The air is placid in the Heartland--saturated, enveloping, heavy. I look up to the streetlamps bounded by low clouds, their light reflecting off an opaque ceiling. It creates a dim haze extending throughout the density. What I thought was a fallen brown leaf on the brick beside my feet had moved from when I first saw it. A narrow oval with a spinal vein, a tropical leatherleaf slug, slowly making its way across the damp Earth.
The Heartland is quiet at night, once the traffic has receeded and the markets have closed and the only people out are drinking Tiger Beer and whiskey around plastic tables doused in shadows. It's a far cry from the upscale wine bars and Michelin nominees, the plastered cityscape of allure, though their separation is a mere 15 minute train ride. But even there, in the center, it is quiet. Cars are few for their ungodly pricetag and the city's successful congestion pricing system. The only boisterous groups I've noticed are British tourists. The humans in this city-state, their landscape, all quiet.
I find Singapore built at a human scale. The streets are narrow like their thin residents; the hawker stalls are manned by sole proprietors, all tools at arms-length. Last week I walked for 30 minutes and crossed three neighborhoods. Back home, I walk 30 minutes and haven't yet exited one. The American journey to the Heartland takes hours, days. The entire nation of Singapore is smaller than New York City.
This human-centered development is tangible within the populous. I sense community is strong among the numerous elderly, who gather for tai chi and lor mee in the public spaces. Traffic lights change slowly--I suspect to account for the slow walkers who helped lift this place into the ranks of the First World. Singaporeans have the second-highest life expectancy in the world and are top 10 in the UN's Human Development Index, a measure of living standards and education. The youth are as phone-addicted and materialistic as anywhere (the global hegemony spares none, after all), but both young and old, I think, seem acutely aware that they're better off here than nearly anwhere else. Grumbling about the dominance of the People's Action Party (PAP) stays at that.
The Singaporean Heartland is an interesting term. I wasn't sure I heard it right the first time, because how could a city have a Heartland, especially one known for its immigrant population and lack of natural resources. Apparently it was coined by politicians in the early 1990s to give a sense of esteem to the mostly ethnic-Chinese "middle class" who weren't part of the Global City project the PAP was undertaking to attract wealthy foreigners, multinational corporations, and a level of prestige that would lead to Formula One races and major defense summits and six shows of the Eras Tour. When I walk past the small cafes at the bottom of my building, the laundromat, the hardware store, it's evident I'm probably the only non-Singaporean living here. I get to see a life not meant for white-collar expats.
These Heartland neighborhoods are constituted by public housing developments. The one I live in is from the early days of Singapore's industrialization, its units ringed by crown molding and an arched walkway of brown glazed tile separating the long kitchen from the living room. Public housing here isn't like that in the US--the Housing & Development Board (HBD) owns 1 million units that 80% of the population lives in (the state takes care of everyone). I put "middle class" in quotations because, here in this average complex, the parking lot is filled with BMWs and Mercedes Benz. Singapore's GDP per capita is over $88,000, after all.
The people's reserved nature means outsiders are starkly so. I think I would do well as a native son. This city is filled with people like me who don't really have a natural place on this planet anymore: generational immigrants no longer interchangeable with those in the motherland, long-term economic migrants accustomed to their adopted nation, brown-skinned people more comfortable with English than their ancestor's tongue. Singapore has approached multiculturalism in a different way than the States, but both rest on their citizenry becoming one people. I sense a national identity parallel to "American" here. I think that's why the Heartland has drawn me in--it's a home, a firm, established one, not an effort to be something else.
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