Seeing like a city through the Singapore City Gallery

Urban planning galleries are interpretive spaces that assert the state’s vision for the city. Ostensibly public showcases of a city’s past, present, and future, state administrations use these sites for specific purposes. On the one hand, planning galleries are designed to convince the public, tourists, and investors that their cities are aspiring towards a greater and more optimistic future. On the other hand, these galleries imply to visitors that the state holds extensive spatial knowledge about their territory—in essence, planning galleries are a material and discursive assertion of state sovereignty. Such assertions are a reaction to shifts in the state–civil society relationship, and represent the state’s desire to have citizens appreciate the challenges of urban management—to see like the city. This paper evaluates the Singapore City Gallery (SCG)—a performative space maintained by the Urban Redevelopment Authority that reasserts the state’s vision for Singapore. I argue that sites like the SCG are significant for understanding how cities are being made through negotiation between the state and diverse publics.