Introduction

Almost a decade ago, Kong and Yeoh argued, in the context of Singapore, that “landscapes play an integral role in the (re)construction of ‘nation’ [and] national identity … Particular ideological constructions of ‘nation’ are made to appear natural when concretised in the landscape.” In the book, they address this with respect to landscapes of death, religion, housing, toponymic inscriptions, heritage, and the arts. However, in the last ten years Singapore's cultural landscape has metamorphosed significantly as a result of the twin pressures of globalization and new immigration, prompted by state-led exhortations to transform Singapore into a global cosmopolitan city. This chapter takes stock of these changes by analyzing them through the lenses of the geographies of migration and its inflections on Singapore’s cultural landscapes. The chapter argues that spatial proximity in the heartlands not only fails to promote meaningful social interactions but results in stereotypes being attached to immigrants that prompt social tensions. The chapter then suggests there is a need to go beyond mere tolerance for social difference towards an attitude of mutual positive respect that would promote the furthering and flowering of cosmopolitanism. This approach includes a willingness to engage openly with underlying social prejudices so as to move towards a constructive relationship regardless of immigrants’ class, ethnicity, or nationality backgrounds.

Landscape, migration, and cosmopolitanism

In its simplest form, landscape is defined as the “visible material surface of places” but it can also refer to a way of seeing or interpreting, the social relations and spatial arrangement of a delimited area. Landscapes act as a bridge between space and society, culture and environment, but as containers of meaning, landscapes are a fluid and contested concept especially as various social groups may appropriate their meanings in different ways. In a critique of the extant scholarship on landscape, Rose argues that scholars working on landscape tend to reify culture as a system of representation (i.e. culture as a map or blueprint) instead of accounting for how this representation works. Rose argues that, other than asking why landscape matters, and by whom and for whom it is socially constructed, it is also important to “search out the various practices that surround landscape and make it matter.”