Geylang Serai Pasar cleansed

mancha SG

Visited the new pasar today.

Before it was completed, I expected that the area would be ruined just like Chinatown was. I was right.

When it was slated for redevelopment, it was promised that the area's heritage would be kept and more introduced. That as much as possible the original vendors would be brought back. The old charm would be retained.

I only noticed that almost all of the original vendors have taken up stalls at the new complex.

As for the ambience, it is as sanitised and plain as any other food centre and market in Singapore. Concrete and ceramic tiled cubicles. White in colour. Culturally cleansed. Only the exterior high roof bears any semblance to the Malay culture, and this can be seen clearly, from a helicopter.

If not for the preponderance of Malays and other Muslims at the complex, it is just another market and food centre.

Geylang Serai Pasar is the label given to that spanking new complex. The old charm is gone. Sadly.

First Chinatown, now Geylang Serai, next? Little India I think, would be slated for cleansing.

Ah Chia SG

Geylang Serai Pasar is the label given to that spanking new complex. The old charm is gone. Sadly.

More local identity destroyed.

So now local identity all destroyed, more foreigners come in?

Plan of the PAP?

Chew Bakar SG

Another landmark gone in the name of modernisation.

simnatic SG

Visited the new pasar today.

Before it was completed, I expected that the area would be ruined just like Chinatown was. I was right.

I only noticed that almost all of the original vendors have taken up stalls at the new complex.

If not for the preponderance of Malays and other Muslims at the complex, it is just another market and food centre.

Geylang Serai Pasar is the label given to that spanking new complex. The old charm is gone. Sadly.

First Chinatown, now Geylang Serai, next? Little India I think, would be slated for cleansing.

Most people, especially the Malays, are happier with the new market.

If we were to talk culture, the old market was in no way a cultural landmark. Yes, it has sentimental values to the people but when it was built, but it was designed with the 1960s mentality of functionality as the main driving force of the design. This new market is something that the people there can be proud of, the architecture and design is beautiful, rich with traditional Malay architecture. In fact, it is akin to some of those heritage markets we find in Malaysia.

I don't understand what you're complaining about. So you mean that the old Geylang Serai Market, the dirty state of that place was a symbol of the people of that area? If you were a Malay who frequented that place, you would know how embarassing the state of the old market was, and how business was slowly trickling down as the old generation of Malays who frequent that place dissapear while the new generation simply do not want due to how dirty that place was? Oh and yeah, we do thank the PAP for this brilliant plan of theirs.

sgdiehard SG

Most people, especially the Malays, are happier with the new market.

Mahathir was right once when he said that the westerners expect Asian to continue to live in the 50s or 60s and when they came to Asia and saw all the new buildings, they explained that the local culture had disappeared.

apparently many people don't know much about what Malay culture is all about, or even what is Chinese culture. What the old malay and chinese think and what the new generation think.

and damn, again the government was pulled in to the discussion.

mancha SG

Most people, especially the Malays, are happier with the new market.

No one dispute that the old squatter type Geylang Serai need to be torn down and rebuild.

In rebuilding the former characteristic need to be taken into account the during design and building stage. Yes there is the roof, symbolic of the Malay architecture, but apart from that there is nothing else.

Much designing opportunity is not realised, the interior is build in a secular, clinical and non descriptive style.

Have we not learn from the redevelopment of Chinatown? Are we not going to depart from building a non-discriptive structure, lable it, and it becomes it. Our Chinatown could be duplicated in Sengkang, or Woodlands, and labled Chinatown. Would it be a chinatown? The same applies to the Geylang Serai Pasar.

Singaporeans are happier with the new place, because they are familiar with the layout, it is Singaporean, not Malay.

Singaporean as a society is losing its traditional heritage, that is what I lament. More thought could have gone into the rebuilding of Geylang Serai Pasar. Unfortunately it was built clinically by cold practical people, who technically incorporated the ethnic element.