2025/02/27 by Marissa K. L. E, Sabine Tan · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Asian Studies and History #Socioeconomic Development in Asia #Urban Planning and Governance
paper · doi:10.1075/jlp.24115.e
openalex publication_date 2025/02/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Abstract In this paper, we focus on the context of urban development in Singapore, where some of the country’s remaining forests have been earmarked for development, to examine how discourses of development and conservation are semiotized via multimodal representations of the forest landscape in environmental communication. To show how these discourses interact, we use one of the forests identified for development, Dover Forest, as a case study, employing de Certeau’s (2011) concepts of ‘place’, ‘space’ and ‘spatial stories’ to demonstrate how the Singapore state’s narratives of place emphasize national development imperatives connected to neoliberal market logics, with conservationists utilizing narratives of space that emphasize conservation, though the latter emphasis is not made unproblematically without impact from narratives of place. Implications of the analyses are briefly discussed with reference to de Certeau’s theory in light of the complexity of environmental conservation discourse where a dominant developmental state agenda persists.