Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2019. xvii, 275 pp. (Tables, figures, map, B&W photos.) US$32.00. ISBN 9789814722902.
The cover of Las Vegas in Singapore is the tip of the visually stunning Marina Bay Sands (MBS) in Singapore. When this project was being developed, a local newspaper polled several experts for their comments on the MBS. Leading Singaporean architect Tay Kheng Soon had this to say: “[B]ecause it is so outstanding, it is likely to be mistaken as the icon of Singapore. No self-respecting city has a casino as its icon” (The Straits Times, June 4, 2006). In this statement, “No self-respecting city has a casino as its icon,” Tay was referring to the trophy building and also to its location in the city. The Singapore government decided to give the MBS a central position on the seaward side of Marina Bay so that any visitor on the more populated landward side of the bay has a glorious unblocked view of the MBS. The location is unquestionably one of the most strategic spots in the new downtown area. Where once such spots were reserved for banks and business services, the MBS, by occupying this envious location, has become a new contender for the city skyline, and what visitors and Singaporeans must see.
That the MBS ended up being in Singapore at all is the result of ideological shifts towards gambling, and this is what Lee Kah-Wee brings out in Las Vegas in Singapore. In the process of collecting material for the book, he has amassed a wide variety of data from historical and contemporary sources—archival material, interviews, casino architect sketches (212 [fig. 6.12]), including some participant observations (144)—which are deployed with great effect and weaved into a strong analysis of the history of gambling in Singapore.
The book makes three important contributions to the literature on gambling and the city. First, Las Vegas in Singapore can be read as a study of the spaces and architecture of gambling. This approach to gambling studies through the focus on the built environment forms the book’s key feature (8, 13–14). The gaming house in chapter 1 is a long story of how colonial authorities sought to tackle the rampant problem of gambling in Singapore in the nineteenth century. By tracing the reports and records of the colonial government, Lee shows how architecture is used to evade capture and also to assign guilt to the owners of such establishments. Chapters 2 and 3 are set in the period of the 1950s to 1970s. Chapter 2 documents the effort to control gambling in the spaces of everyday life: coffee shops, provision shops, and street vendors. Chapter 3 moves the analysis to the level of city streets by providing a fascinating account of how gambling represents one important facet of the social and economic life of the street.
The second way the book makes an important contribution is in the analysis of changing justifications behind the policy on gambling. Lee makes an important point about the priorities of lawmakers during the colonial and nationalist periods (67). While colonial administrators worried about criminalizing the Chinese for what was seen as an everyday practice, nationalist leaders were concerned that criminalization had an adverse effect on the integration of different groups and the building of a national identity. Lee used legal case records to show the way in which colonial authorities laboured to make distinctions between those who flout the law and those who are engaged in a leisurely pastime. In contrast, nationalist leaders took a different path when faced with a different political and economic context. Chapter 4 is, in my opinion, one of the highlights of the book, for it shows the ideological work behind the attempt by nationalist leaders to capture what had been an illegal activity and turn it into a state-sanctioned business for the good of the nation.
Are chapters 5 and 6 an unnecessary detour? Maybe, since one can follow the Singapore story without these two chapters. But a determined reader will learn how the Las Vegas model is transferred to Singapore. Chapter 5 shows how the new technologies developed in Las Vegas give the operator more information, allowing for better control over player routines and preferences, surveillance and detection over cheaters, and ultimately, revenues. Chapter 6 details the insidiousness of casino architecture in that all casino design components are a deliberate attempt at creating “architectural reasons to gamble” (211). Arguably, it is this deliberateness that has brought the client and architect into an intimate partnership, one where “the casino designer’s autonomy is directly drawn from the client’s own discursive framework and material interests, not detached from it” (210).
This model is necessary in order to understand the tussle between the profit-oriented casino operators and the political correctness of government planners laid out in chapter 7. Geographers may easily connect this line of analysis to the policy mobilities literature that looks into the political economy of policy transfers across geographical boundaries—in particular how policies and practices “mutate” when these confront the new socio-cultural, political, and economic realities of the new homes that adopt such practices (E. McCann and K. Ward, “Assembling Urbanism: Following Policies and ‘Studying Through’ the Sites and Situations of Policy Making,” Environment and Planning A, 44(1) [2012]: 42–51).
This point brings up the third contribution of the study: the role of the architect as mediator between the owner-operator and the government planner (chapter 7). Chapter 4 shows the importance of the ideological work necessary (Lee cleverly terms this as “moral laundering”) to make what is a morally questionable activity into an acceptable one in the eyes of the public. Government planners overseeing the MBS project must necessarily be aligned to this position. We see in chapters 5 and 6 the contrasting orientation of the operator deploying technology and architecture to derive the greatest gain from the casino. The architect is portrayed as the heroic figure balancing the contrasting goals of the operator and the planner.
Las Vegas in Singapore is a powerful analysis of the spaces and architecture of gambling—how gambling provides a lens in which to understand the interactions between state and society and the way that the architect is inserted into this complex process.
Ho Kong Chong
National University of Singapore, Singapore