The relational co-production of “success” and “failure,” or the politics of anxiety of exporting urban “models” elsewhere

ABSTRACT

This paper critically examines the case of the much-vaunted Singapore “model” and its export via the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city (SSTEC), a megaproject jointly developed by the Singaporean and Chinese states in northeastern China. It revolves around the central question of why, for some Singaporean officials, this export was thought to have “failed” in spite of the model’s acclaimed success globally. To address this, the paper historicizes the Singapore model, tracing undercurrents of (geo)political existentialism through Singaporean state meta-narratives that are enacted through thehistorical politics of anxiety and the practitioner politics of anxiety. It argues that categories of policy “success” and “failure” are relationally co-produced through a politics of anxiety, wherein their stakes are amplified in ways distinctive to small postcolonial city-states. Collectively, the paper emphasizes the enduring significance of (inter)state actors and structures for transnational urban policy mobilization and the limits to assumptions of post-failure policy learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy mobilization
• model
• transnational urbanism
• urban politics
• singapore

Acknowledgments

This paper has benefitted greatly from comments by Winston Chow, Matt Wade, Mayee Wong, and three anonymous reviewers, together with more general conversations with Emma Colven about policy mobilization. I am very grateful to John Lauermann and Cristina Temenos, the editors of this Special Issue, for their guidance and patience. I also thank Susan Moore for her editorial support. This paper has been years in the making, a product of earlier research I had undertaken during my time in the Masters program at the National University of Singapore (2013–2015). I acknowledge the funding support of the NUS Graduate Research Support Scheme. I thank Neil Coe for his supervi- sion at NUS, as well as David Sadoway for the opportunity to present these findings at a 2016 work- shop, entitled “Memes, schemes and dreams: Singapore urban futures,” where the paper received some initial feedback. I dedicate this paper to the memory of Shirley Leow Sweet Mai (1935–2019).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.