The transition from physical infrastructure to infostructure: infrastructure as a modernising agent in Singapore

This study examines the modernising role played by infrastructure and the transition of emphasis from physical infrastructure to knowledge-based infostructure as a source of economic growth in Singapore, noting the factors behind the change in strategy. Occupying a strategic sea route location and serving a resource-rich hinterland, Singapore inherited from the old British empire a well-established infrastructure when it achieved self-government in 1959. Since 1965, Singapore's development has been led by a pro-business developmentalist government, and strongly linked to technological advances in the West on which it also relies heavily for its exports and multinational corporation investments. From the 1980s, the government has launched a series of pro-IT plans to prepare the city-state's transition to an `intelligent island', and a regional hub for high-technology, and international financial transactions, a full-swing state-initiated strategy to leap from a semi-peripheral economy to be part of the developed core, and enhance its status to that of a world city. Despite barriers, some positive results have been observed. In terms of IT's spatial effect, it is largely overshadowed by the predeterministic long-term plans of the state's powerful planning authority. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.