" And on land use planning matters, the statutory board responsible for urban planning (the Urban Redevelopment Authority) answers directly to the Ministry of National Development. In turn, one key agent of national development (the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB))has near monopoly power at determining the strategic direction of the economy (see Koh, 2002; Low et al., 1993). Given that the EDB formulates and implements national economic development policy, and the URA then falls in line to that ensure land use planning supports EDB directives, the politics of urban change is highly charged, hierarchical in nature, and it rarely becomes complicated by citizen involvement procedures (compared to most Anglo-American global cities). Furthermore, the consequence of intertwining the national and the urban is that all urban planning policies, programs and projects are suffused with the politics of nation-building in
the post-colonial era (see, for example, Chua, 1996; Kong and Yeoh, 2003). More pragmatically, 100% of the country/city is planned by one authority, with every square centimetre of the city/island being managed in a fine-grained manner (Koolhaus and Mau, 1995)."

-- (Olds and Yeung, 2004)

i never saw it that way, not the hierarchical structure, nor the role of EDB in our landscape. But why should i be surprised? it is after all, our very own Singapore.

one of them is my prof now, and the other, a friend of my teacher in rj. he came to give a guest lecture in rj when i was in j1.

and the question still remains -- what should i do for my thesis? and more importantly, what are the repercussions?