. It’s an issue of what our definition of the purpose of arts education is. Technical training is important but on top of that, I think we need to use it as a medium to develop a person’s mind.
Bharati: Even today, when it comes to the arts, there are still issues of censorship and disagreement over state funding. If we have so many out-of-bounds (OB) markers in Singapore, can we truly have a vibrant arts education that encourages probing without boundaries in Singapore?
Liu: Personally, I feel that a society needs to have OB markers because otherwise, there will be a lot of conflicts.
Bharati: That’s an assumption that some people make. But couldn’t talking about difficult issues also bring enlightenment and understanding?
Liu: Yes. Actually that’s right. I personally feel that we certainly should talk about difficult issues, but not in an irresponsible way. In other words, you don’t talk about something different or difficult for the sake of being different and difficult. You must have a basis for saying that. You must build up your argument for doing so. That requires intellectual depth.
I’m a little bit concerned that it’s now become fashionable to speak irresponsibly just to create controversy. Then you are seen as being very clever and people clap for you. To me, that is not healthy.
If you want to be different and you want to express new ideas, you have to build up a strong argument for it. That is a real intellectual depth.
10 MILLION STRONG POPULATION – AN “INEVITABLE REALITY”
Bharati: You yourself created controversy a few years ago when you said that Singapore’s urban planners should plan for a population of 10 million. Some say you made a good case for it. Others asked why you would even suggest having so many people populate this tight space.
Liu: If your economy is doing well, no government with any amount of power should stop population growth.
Bharati: But economic growth at what cost?
Liu: That’s why you need to be prepared. If you want your economy to grow, and your population grows but you are not prepared for it, you will have problems. If you plan well, the city can still be liveable. Singapore is unlike other countries. If you don’t plan long-term, if you don’t conserve your land carefully, use it efficiently, when you run out of land, you have no land to expand. You have limited land. So you have to use what you have more efficiently from the start to make sure you have enough for changing circumstances. To keep the economy growing, you need a growing population size. So what’s the reason for us not to plan long-term for large numbers just to make sure we can be self-sufficient.
“I learnt the lesson that population projections are really under-projections. I also learnt a second lesson because Singapore’s population grew faster than we could envisage in 1991,” says Liu Thai Ker. (Photo: Liu Thai Ker)
Bharati: We’ll talk about how you arrived at the figure of 10 million in just a moment, but you were CEO and Chief Planner of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) between 1989 and 1992. Why didn’t you think that way then? Why didn’t you plan for a larger population? We could have avoided many of the overcrowding problems we’ve been facing for several years now.
Liu: At that time, I was already worried that if we did not plan well enough, we would run out of land. In other countries if they run out of land, they just go into the rural areas. If we run out of land, we will hit the international line and we can’t build anymore. Most planning would plan in horizon for about 15 to 20 years. I felt that we have to plan for long-term.
Bharati: But clearly, you didn’t.
Liu: Let me explain. We adopted an “X” year concept. We would plan for “X” years. It was a term used by me.
Bharati: Why “X”?
Liu: I decided to just use that term.
If I told the people in those days that I wanted to plan for a hundred years, I think I would be told off, maybe I would even lose my job because nobody did that.
Bharati: You were looking at 100-year horizon?
Liu: It was meant to be 100 years. We proceeded to check with some experts. I asked them what the population size would be in hundred years. At that time in 1991, we had 3.2 million and our economy was just starting to grow faster. Very few of them projected beyond 4.5 million in year “X”. I felt that it was just too modest, so I decided to look at it in terms of by 2091, based on the projections, we would have 5.5 million people.
Bharati: A gross underestimation.
Liu: Yes. By 2017, we already have 5.7 million. Did I make a mistake? Yes, but at least I jacked up the number beyond other people’s projections and secondly, being a very good Singaporean, I had the virtue of being kiasu. So despite that 100-year projection, I still kept a lot of land undeveloped so we would have room to play around with. I also negotiated with the Port of Singapore Authority for the ultimate boundary of land reclamation. Some of these are still not reclaimed, but it’s in the plan. There’s room for more. It’s just that our population projection was not accurate but name me one urban plan anywhere in the world where the population projection is accurate.
Bharati: Considering this, how did you even arrive at 10 million?
Liu: I learnt the lesson that population projections are really under-projections. I also learnt a second lesson because Singapore’s population grew faster than we could envisage in 1991. Why?
If your economy is doing well, no government with any amount of power can stop population growth unless you tell society, “Look, I don’t want economic growth.” Then you can stop the population growth. Which government will want to do that?
In China they have the hukou system – a household registration system. They register in different districts. Despite this, Shanghai and Beijing cannot stop the population growth.
Bharati: But certainly, it shouldn’t be a case of economic growth at all costs, should it? These things need to be calibrated, not just because of the infrastructural issues, but social issues associated with uncontrolled population growth.
Liu: If you have made and implemented plans to accommodate population growth, the costs won’t be hard to bear. These are the lessons I’ve learnt. I still feel we need to face the inevitable reality of 10 million people.
Bharati: But if as you say, you can’t control or even accurately project population growth, how did you land on the 10 million figure and the need to plan for it? Why not 20 million or some other random figure?
Liu: Because I also read a UN report that said by 2075, the world can no longer support population growth. Between now and 2075, the world population may double but by then, the world’s resources can no longer support growth.
Bharati: There might be technological solutions for that, or not. The point is, even that’s not certain.
Liu: Yes, but based on that, I thought of 10 million almost like the ultimate number. But even if we plan this, I personally would still want to reserve some land just in case the UN prediction is not right.
Bharati: You’ve said we can plan for 10 million and accommodate 10 million people without losing green spaces and heritage and conservation areas and buildings. How?
Liu: I know Singapore’s land situation quite well and I feel that despite my proposal for 10 million, there will be enough land, including the future reclaimed land. We should keep all the interesting parts – historical areas, bungalows and even golf courses because we need all of this, to be a complete city. This would mean taller blocks and denser towns too.
A QUESTION OF LIVEABILITY
Bharati: But how liveable will the city be? Dense, overcrowded estates, parks, transportation nodes. Transport nodes have experienced that already. We’ve seen more MRT lines open up but clearly at one stage, the city wasn’t ready to accommodate the population comfortably because of the influx of immigrants. What about such issues?
Liu: Yes, because at that time, we didn’t expect the population to grow so fast. We didn’t expect Singapore economy to be so successful.
We need to learn our lesson. If we plan for taller and more dense development now, if we decide now, we can distribute the taller buildings more evenly across our island and therefore you won’t see big bunches of tall building in certain areas.
If you do that, those areas become like a slum area. So if we do it now, we have better chance of creating an environment where you have a mixture of different densities. That makes for better living. For example, people not only accept, but love The Pinnacle. Why? Because The Pinnacle stands alone among the shop houses. If you put 20 such buildings next to each other, would you still love The Pinnacle? I want to avoid that situation. High-rise housing must be mixed with low-rise schools, parks, sports fields, low-rise neighborhood centers and so on. The definition of high-density is to create a physical environment where it’s very difficult to see the sky but if you mix them around this way, it’s still possible to see the sky.
Liu Thai Ker with former United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger at renowned architect, IM Pei’s 100th birthday celebration in New York this year. (Photo: Liu Thai Ker)
If we plan now for a larger population now, we can avoid possible future overcrowding on the transport system too. I’m happy to see that the Government in recent years has added quite a few MRT lines. But I just hope that they have done a calculation to see whether the train and the bus stations be able to cope with the amount of travelers. If they have done this calculation, then maybe the problem would be solved in due course.
Bharati: Right now, we are seeing issues with the Bukit Panjang Light Rail Transit system. It will soon be overhauled. Minister Khaw Boon Wan said the Bukit Panjang LRT was an “afterthought” built under “political pressure”. Apparently they had not anticipated a need for LRT during the town planning stage. This resulted in the LRT having to be built around existing developments, incorporating “sharp turns over undulating terrain” and over time, leading to “power trips at the sharp bends”. What alternative strategies would you suggest as a planner to anticipate such needs or to mitigate such problems?
Liu: I shall abstain from commenting on the Bukit Panjang LRT. I will not want to be drawn into any political debates.
If we plan for a larger population and do the calculations right. We can avoid problems. If the population does not grow as projected, then we’ll have more than we need. That’s better than not having enough. But if the population doesn’t grow, it would also mean economic growth is in trouble. Then we have a bigger problem. We have a chance to do it now. If we plan now, we can take better charge of the situation because now we have more land available for us to play around with the density.
Bharati: Of course, the train disruptions are angering people too.
Liu: That’s a separate thing. One is to plan for the needs and actually to have our MRT service and bus services. The two must be combined and done well. We need several factors. One is to set the target of how many per cent of people would want to travel by public transportation. Two is to plan according to such projections and three is to plan and develop them in good time. So I think currently, the development is slightly behind time. I personally remain reasonably optimistic assuming that they have done their calculations.
For the transport issue, there is the maintenance factor. Maintenance is quite obvious that it’s not as good as one had wished. This is a management issue, not a planning issue.
Bharati: Of course if the planning isn’t done well, the strain on the infrastructure could make maintenance even more arduous too.
Liu: Yes, so as planners we plan as well as we can. When we talk about problems, we have to be very clear in what context we are talking about them.
Bharati: There are plans to build some facilities underground such as storage facilities. Would your plan involve subterranean housing?
Liu: No. Would anyone want to live and work underground? Some people have talked about it but to me, that is not an option. You can use underground for storage, because the goods don’t complain. They don’t need the sun and they don’t need the see the trees. But human beings need to see the sun, need to see the trees. So that’s another reason that we need to plan now for 10 million so that we don’t run out of land and need to go underground.
Bharati: Why do you think our Government planners today are not doing what you’ve suggested in terms of thinking beyond the next 15 years?
Liu: No idea. Since I left the Government, I haven’t really had a communication channel with the Government. But I hope that they will take the 10 million seriously and really try to study a plan for that.
NO NEED TO LOSE HERITAGE, NATURE AREAS OR GOLF COURSES
Bharati: You’ve mentioned the importance of preserving heritage and nature areas and even golf courses while being able to house a population of 10 million. But already today, at about half that population, we’ve seen several nature and heritage go or in danger of going. The loss of Bukit Brown caused quite a furore. There’s been a debate over the impact of the Cross Island MRT line being built beneath the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. With your plan, will there be more losses?
Liu: Whatever we have today, I would say deserves to be kept for a long time. There’s no need to lose more.
Bharati: Why are you so confident it’s possible to house more people without losing heritage and nature when urban planners today have not managed to inspire that confidence in people?
Liu: I’ve also learnt that nothing is absolute. Even during my time, it was already made known that Bukit Brown would be gone. I cannot guarantee that what we have now will be kept. There’s a Chinese saying: “a sparrow may be small but it has all the organs of a bigger animal”. Singapore is not just a city. We are a country. We must have all the facilities of a country.
I don’t want to lose heritage because if Singapore were to be a world-class city, you need to have heritage, you need to have culture, you need to have a beautiful natural environment, you need to have golf courses. If we don’t have all these things, we cease to be a world-class city.
Bharati: Why golf courses though? Some have said they’re not at all essential.
Liu: Well, leisure is part of living and also it’s good for businessmen as well and if it’s good for businessmen, it’s good for the economy.
Bharati: So when planners today say that we have to sacrifice these and other heritage and nature areas for the sake of development, are they wrong?
Liu: I’m not in communication with the planners but if I look at the map of Singapore, we do have spaces that we can use without sacrificing heritage and nature. We still have land not reclaimed and I must say, every time I take off from Changi to go overseas, I’m very, very happy to see the that Pulau Tekong is now reclaimed to be a much bigger island than I envisaged in those days. We could also redevelop some of the industrial areas because a lot of the industrial areas in the earlier days were single-storey terrace factories. Now, you can actually intensify these. So we can also hopefully use some of the excess land for housing, for commerce and so on. If the planners say that we have very little land. We can’t go for 10 million, I would say if that’s the case, it’s even more critical that we plan for 10 million now. If we plan for 15 years or maybe add another 10 to 20 years, we might use up all the land, but the population might continue to grow because the economy is still booming. Will we then say, “There’s no more land, so we should stop economic growth?” Is that a good idea?
Bharati: Could we have avoided losing some heritage buildings or nature areas had planners over the years done a better job of using land efficiently?
Liu: Off the cuff I can’t think of anything that has been a serious loss. I would say so far, our Government has done a very rational job. Some things I believe were necessary. In urban planning, you have to make a choice between heritage, nature, rivers and cemeteries.
Personally, I feel on issues like cemeteries like Bukit Brown – the priority should be for the living rather than for the dead. Each issue needs to be examined independently.
Bharati: What’s your stand on the Central Catchment Nature Reserve issue?
Liu: I’ve left the Government and I don’t want to get drawn into the controversy, but since you asked, I would say that MRT line investment is expensive so if the same line can go through more urban areas, picking up more passengers, first of all, you get a better return for your investment. Secondly, you serve more people than if you go underground without income and without serving more people.
You save some time for the people on the line but you cause more people not being able to take the MRT lines. So I think the subtotal of it is quite different. I think we should look at the bigger good. But I must say, this is comment based on pure theory. I haven’t really studied the problem.
When it comes to places like Rochor Centre, I would say I believe the Government has probably done an economic study. It’s public housing but in a place with a very high land premium. By tearing down and redeveloping for something of higher value, to me, makes economic sense and I personally feel that that’s not a bad decision.
Bharati: Some people are now also taking issue with the loss of farmland.
Liu: I haven’t made any study of that except that some time ago, I heard a talk about farming and this speaker said that it’s unrealistic for us to hope to be self-sufficient on our food supply. On the other hand, we still must maintain our vertical farms to do research because there is business for us to use more scientific ways to ensure quality food. What is more important is for us to create an urban environment which is as liveable as possible. If you want to have a small farm area to demonstrate to people how chicken and pigs and cows and goats live, I would say it can be considered but I don’t think we can count on developing a large farm to give us good food supply. That, to me, is quite difficult.
Bharati: While being a proponent of nature and heritage, you also seem to take what some would describe as an unsentimental economic approach to the issues. How do you personally strike that balance?
Liu: You have to think of all of the factors at the same time.
Sometimes, the sentimental wins out. Sometimes you have to look at the alternatives and see if they will contribute to liveability more considering the limitations.
For different issues, certain factors may take higher priority than the others. But as a planner, you have to consider all of these factors.
Bharati: Are there any spaces or structures that you feel we absolutely should not lose in the future?
Liu: Off the cuff, nothing really comes to mind. But I feel we can develop without losing more. I would say serious things to lose would be things which are valuable to us but irreplaceable such as nature and historical buildings.
HIS IDEAL SINGAPORE
“There’s a Chinese saying: “a sparrow may be small but it has all the organs of a bigger animal”. We must have all the facilities of a country…you need to have heritage, you need to have culture,” says Liu Thai Ker. (Photo: Liu Thai Ker)
Bharati: Your plan, I understand, envisages a mega city made up of five smaller cities, each one with a population of just two million or so with its own Central Business District (CBD), own hotels, own cultural centre. The Government has planned a second CBD in the Jurong Lake District. What do you think of the current plans as a whole for Singapore?
Liu: If you want to create a CBD, you have to consider if the population size will support the CBD to fill the jobs and support the retail. You have to consider the increased amount of traffic and so on. You have to consider the increased demand for schools, universities, hospitals for the increased population. For the western part of Singapore to have a CBD, I feel that theoretically, it’s fine but I feel that we need to think about all these related issues. But won’t it be better if we consider the whole island as one whole collection of systems? That means if Singapore in the future would have four other secondary CBDs and all the traffic, the roads and the MRT lines and so on are planned at the same time and planned for a bigger population. It would give us better assurance that we will have a better environment, a good environment in the future for everyone living in each city – everyone will have the opportunity to live and work in one city. That means you don’t have to spend a lot of time traveling long distances. You can go home to spend time with the family.
Bharati: You were Chief Executive of the HDB between 1979 and 1989. You made an impact in several areas including in the planning concept – the move from large-scale estates with localised facilities to new towns that were actually self-sufficient. But what would you say to people who feel that the flats that were built at the time didn’t really address liveability in the sense that they followed a cookie-cutter model?
Liu: Singapore was much poorer then. People’s incomes were lower, so it was important for us to build housing efficiently at a low-cost. Our goal was not to design aesthetic buildings to please the few people who an international education. Our main mission was to house as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. The young need to understand this. But also, not many people realise that in those days, our contractors were very inexperienced. So if we were to ask them to do something out of the ordinary, many mistakes would be made. I’ll give you one concrete example. In Buona Vista estate, because of the hill, I asked our engineer to design a step footing instead of a flat foundation so that we don’t have to cut down the hill. Way past the construction completion date, I still couldn’t see the building. So I asked my engineer about it. He said, “Oh, Mr Liu, you don’t realise our contractor has never done this before. They’re struggling to get it done.”
I want to say one thing though. Despite the high degree of standardisation, I did take care of two things among others. One is to give the places identity. I put non-housing buildings like churches, temples and community centres as much as I could at street corners to give the building blocks some identity. Also, we didn’t spend money adding aesthetic features to the buildings but I still wanted the buildings to be beautiful, so what did I do?
I learnt from Miss Universe. What’s the difference between Miss Universe and ordinary girls? Why is she prettier? It’s because she has nice proportions so I spent a lot of time working on the proportion of the HDB building façade.
In every HDB building, the relationship of the window sizes to the balconies to the size of the window panels and so on they are all carefully calculated and proportioned.
I also introduced a concept of street architecture. That means if you have a row of buildings in one whole block from one street corner to another street corner, that row of buildings should not be all flat. It should go up and down, so the whole street facade looks like a piece of artwork with rhythms and so on. If you look at the Bishan estate from Bishan Park, now, the buildings going up and down – that’s the result of street architecture. It was deliberate. It was not as thoughtless as some of the critics would say.
Bharati: You are the Chairman of the Centre for Liveable Cities’ Advisory Board. What other elements would you say absolutely cannot be compromised or must be introduced in order to ensure liveability here?
Liu: The purpose of planning can be summed up by two words. One, is people. The other, is land. The city needs to be functional and the economy has to be sustainable. These are the two fundamentals. This is the starting point, but to achieve them you need to think about liveability, resilience and so on. It’s a whole string of issues. Liveability involves health, education, culture and jobs and so on. You have to think about a green environment, low carbon emissions and so on for sustainability. We’ll have to also understand the basic human needs. To give you an example, I think one of the reasons that we have achieved good racial harmony is that in HDB estates, we provided religious sites for different faiths. The Chinese, Indian temples, mosques, and also churches. Always think of human needs – not just the practical ones, but the ones for human well-being and plan for it. We need to ensure protection of rivers, hills and in certain areas, we even protect the mangrove swamps and so on to keep the natural biological species. We have to consider many factors all at the same time.
Bharati: One of the things you take pride in is your focus on creating community spaces within housing estates. Some have remarked though that physical spaces don’t really help if people aren’t willing to interact. A lack of neighbourliness is an issue in many estates. Increasingly, people are interacting more online than in physical community spaces. Do you feel like your efforts have failed or are futile?
Liu: The concept of community space has been around for centuries. The most original community space is the village well for people to gather around while collecting water. In modern times, despite the introduction of telephones, some people still gather at community spaces, because face-to-face contact cannot be replaced by phones and emails. I think as a planner we can only try our best to provide the physical environment, conducive to human interaction but we cannot force the people to behave the way we want them to behave. But we cannot use that as an excuse for not creating conducive environment.
I often tell people that in HDB estates, we have provided a vertical kampung, but I’m waiting for you to show me the kampung spirit.
I remain hopeful that as long as the planner does his job to create a conducive environment, all you need is just one or two leaders in the community to lead to push it and things will happen.
Bharati: You said earlier you regret not having preserved a small part of the squatter areas. Do you regret anything else?
Liu: I wish that when I was at the URA, I had prepared more aggressively for a larger population. Planned the road traffic and MRT more like for a collection of five cities rather than five regions. If I had done so, the job of planning for a population of 10 million would be more easily done now.
Bharati: What legacy do you want to leave?
Liu: I feel that the fact that I started in HDB and with the help of all my colleagues, we created highly self- sufficient new towns and the segmented corridors to create a sense of community. I really hope this kind of community spirit can in time to come, nurture a stronger understanding of the culture and art and attitude to life among the different races. Not only will we achieve harmony but we would also enrich our understanding of life. I want to leave a legacy of having created such opportunities.
SINGAPORE: Southeast Asia has a lot to offer to global tourists.
The rich cultural diversity, affordable lifestyle and beautiful geography, all make countries in the ASEAN region attractive to tourists from around the world. Growing connectivity also makes it easier for tourists to experience multiple cities and countries within the same trip.
As the most developed economy in the region, Singapore alone attracted more than 16 million visitors last year, according to data from the Department of Statistics. For a small country, this figure is a significant share of the more than 100 million tourist arrivals in the ten ASEAN countries.
A sizable number of tourists visiting Southeast Asia actually come from another country in the region. The ASEAN Secretariat says that intra-ASEAN travellers make up 41 per cent of the tourist numbers in 2015 and this figure is expected to grow.
If we add the number of people travelling within Southeast Asia for work, the figure will be even higher.
A big contributor to this development is the growth of regional airlines, especially low-cost carriers.
A SINGLE AVIATION MARKET
Those who keep tabs on bargain flight tickets and are avid travellers within Southeast Asia will be interested to know that an important meeting likely to have bearing on the region’s aviation market will take place in Singapore this coming week.
Transport Ministers from across ASEAN will be in the country to discuss various regional transport issues, including the ASEAN Single Aviation Market. This is an agenda that can enhance tourism’s contribution to regional economic growth.
Travellers arriving at the immigration hall in Changi Airport Terminal 2. (File photo: TODAY)
At a time when the world is facing a challenging economic environment, the region could certainly use a boost from travel and tourism.
Known as the Open Skies agreement, the Single Aviation Market initiative promises to create competition between airlines that will benefit consumers.
The agreement which had the support of ASEAN Transport Ministers in 2015 envisages the liberalisation of air travel and the removal of restrictions on air transport of passengers and cargo for airlines in the ten countries.
The single market will also provide the opportunity for homegrown airlines to expand by increasing their number of intra-ASEAN routes. While this will directly benefit the companies and their employees, the wider supply chain will see trickle-down effects too.
As they expand, airline companies will have to compete with each other, and consumers can expect fares to drop as a result of this rivalry. Consumers will benefit from cheaper airfares and more airline choices.
To differentiate themselves, airlines may also offer new routes to key destinations, providing still more options for tourists, and generating more opportunities in the tourism sector.
Malaysia Airlines planes sit on the tarmac at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Jul 21, 2014. (Photo: Reuters/Edgar Su)
If ASEAN governments vigorously pursue the Single Aviation Market’s agenda, the benefits can be shared by all ASEAN citizens.
Singapore will a prime beneficiary because it is already a regional and global hub for many airlines. But neighbouring countries, like Malaysia, will reap benefits too.
The total contribution of travel and tourism to Malaysian GDP was RM167.5 billion (US$39.6 billion), or almost 14 per cent, in 2016. Tourist arrivals originating from ASEAN countries to Malaysia made up about 76 per cent of all tourist arrivals in Malaysia that same year. Evidently, intra-ASEAN tourism is a major contributor to the country’s economy.
The rise of alternative beach destinations such as Sihanoukville in Cambodia and Phu Quoc in Vietnam, to rival the traditionally popular Bali and Phuket, further illustrate how there is still so much more of Southeast Asia to discover, destinations for airlines to cater to, and tourist dollars to be earned.
It is not just existing hubs like Singapore which stand to benefit handsomely from the Single Aviation Market. There is something for everyone.
Two Cambodian fishermen go for night fishing as the sun goes down in the seaside resort of Sihanoukville some 230kms South of Phnom Penh, 22 April 2001. (Photo: AFP/Philippie Lopez)
THREE STEPS TO TACKLE HURDLES
For sure, such a major regional undertaking does not come easy and there remains some hiccups.
ASEAN’s diversity means countries in the region are still at very different stages of development, and therefore every country will have their own calculations to make about the risks and benefits of liberalising their aviation industry.
Some, like Indonesia and the Philippines, have expressed concerns about the ability of their airline companies to compete against bigger rivals from other countries. These concerns are understandable, and clearly more work needs to be done in this respect.
There are three specific steps that can be taken by various ASEAN governments to tackle the hurdles.
First, an ASEAN-level arrangement that oversees the effective implementation of the Single Aviation Market should be established. Regular meetings of the heads of the civil aviation agencies from the different countries can be helpful to these ends.
Frequent interaction will enable them to have a deeper discussion on technical and regulatory matters to find solutions that take into account their national challenges, so that hurdles to air travel can be gradually lowered and eventually removed.
The ASEAN Transport Ministers signed a master plan to boost connectivity in the region’s transport sector and a protocol aiding in the formation of an ASEAN Single Aviation Market in 2015. (Photo: Sumis Naidu)
Second, ASEAN countries need to commit to harmonise regulations that affect the aviation industry, especially on matters that involve safety and efficiency. At the moment, the regulations are too varied, making cross-border enforcement and cooperation tricky.
For example, mutual recognition of licenses and certification for personnel that include pilots, engineers and air traffic controllers would greatly enhance the benefits of a Single Aviation Market. Similarly, cross-ASEAN standardisation and recognition of documents such as certificates of aircraft airworthiness would help make airline operations smoother too.
Third, there should be more high-level discussions that lead to concrete action plans and implementation timelines for a Single Aviation Market. These are in ASEAN’s overall economic interests of greater integration.
The ASEAN Economic Community’s goal of greater connectivity has indeed been discussed at length, but there are still many issues that are not yet fully resolved, when it comes to implementing initiatives like the Single Market Aviation, despite having in-principle support from the highest levels of government.
It is important for the ASEAN Transport Ministers meeting to come up with specific next steps as well as a clear timeline.
WIDER ECONOMIC BENEFIT
Efficient and affordable air transport is not just good for tourism, but also critical for the region’s continued economic growth and vibrancy.
The World Economic Forum predicts that the region will have the world’s fifth largest economy by 2020. Last year, intra-ASEAN total trade reached almost S$750 billion – a substantial figure as it is.
Just imagine how much more that figure could grow, with a more cost-effective aviation industry that enhances the flow of people and goods.
This Single Aviation Market is a potential game-changer for ASEAN. When the Transport Ministers meet, they should devote more attention to realising its possibilities.
If ASEAN Transport Ministers can commit to this agenda, and reiterate their commitment to speed up the process, there should be nothing preventing full implementation by the end of 2020.
The potential is huge and the sky’s the limit.
Wan Saiful Wan Jan is chief executive of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs in Malaysia.
SINGAPORE: Their one-room flat has everything the family needs, except space for the younger son’s trophies – trophies from countries across Europe, Asia and North America.
A monitor and gaming console in the corner of the unit is the only giveaway that this is the home of a world champion gamer. To be more specific, Singapore’s first.
Mr Ho Kun Xian – the son of a cashier and a private-hire car driver – recalls that when he was in primary school, he was given only S$2 whenever he went to the arcade.
But he made it stretch for hours.
“Each time I went, I just got better and better because … when you win in arcade games, you can continue playing,” said the 27-year-old, who is featured in the Channel NewsAsia series, Unusual Suspects, about Singaporeans who’ve made their mark in unconventional fields.
It has been a decade since Mr Ho left school behind and focused on a career in gaming, one that would have been impossible without passion, grit – and a few special individuals and help that came along at the right time.
At the start, however, that journey to become Singapore’s only professional player in the fighting games genre did not even seem as if it would get going.
AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK?
After his O levels, life had become a series of odd jobs – cargo lifter, home mover, hawker assistant and so on – before his National Service. But from that experience, he learnt that a nine-to-five job was not for him.
“I don’t like waking up at 8am, doing something I don’t like and always waiting for lunchtime, waiting for the work to finish,” said Mr Ho.
“I wanted to do what I liked as a living. Although at the start, it sounded like an impossible task to make gaming a career.”
He needed to hear the siren call of gaming again, and it came when Street Fighter 4, the game he has now made his name with, was out in 2008.
Mr Ho, with his mum Mdm Lee Siew Lian, packing for an overseas tournament.
“It was so popular that my friends asked me to go back to the arcade to play,” Mr Ho said. The competitions followed, and by the next year, he found himself representing Singapore at the DreamHack gaming festival in Sweden.
I never thought that I’d ever get to fly to Sweden… I never thought I’d see a country outside of Singapore or, you know, maybe Malaysia.
Since then, gaming has taken him to countries such as the US, Canada, France, Japan and Korea. But no international outing was as rough as his maiden one, where he came in second.
UNDERESTIMATED TALENT
He slept on the floor of a hall in the tournament arena and, for three days, did not shower because there was “just the bathroom, and it wasn’t really a shower room”.
On the last day, he met Team Titans, Singapore’s well-travelled competitors in the Counter-Strike game. “I looked really haggard … and they offered me a bed and their hotel to shower, and I was really happy,” shared Mr Ho.
Half a world away from home and pitched against overseas gamers, he realised for the first time that Singapore had a lot of gaming talents who were “underestimated” and “not noticed”.
That could have been his fate too – notwithstanding his breakthrough – when finances soon became a constant worry in the way of his ascent to the big league of gaming.
But that was when he came to the attention of the man who would become the silent backer of Mr Ho’s, and Singapore’s, biggest gaming success thus far.
THE BACKER WHO BELIEVED
Mr Lenn Yang, now 35 and an information technology infrastructure manager, was a casual but passionate gamer when he first saw online video clips of Mr Ho in action overseas.
His curiosity piqued, Mr Yang asked around the gaming community who this Singaporean going up against top gamers was. After chancing upon someone who was friends with Mr Ho, he set up a meeting.
“I wanted to find out, if he was so good, then why he wasn’t travelling that much to try and achieve more,” said Mr Yang. He got his answer and saw in Mr Ho a special quality: Tenacity.
Having seen other gamers hang up their console over the years, Mr Yang, who runs a small gaming venue as a sideline, did not want the same thing to happen to Mr Ho.
What Mr Yang wanted was “to see if somebody from Singapore can really be the best player in the world”. So he decided to sponsor Mr Ho’s tournament expenses – airfare, accommodation and a travel allowance – out of his own pocket.
“I kept it very low-key,” said Mr Yang, who forked out S$15,000 to S$20,000 a year, which was 20 to 30 per cent of his salary, for three years.
He declined all of Mr Ho’s offers to repay him. “At that time, he was just working sporadically and also sort of relying on his winnings … I had to consider this aspect,” said Mr Yang.
“And what if I took a portion of his winnings and he went on and lost his four other tournaments? He might have felt that he had this burden on him.”
VICTORY – AND DOUBT
But he got the biggest repayment of all when Mr Ho, at the age of 22, became the world’s best Street Fighter at the 2013 Evolution Championship Series (Evo) in Las Vegas, the largest of fighting games tournaments.
It not only surprised me, but I think it also shocked the whole world. I would say it’s as shocking as Greece winning the World Cup,
said Mr Ho. “I was, of course, very happy about it.”
He had beaten off 1,600 players to claim US$5,700 (S$7,760) in winnings. The triumph brought him international fame – but also confusion.
Perched at the top of the world, he pondered the question: Was he fighting a losing battle?
“I’d actually won the highest, most prestigious tournament in the world, and the prize money was only US$5,700. I wouldn’t say it was very little money, but that wouldn’t last me three months,” he said.
I was just playing games and trying to figure out a way to get money as well – trying to survive day to day. And that made me really wonder about being a pro-gamer.
As it was, and still is the case, Mr Ho felt judged by people because of his career choice. Questions about how much he earned and whether there was any future in e-sports were par for the course.
His family, which includes an elder brother, were once sceptical too. But they shared his joy when he returned victorious from Evo.
“I was so happy, and I hugged him. And I said, ‘Eh, you really did it, ah?’” recounted his mother, Mdm Lee Siew Lian. “So we went to celebrate at night – whole family.”
THE DREAM COME TRUE
And family was the main reason he remained in Singapore. At the crossroads of his career, moving to the US, a powerhouse in e-sports, would have given him more opportunities to compete and a more promising life as a pro-gamer.
Based in the Republic, the alternative was to travel to fewer competitions and succumb to the pressure of finding a supplementary job, if not quit altogether.
This time, with his career on a razor edge, support came in the form of homegrown gaming technology company Razer, which offered him a sponsorship deal, a contract and a salary to play full-time in its e-sports team.
“It just became a dream come true for me,” said Mr Ho, who is known as Xian to his friends and the gaming community. And he has been with Razer ever since 2014.
At the heart of his passion, he explains, is the joy of winning: “A lot of things in life, like maybe studying or a job, can’t bring you that satisfaction all the time, so that’s why I want to play video games.
“That satisfaction is really something you can get every day because you’re playing with different opponents all the time.”
That competitive spirit since young also accounts for his preference for fighting games. And as he notes, Street Fighter is the most popular, with its top players hailing from more countries compared with the other games.
It has also taken him on a journey of a different sorts: He first met his girlfriend, Jen Tan, when she was one of the few girls playing Street Fighter in the arcade in 2010.
They have been together for close to four years, and not only is she supportive of Mr Ho’s career, either accompanying him overseas or watching the live streams of his tournaments, but so are her parents.
“My parents watch the streams, and they actually know who’s Daigo, Tokido and Momochi (Mr Ho’s rivals). During dinner, they actually asked him, ‘So how are you training up against Daigo or Momochi?’” said Ms Tan, a tattoo artist.
“He was quite shocked … My family really made the effort to try to connect with him, and I really appreciate it.”
FANS, WINNINGS AND THE FUTURE
Mr Ho’s fan base has certainly grown over the years. He has 40,000 followers on Twitter and 15,000 on Facebook. He collects appearance fees from gaming events and has more sponsors now, like drink company Monster Energy.
He competes overseas 10 to 15 times annually, and has pocketed S$50,000 in prize money so far this year – a better showing than last year, especially after winning Final Round, the first big tournament of the year.
Girlfriend Jen Tan sometimes accompanies him on his overseas tournaments, and sometimes watches the livestream at home.
The Capcom Cup, an event in California where he has been the runner-up twice, is his main goal now, besides becoming a two-time Evo champion. And if he goes one better at Capcom in December, he could earn about US$120,000.
It would make his US$5,700 dilemma seem ages ago, and his afternoons at the arcade with only S$2, a distant memory.
Just as he made the money last for as long as he could then, he hopes to stretch his career now for as long as possible, even if the sponsorships were to dry up in future.
“I’ll be playing games very competitively because this is what I’ve been doing … I’ll be a pro-gamer for the rest of my life,” declared Mr Ho. “Until the day I cannot play any more.”
Watch more of Ho Kun Xian’s story on Unsual Suspects: The Underdogs.
SINGAPORE: Beyond that highly coveted handbag and iconic silk scarf, Hermès has long been in the business of making fine furniture.
The French luxury goods company has made furniture since the early 1920s, when it first commissioned pieces by legendary interior decorator Jean-Michel Frank. In recent years, the brand’s collection of furniture, tableware and decorative design offerings – known as the Hermès Maison Universe – has steadily expanded to a fuller complementary collection in the hands of co-deputy artistic directors Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry.
Now, there’s Through The Walls, an immersive exhibition of that home universe created specially for Singapore. Showing at the brand’s Liat Towers flagship store, this exhibition – a world-first – will run from Oct 7 to Oct 29.
The upper levels of the store have been transformed into a striking scenography by Jean-Christophe Vaillant & Hervé Sauvage, inviting visitors to experience the diversity of the Hermès home collection, such as wallpapers, furnishing fabrics, and even lighting.
Inspired by the anarchitecture of American artist, Gordon Matta-Clark, the exhibition is billed as one that “deconstructs and reinvents spaces with humour and surprise, bringing each Hermès object to life”. The Link (Lien d’Hermès) is the main theme of this collection, both in its formal appearance and in its inspiration, drawn from the equestrian heritage of the storied house of Hermès.
Mahjong tiles made out of leather are just some of the bespoke pieces shown at the Through The Walls exhibition. (Photo: Edward Hendricks for Hermès, Paris 2017)
So why was Singapore the specially chosen location?
“I feel that people here don’t really know much about what we’re doing at Hermès Maison,” Perelman told Channel NewsAsia ahead of the exhibition’s opening. “And I saw that this was the right moment to convey and show our vision.
“People are aware of Hermès – that it’s very rigorous and the furniture very well done. But the fantasy (element)? That’s always in a small amount, so people don’t really see it,” she said. “So it was important for us to show that this kind of fantasy is part of Hermès too. I think it was the right moment to do it here.”
According to Perelman, it was imperative to “bring fantasy in an architectural way”.
“That is why we show the broken walls and the bones of architecture to convey the sense of space and not just décor,” she explained.
Through The Walls is all about bringing “fantasy in an architectural way”. (Photo: Edward Hendricks for Hermès, Paris 2017)
Perelman emphasised that the home department should also carry on with the core values of Hermès.
“Alexis and I didn’t want to create a break; both of us wanted to stay within the Hermès heritage, we wanted it to carry the same values,” she said. “So when we design an object, or furniture or wallpaper, we are always wondering if it’s the right project for Hermès.”
“We are always trying to think if it’s the right material, the right design, or even if it’s the right way of doing it.”
Through The Walls runs from Oct 7 to Oct 29 at Liat Towers, Hermès flagship store in Singapore. (Photo: Edward Hendricks for Hermès, Paris 2017)
Perelman, who has been at the helm of the home universe since 2014, said that it was vital that every object in the collection was in balance with one another.
“What is important is that the whole collection has to have a meaning together. The link is very important. It’s the interaction between the objects,” she said. “In this scenography, we wanted to emphasise fantasy. We also wanted to show our furniture and we wanted to emphasise our wallpaper.
“For me, wallpaper is decorative but it also changes the way you see the architecture. It’s like wrappings; it changes the space completely. And I wanted to convey this sense of space and architecture.”
The wallpapered stairway at the Through The Walls exhibition. (Photo: Edward Hendricks for Hermès, Paris 2017)
Perelman says that collaboration is also key for Hermès, whether it’s with the craftsman or other designers.
“We respect this relationship between designer and craftsman a lot,” she said. “For me, it’s very important.”
As for the process of selecting which design industry heavyweight to work with, Perelman, herself an architect by training, says it’s all very “simple”.
“(Both Alexis and I) make our own process. We always agree and it only takes two minutes. It’s very easy and we know what we want,” she said. “We don’t go for names. We don’t work with famous names. We always look for a specific designer for a specific project.”
She cited French designer Pierre Chapin as an example.
“When we did the lacquer with Pierre, who’s a great French designer and a great colourist, he was just coming back from Japan where he was in a six-month residence with a lacquer master. We wanted to use his expertise for this project. For us, the collaboration must always has a meaning.”
Will the exhibition be travelling elsewhere after its run in Singapore?
“We just made this for Singapore and for this store so it’s supposed to be unique,” she said. “I guess we’ll see. A lot of people have expressed wanting the same scenography, but I’m not sure we want to repeat ourselves.
“Maybe we’ll tell another story. I think there’s a lot of other things to say.”
SINGAPORE: ‘Girl ah, you have no cash ah?’
It was late morning at a crowded hawker centre in Toa Payoh, and I was holding up a line of people as I struggled to pay for my breakfast with a mobile phone that stubbornly refused to recognise my thumbprint.
I sighed in frustration. My breakfast choices had already been narrowed down significantly by the lack of stalls at this hawker centre that offered me the option to go cashless. And after finally locating a stall with the distinctive QR code sign on its front, queuing up and placing my order, my phone’s thumbprint scanner decided to fail me.
I began to panic, my mind running through the various options available to me in lieu of cash. Could I ask the hawker for grace and return another day with cash? Borrow money from someone else in line?
But thankfully, there was another option.
“Uncle, FlashPay can?” I asked, as I extracted my card from where I had stashed it under my phone’s casing. With a grunt and nod, he assented, and with a reassuring beep from the reader, I was on my way.
TEETHING ISSUES
It seemed like it would be a tall order to survive without any cash for a weekend, and live to tell the tale. But after researching and writing a previous story on the availability of cashless payment options in hawker centres, I was encouraged to see how doable it could be. To sweeten the deal, I had also found out that some cashless payment modes like Liquid Pay offered discounts and incentives for customers who pay through their app.
Liquid Pay currently offers a voucher through its mobile app for 20 per cent off food at selected hawker stalls. (Photo: Lianne Chia)
So I optimistically left my wallet at home, and walked out to the hawker centre with just my iPhone and credit card, which also has NETS FlashPay capabilities.
But I had not expected to run into problems right from the get-go. With my phone’s thumbprint scanner out of order, I could no longer make payment via my banking app’s QR code function or Apple Pay, both of which required me to scan my thumbprint before payments could go through.
Slightly demoralised, I found a table, sat down and tried to enjoy my breakfast while looking up solutions to my thumbprint scanner woes. But I was soon distracted by the tapping of a cane next to me.
An elderly lady had approached my table, proffering three packets of tissue paper. I smiled at her, but shook my head, indicating with hand gestures that I had no cash to spare – in fact, no cash at all. Feeling a twinge of guilt at her pleas, I waved her away, telling her that I would buy from her next time.
All in all, not a very auspicious start to the weekend.
TAP AND GO
It had been a frustrating morning, but there was a silver lining: I had finally discovered how to fix the thumbprint scanner issue after deleting and re-adding all my saved fingerprints from my iPhone. And trying out Apple Pay for the first time restored my faith in the convenience of cashless payments.
It was fast approaching lunch time, and I had agreed to meet a friend at a restaurant downtown. Having been duly warned of my cashless status, he suggested that he pay for lunch first, and I transfer my share of the meal to him via PayNow, a funds transfer service made available in July that allows customers to transfer money with just the recipient’s mobile number or NRIC.
The interface of a banking app when transferring money to a recipient registered with PayNow. Customers will also have to key in a one-time password before the transaction will go through.
I had initially decided to go with that option. But when we were queuing up to pay at the cashier, my curiosity was piqued by the customer in front of me, who was holding her mobile phone to the card scanner and placing her finger on her phone’s home button.
I decided to give it a shot too.
When I reached the cashier, I said confidently, “I’d like to pay by Apple Pay, please,” hoping my tone would mask my inexperience with the system. He smiled and nodded. “Please place your phone on the scanner.”
Paying for food again via Apple Pay.
It sounded like he had done this many times before, and it must be a popular method of payment, I thought to myself. And no wonder: Just a few seconds after I opened my Wallet app and placed my finger on my phone’s home button, I was rewarded with a check mark appearing on my phone screen, indicating that the payment had gone through.
Having settled payment with the restaurant, it was now time for my friend to pay me back. Thankfully, he had already registered with PayNow, and with a few taps on his phone, it was all sorted.
A HIT-AND-MISS SITUATION – EVEN IN SHOPPING MALLS
On the whole, it seemed easy enough to live without cash, as long as I stayed in areas like shopping malls or upmarket cafes. Getting around was also a breeze, thanks to ride-hailing apps like Grab and Uber, which utilise credit cards as a primary option for payment. And I discovered a bonus: By opting to go cashless with Grab, I was rewarded with additional rewards points, which I could redeem for more discounted rides.
But going about my daily life without the reassuring comfort of cash made me realise that for now, it is unlikely people in Singapore will be comfortable going out without their wallets and using their mobile phones for all transactions.
Take, for example, the night I tried to buy a parking coupon from a stranger after realising I had run out of coupons after parking. After offering to pay him the 60 cents via PayNow, he declined and instead told me to just take the coupon for free.
Or my experience looking for a place to buy a lunch and a drink after a Sunday exercise class in the deserted CBD. Most stores and restaurants in the area were closed on weekends, and a walk to two nearby hawker centres yielded sparse results.
Most stalls in both centres were closing, and when I approached those that were still open, stallholders said apologetically that they only accepted cash. When I asked them why, the answers were generally the same: They felt it was too much trouble to get the systems up and running, and lack of demand for cashless payment from customers.
A hawker centre in the CBD on a Sunday afternoon. Most of the stalls were closing, and those that were still open for business did not accept cashless payment. (Photo: Lianne Chia)
And indeed, why would customers make the switch, when there were so many ATMs located prominently within the hawker centres? Ignoring my growing hunger pangs, I forced myself to walk away.
Even in shopping malls, it was a hit-and-miss situation. After giving up and walking towards a shopping mall in Tanjong Pagar, I made a beeline for my favourite bubble tea shop. But I went away disappointed – and still in need of a cold drink – when I was told in no uncertain terms that it was “cash only” for them.
By the time I got my food and drink, it was 3pm, an hour and a half after I had begun my search, and my patience with the cashless experiment was wearing thin. All I wanted to do was grab a train back home and stay there for the rest of the weekend.
But first, there was one more transaction I had to make: My ride home. As I arrived at the train station, I saw a middle-aged woman fumbling with her wallet at one of the cash top-up machines. As I walked past she dropped her wallet, and coins went rolling everywhere.
As I bent to help her retrieve the coins, I realised this was a situation that could have happened to me any other day.
But as I used my card to tap my way seamlessly past the train gantries, I smiled to myself. It would not happen today.
SINGAPORE: A new smartphone app is being used as part of a clinical trial to help pregnant women with diabetes manage their condition better and prevent excessive weight gain during pregnancy.
Gestational diabetes mellitus is a type of diabetes that develops usually during the second half of pregnancy, when there is insufficient insulin production to meet extra demands for pregnancy, resulting in high blood glucose levels.
Singapore has one of the highest rates of gestational diabetes in the world, with the condition affecting 20 to 30 per cent of expecting mothers. If left untreated or poorly managed, it can lead to various complications for both mother and baby. For the mother, this includes increased risk of high blood pressure, while the baby runs the risk of jaundice, breathing problems, and in the worst scenario, still birth.
The app, developed by the National University Hospital (NUH), is being used as part of a clinical trial for a tailored coaching programme to help more pregnant women better manage their gestational diabetes, compared with standard care alone.
It consists of several components. First, there are short, personalised interactive lessons and daily tips to help mothers understand the importance of managing the condition for themselves and their babies.
There are also tracking features to help women monitor their weight and blood glucose levels, even on the go. This is done via the detachable Aina blood glucose monitoring device, where a blood test strip is analysed to determine the user’s blood sugar.
The app can be paired with a Bluetooth weighing scale to help chart weight gain.
It also helps track food intake, which may cause spikes in blood glucose levels, said Dr Yew Tong Wei, who is site principal investigator of the SMART-GDM (gestational diabetes mellitus) clinical trial and consultant at NUH’s division of endocrinology.
The app also features an automated chatbot that prompts users to take further action when their blood sugar readings are high.
The app and the study aims to target behavioural change, which doctors say is the key to managing gestational diabetes and helping mothers achieve optimal health outcomes.
“The primary outcome of the study would be gestational weight gain, because the more weight you gain during pregnancy – it is associated with a larger baby, and also the more weight you need to lose after delivery. And that increased gestational weight gain is also associated with the risk of developing type 2 diabetes after the pregnancy in the long run,” Dr Yew said.
The clinical trial began in September with 20 mums-to-be using the app. It aims to recruit a total of 340 participants over the next 10 months.
