‘Singapore on Thames’ Metropolitan Dreams and Planning Regimes

Abstract Singapore has frequently been idealised as a metropolitan financial hub that the UK should aspire to by adopting similar models of deregulation and executive control. This article brings attention to the role of planning laws in enabling or obstructing this goal. Planning regimes are responsible for facilitating a city’s infrastructural transformation, but are also emblematic of a state’s legal approach to its political goals. Comparing the planning regimes of the UK and Singapore will reveal how, despite originating from similar systems, their modern forms create vastly different pathways towards their metropolitan dreams. ‘Singapore on Thames’ reform in the planning context must thus be questioned as the legal histories and frameworks of the planning regimes also speak to irreconcilable legal cultures. In particular, differences in accountability mechanisms, the ways political authorities and their laws are legitimated and the role of law should warn against simplistic calls for deregulation or technocratic executive control. This comparative study of English and Singaporean planning regimes thus sheds light on how divergent approaches to planning may secure different outcomes, warns against legal reform that fails to account for the features of local legal culture and concludes by rethinking the concept of ‘Singapore on Thames’.