The clean city

Is Singapore too clean? This question arose while I was on the KL trip with the guys, and Ben lamented that Singapore, being too clean, was losing its good hawker food. Whether KL food is better than Singapore food is debateble, but I do find that food along the streets, hawker centers is indeed tastier than food found in foodcourts.

Hawker food	Jalan Alor - Rows of Hawker food

The city center, KLCC, is a really nice place. The buildings are beautiful,and with a monorail running nearby, I would say it is more modern-looking that Downtown Singapore. Nearby our hotels were clubs and pubs, all adding to the vibrant city feeling. But just a 10 minute taxi ride away, would be Jalan Alor, with its smelly drains and street-side stalls. We were there on the Friday night, and the streets were packed with hawkers selling fake goods, pirated cds, fruits etc. Ironically, the food here along the streets, where basically you don't want to know how the food was prepared, was much better than the food at the foodcourts.

Club we visited on Sat	Another club down the street

So why is food along the streets better than food at the cleaner foodcourts? My theory is that because the foodcourt stalls will always have business because people like cleaner places, while streetside hawkers, have to attract people with the quality of their food. Which led me to thinking about this: Has Singapore's cleaner and more secure environment led to the decline in quality of our people? Singapore's economy has stagnated for a while now, and unemployment still remains relatively high. Our ministers blame Singaporeans for being too picky, unwillingness to take glamourous jobs. While I do think that given Singapore's status as a developed nation we should have higher job expectations, I also believe that Singaporeans have become to comfortable, unwilling to experience hardships or take risks. And then there is the absolute dearth of creativity as well. Take the advertisements for example. When was the last time a TV ad or poster ad could be called innovative or funny? I receive a lot of funny and interesting Thai ads through email, and not a single one I've seen in Singapore can match them.

A lot of reasons have been put forward to explain this. The 'One party system', the lack of tolerance for dissent, our education system, our clean and secure ways. I believe its a combination of all these factors. But our society cannot develop like this. Artists and writers tend to emerge from poor neighbourhoods. Why? I think its because through experiencing a life of hardship one can get a better reflection on life and society. My suggestion: Controlled Disordered.

I can understand why certain things have to be done - Singapore, being a small country, cannot allow disorder or it would affect our whole economy. So Controlled Disorder means letting a particular neighbourhood fall into disrepair. Don't upgrade the buildings. Don't maintain the parks or the trees. Allow people to vandalize the walls of buildings. One suitable place would be Geylang. Geyland is an old neighbourhood famous for its red-light district, so it already has a reputation for being bad. Let it get worse. Of course there will downsides. Gangs may develop. More crimes may be committed in the area. But such environments also toughen people up, and allow people to express themselves. We only find diamonds in dirt and rock, and I believe that is the same for people, that the most creative and motivated people emerge from experiencing hardship.