Heritageisation is both a process and a product shaped by several causing agents with their respective motivations - in how meanings are attached, created and expressed by the different stakeholders as well as the transformation of places, practices and objects into heritage. Secondary literature in heritage studies has made significant strides in understanding the significance of cultural heritage, its preservation, conservation and management as well as the intention involved. However, there exists a limited understanding of the heritageisation of everyday urban landscapes – mundane, overlooked places that are reviewed as heritage and to be protected. This dissertation seeks to investigate how everyday urban landscapes become heritageised – in other words, recognised as heritage, and what the implications are for the identified site. A mixed-methods approach that combines discursive positioning, archival research, and analysis of case studies Kampong Glam and Queenstown in Singapore will be utilised to consider these two subsequent questions: (1) how does everyday urban heritage differ from official heritage that is configured by cultural heritage work done by the state and (2) how do different actors (re)negotiate their relationships to place and to their pasts through (re)heritageisation towards their respective goals in addition to the aforementioned.The focus here is upon everyday urban landscapes involving built environments because of its accessibility and relevancy to the daily lives of the major population. Kampong Glam, a designated historic district, has been chosen due to its contested nature in heritage management to understand the intricacies of heritageisation and re-heritageisation of official heritage. On the other hand, among the vast forms of unofficial heritage, public housing has been chosen as a prime example of everyday urban landscapes for its relevance in daily lifestyles, scale, and symbolic reflection of the larger society. Queenstown is selected for its recognition by both bottom-up actors and the state, making it an apt case study to illustrate how the polarisation of official and unofficial heritage may not be as explicit as it may appear to be, besides these reasons. This work takes up the challenge to re-examine the heritageisation of everyday urban landscapes – once treated as an ordinary part of the city – in Singapore and seeks to make sense of why and how this occurred.
This dissertation drew on mainly the concepts of heritageisation and re-heritageisation proposed by Sjöholm as well as the differentiation of official and unofficial heritage proposed by Harrison to understand the makings of heritage in the urban context. The multidimensional nature of heritage, actors and power relations, temporal dimensions, and the everyday urban landscape underlie the arguments in this dissertation as outlined in Chapter 2. AHD serves as an influential element in the heritage assemblage which emphasised how certain notions of heritage has been reinforced and promulgated by authorised institutions. It has also highlighted the deliberate nature of heritage, where there is no such thing as inherent values but is ultimately curated and created by motivated actors. The concept of heritage dynamics then aids researchers and stakeholders involved in the management of urban areas to clarify the underpinning forces that lead to heritageisation.
To answer the research questions, this dissertation has argued that everyday urban landscapes become recognised as heritage in the presence of elements that threaten their very existence and/or the disruption of the everyday activities that take place in the urban space. Everyday urban landscapes as heritage emerge through a dynamic and composite construction made up of various interconnected elements involving the agents – the various individuals or groups of people who value, use or simply do heritage work. Some of these agents, while seemingly invisible in the systemic conceptualisation of heritage, are, in fact, omnipresent in the negotiations of meaning-making. Even though the intention of heritageisation may have been to safeguard the site and mitigate changes relating to urban development, the recognition of the landscape as heritage is also a form of change in itself which leads to further heritage-making processes as well as the generation of new value as a heritage site. Implications of the identified site may hence vary depending on the interconnections of the key elements and dialogue involved, where the legislative protection of the landscape may be narrowed to the boundaries of the identified site, the identified site may be frozen in place to preserve the identified heritage values and heritage elements may be capitalised as the foundation to generate new functions and values.
There is undeniably an abundance of heritage in our late-modern world. Reflected in the growth in the number and range of officially listed and conserved places, objects and practices, the number of potential official heritage being identified, recognised and gazetted around the world is increasing even at this very moment. It is also reflected in the unofficial forms in the growth of nostalgia and alternative memorial practices of individuals and groups that are not necessarily recognised by the state. Even though heritage has been promulgated as the old and grand as naturalised in AHD, we are experiencing a conflation of heritage and everyday living. Sites marked as temporally distant from the present have undergone adaptive reuse to transform into upscale markets and cafes that people may visit regularly. Massive modern heritage buildings and obsolete industrial heritage infrastructure are reused as hotels, offices and more, reviving these spaces whereby heritage acquires a new function, use or purpose. Spaces of mundane everyday living – central to this dissertation – are increasingly identified and managed as heritage as well. These sites, objects and practices that are present in the urban sphere and involved in routinised everyday activities are understood as everyday urban heritage – “the complex sum of practices, activities, and meanings” by which communities use all types of local heritage, including official heritage, daily to strengthen their connection to particular places and each other. In contrast, official heritage that is configured by cultural heritage work done by the state refers to a limited selection. It has been understood in this dissertation as objects, buildings and sites identified for preservation, conservation or restoration for a certain set of values predetermined by the authority and differentiated from the everyday ordinary. In Singapore’s context, official heritage in the urban built environment will consist of national monuments, historic sites, conservation areas and buildings as discussed in Chapter 3.
As illustrated in Chapter 3, dissent voices to state approaches have largely remained unwelcome in the context of Singapore. As a shared tacit understanding, formally registered institutionalised NGOs and informed laypersons have been conscious of their opposing views as well as the perspective of the state and have typically expressed their oppositional views through conscientious, polite letters to the press. This form of public negotiation started to change in 2011 as a result of the confluence of politico-technological global forces. Accentuated by the integration of technological devices and platforms into contemporary life, the wave of nostalgia in Singapore has taken form in numerous blogs and community groups on social media documenting and preserving lost and/or threatened heritage, the creation of numerous heritage trails and stronger than ever public reaction towards redevelopment projects as seen in citizen-initiated petitions and campaigns. These new strategies have settled in as the common means by which different actors (re)negotiate their relationships to place and to their pasts through (re)heritageisation towards their respective goals. These goals can be both predetermined specific targets set out by actors to achieve through their planned activities and the usually undetermined calls for desired outcomes by the passive majority that manifest under specific conditions.
Developmental threat is an example of such specific conditions. In Singapore, authors of heritage blogs, heritage and community-related organisations such as SHS and My Community, and academics are active actors in raising awareness about the significance of heritage in the nation. The passive public may then engage in existing heritage work as readers and participants of guided trails seek to discover previously unknown aspects of the country to form new relationships with their pasts. However, in the face of a definite developmental threat, as observed in collective sales announcements of Pearl Bank Apartments and Golden Mile Complex and SERS announcement of Tanglin Halt estate, such heritageisation activities take place at accelerated rates to salvage whatever is possible. The passive group may be motivated to take certain actions such as aligning with the cause of activists, accepting the impending changes or reacting by pushing for their newly established goals which are usually short-term. The former usually occurs through supporting online petitions organised by active actors to work towards the reversion of the redevelopment plans. These processes in totality work towards the negotiation of meanings attached to the particular place and to their pasts resulting in the emergence, disappearance and revival of heritage.
Chapter 4 offered a close analysis of how different actors have heritageised and re-heritageised Kampong Glam. The chapter has traced how Kampong Glam has been heritageised by the authorities as a historic district for national cohesion and tourism purposes. Thereafter, the consequent contestations of whose heritage is conserved, how conservation and management has been carried out were discussed. In addition, the way in which Kampong Glam has been re-heritageised through the reaffirmation and value-adding to Kampong Glam’s heritage via 1) responding to contestations by the state authorities 2) the emergence of a new cultural identity and creative community in the district and 3) the reinterpretation of official heritage by individuals, who have challenged dominant narratives of cultural meanings, including collaborations between different stakeholders has been demonstrated. In totality, the approaches taken by the different actors in Kampong Glam have resulted in a non-static, evolving urban landscape that has been attributed new meanings in addition to its values as symbolic of Malay-Muslim heritage since its designation.
Chapter 5 clarified how the perception of public housing estates has changed since their inception in both the global and Singaporean contexts, as well as how different actors have acted to situate them as heritage through the case study of Queenstown. In the analysis of Queenstown, this chapter has shown the considerable negotiations of meanings and values by different actors undergone in the everyday urban landscape. This chapter has traced Queenstown’s transformation from a swampy agriculture village and military campsite to a meticulously planned housing estate, an undesired housing environment to a highly sought-after housing estate in Singapore, and a manifestation of planning decisions that uprooted communities and potential sites of historical significance to a site seen, identified and documented as heritage. Similar strategies are employed by both the state and the community in the heritageisation of Queenstown namely the curation of a museum and a heritage trail to guide visitors in their exploration of the site through the lens of heritage. Queenstown also shows an ongoing dialogue between different stakeholders about what Queenstown means to them as heritage. A comparative discussion between the heritageisation of Kampong Glam and Queenstown has been made Chapter 6, revealing fear of loss of heritage values as a common motivator for heritageisation to take place and how elements interconnect to produce heritage. Even though the distinction of official and unofficial heritage is useful in the conscious identification of the AHD at work, this dissertation argues that more consideration should be given so that such distinction is no longer necessary to work towards a more holistic management of everyday urban landscapes.
This dissertation recognised that there is a research gap in the critical understanding of why some places are regarded as heritage while some are not; and why some sites are seen as the undesirable, and yet, after several decades, conservation is called upon to protect these sites from disappearing. This work took up the challenge to re-examine the heritageisation of everyday urban landscapes – once treated as an ordinary part of the city – in Singapore and seeks to make sense of why and how this occurred through the case studies of Kampong Glam and Queenstown. The former has shown the implications of past heritage decisions on the urban landscape while the latter has displayed hints of changing dynamics of heritageisation and a possible model for the management of everyday urban heritage. The findings of this dissertation contribute to the growing literature reviewing heritageisation processes with the provision of perspectives from a small nation-state in constant dilemma to maximise land utilisation in the country. In addition, the findings also build on the limited but emerging literature on the heritageisation of public housing – an urban landscape close to the hearts of many Singaporeans. It is hoped that this work – a form of heritageisation in its own right – will encourage readers to reflect on what heritage means to them and the wider dynamics present in their locality.
