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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 25:1 (2026) ► pp.1–20

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Environmental conservation and urban development as competing stories of place and space in Singapore

ORCiD logo with link | National University of Singapore (NUS)
ORCiD logo with link | Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS)
Published online: 27 February 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.24115.e
Abstract
In this paper, we focus on the context of urban development in Singapore, where some of the country’s remaining forests have been earmarked for development, to examine how discourses of development and conservation are semiotized via multimodal representations of the forest landscape in environmental communication. To show how these discourses interact, we use one of the forests identified for development, Dover Forest, as a case study, employing de Certeau, Michel. 2011. The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar concepts of ‘place’, ‘space’ and ‘spatial stories’ to demonstrate how the Singapore state’s narratives of place emphasize national development imperatives connected to neoliberal market logics, with conservationists utilizing narratives of space that emphasize conservation, though the latter emphasis is not made unproblematically without impact from narratives of place. Implications of the analyses are briefly discussed with reference to de Certeau’s theory in light of the complexity of environmental conservation discourse where a dominant developmental state agenda persists.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Environmental communication and the ‘spatial turn’
  • 3.Method and data
  • 4.Analysis and discussion
    • 4.1Modern neoliberal urban developmentalist agenda
    • 4.2Technocratic governance; consultative authoritarianism with claims of consensus
    • 4.3The need for order and control to manage disorderly nature
  • 5.Implications and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (50)
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