The relational co-production of “success” and “failure,” or the politics of anxiety of exporting urban “models” elsewhere

Abstract

This paper critically examines the case of the much-vaunted Singapore “model” and its export via the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city (SSTEC), a megaproject jointly developed by the Singaporean and Chinese states in northeastern China. It revolves around the central question of why, for some Singaporean officials, this export was thought to have “failed” in spite of the model’s acclaimed success globally. To address this, the paper historicizes the Singapore model, tracing undercurrents of (geo)political existentialism through Singaporean state meta-narratives that are enacted through thehistorical politics of anxiety and the practitioner politics of anxiety. It argues that categories of policy “success” and “failure” are relationally co-produced through a politics of anxiety, wherein their stakes are amplified in ways distinctive to small postcolonial city-states. Collectively, the paper emphasizes the enduring significance of (inter)state actors and structures for transnational urban policy mobilization and the limits to assumptions of post-failure policy learning.