This article was downloaded by: [National University Of Singapore] On: 16 September 2009 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 779896407] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Local Environment Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713394137 “Community in Bloom”: local participation of community gardens in urban Singapore Leon H. H. Tan a; Harvey Neo a a Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore Online Publication Date: 01 July 2009 To cite this Article Tan, Leon H. H. and Neo, Harvey(2009)'“Community in Bloom”: local participation of community gardens in urban Singapore',Local Environment,14:6,529 — 539 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13549830902904060 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13549830902904060 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Local Environment Vol. 14, No. 6, July 2009, 529– 539 “Community in Bloom”: local participation of community gardens in urban Singapore Leon H.H. Tan and Harvey Neo Downloaded By: [National University Of Singapore] At: 07:56 16 September 2009 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Singapore 117570, Singapore Community gardens offer a space that allows facilitation of leisure activities, encourages interaction within different factions in a community and helps forge a sense of belonging towards the overall community. Using the case study of “Community in Bloom” (CIB) programme initiated by the National Parks Board of Singapore, this article highlights how such community gardens are also viewed by some as exclusionary spaces due to their close links with government apparatus. More broadly, it argues that a constrained civic activism not only affects the extent to which these gardens can forge communal bonds, but they also challenge their integral spirit. Despite promising signs of politically opening up in the early 2000s, the soft authoritarianism of the Singaporean state continues to be wary of non-governmental sanctioned community projects and civic activism. This attitude may prove to be resilient in the foreseeable future, thereby preventing the “CIB” programme from truly blossoming. Keywords: community garden; civic activism; community; Singapore; politics Introduction In May 2005, Singapore officially opened its first community garden in Mayfair Park Estate under the National Parks (NParks) programme, “Community in Bloom” (CIB). Mayfair garden was to serve as the flagship example promoting a gardening culture in Singapore that would contribute to the unique ambience of the city state (National Parks Board 2008). Concomitantly, the programme hopes to forge community ties in local neighbourhoods. Today, 3 years after, there are more than 240 gardening communities and groups all over Singapore – reflecting the popularity of the CIB programme (see Tay 2007a). Using NParks’ CIB programme as a case study, this article highlights how such community gardens are viewed by some as exclusionary spaces due to their close association with government apparatus. At a broader level, it argues that diminished civic activism and the absence of non-partisan politics in Singapore not only affect the extent to which these gardens can forge communal bonds, but they also challenge the integral spirit of such community projects. Following this introduction, we will briefly discuss the idea of urban community gardens. A review of the Singapore context and its governmental attitude towards the “greening” of Singapore as well as civic activism will then follow. The final section introduces two case studies of community gardens to illustrate the benefits and tensions of community gardening in Singapore.  Corresponding author. Email: harveyneo@nus.edu.sg ISSN 1354-9839 print/ISSN 1469-6711 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13549830902904060 http://www.informaworld.com 530 L.H.H. Tan and H. Neo Downloaded By: [National University Of Singapore] At: 07:56 16 September 2009 Nature, gardens and the city While the city is often regarded anti-nature, it can also be an arena where “nature” and the “social” meet and interact with each other (Hinchliffe 1999, Holland 2004). Green spaces within the city enable communities to engage with nature on a daily basis. For Holland (2004, p. 290) “city life can encourage structures that allow this (engagement of humans and nature) to develop”. To highlight the importance of incorporating green notions within urban development, Irvine et al. (1999, p. 35), suggest that we “must build landscapes that heal, connect and empower, that make intelligent our relations with each other and with the natural world”. While debating the need for green urban spaces, Thompson (2002, p. 64) emphasised that “access to some form of ‘nature’ is a fundamental human need”. Chiesura (2004, p. 136) has gone further to state that the “emotional and psychological benefits (of green spaces) contribute critically to the quality of human life . . . [and] is a key component of sustainable development”. Parks, gardens and open spaces are thus essential features of most cities (Burgess et al. 1988). Of late, the seemingly peaceful domestic garden landscape has been problematised by academics as a site to reveal underlying relations within the “private” spaces of the home (Power 2005). Bhatti and Church (2001) argued that the domestic garden is a significant space to understand everyday human – nature relations and “provides opportunities and possibilities in relation to nature that may not exist elsewhere either in the rest of the home or in public spaces”. The domestic garden is a landscape where, “processes associated with production and consumption . . . and the social and economic relations of changing housing patterns . . . contribute mainly to consumerist and utilitarian orderings of nature in domestic gardens” (Bhatti and Church 2001, p. 379). Yet within this socioeconomic matrix, the garden also allows the development of individual and “complex, sensual and personalised readings of nature” (p. 380). Longhurst (2006) has postulated domestic gardens as paradoxical space where ideas of “nature and culture”, “individual and social”, “leisure and work” and “colonial and postcolonial” are played out. In addition, this complex space allows the reinforcement of old hegemonic geographies and may even create new alternate ones. However, Longhurst’s (2006, p. 590) strongest argument is that the domestic garden permits “readers” of this paradoxical site an opportunity to “reflect and reinforce both emancipatory and oppressive power relations”. In this regard, despite their fundamental differences (e.g. one is “public” while the other “private”), community gardens share much affinity with private domestic gardens. First, both attempt to draw participants/gardeners closer to “nature”. Second, both can function as spaces of socialisation, albeit at different spatial scales. Put simply, community gardens offer a space that allows facilitation of leisure activities and this (potentially) encourages interaction within different factions in a community and help forge a sense of belonging towards the overall community (Armstrong 2000, Glover 2004, Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny 2004, Shinew et al. 2004). Community gardens are also important “to non-gardeners in the community: their role in empowering members to become more active in the community, their role as educational sites, the importance of preserving culture through community gardens” (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny 2004, p. 408; see also Wakefield et al. (forthcoming) for direct health benefits of community gardening). More apropos for this research is the idea that community gardens act as a “catalyst” that provides a “symbolic focus”. This allows residents to look into issues collectively, hence facilitating neighbourhood bonding through improving social networks and increasing “community capacity”. (Armstrong 2000, p. 325). Similarly Shinew et al. (2004) suggest that community gardens may be further studied as a potential leisure space that bridges Downloaded By: [National University Of Singapore] At: 07:56 16 September 2009 Local Environment 531 diverse groups through positive interethnic interaction. Community gardens as grassroots initiatives have also been commended for their role in revitalising lower-end income neighbourhoods (Linn 1999, Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny 2004, Shinew et al. 2004). Yet, Glover (2004), when exploring the community as a social context where social capital is produced, argues that community gardening not only produces and maintains social capital but also reveals the unequal distribution of its benefits within the community. Due to the multitude of parties and factions involved within a community garden, it has been studied as a site of contestation where some parties are marginalised while others gained (Parry et al. 2005). Questions of contestation over the community gardens include access rights, the cost of operating these spaces and general “garden politics” (Schmelzkopf 1995, p. 376). Nonetheless, because of their specific contexts, most of the works discussed above omit discussions of broader politics (beyond the local scale) that could affect the dynamics of community gardening. In the next few sections, we show how the Singapore’s government technocratic approach to dealing with “nature issues”, coupled with its highly restrictive stance towards civic activism, limits the potential benefits of community gardens. Singapore: “engineered” landscape and “circumscribed” civil society Singapore is often viewed as a developmental city-state that has overcome its environmental limitations, paying less attention to the value of its nature areas (Neo and Pow 2006, Neo 2007), in pursuit of economic growth. Since the early 1960s, the Singapore political leadership has adopted a “pragmatic environmental ideology that hinges on possibilistic and anthropocentric human-nature relationships” (Savage 1997, p. 187). Savage aligns this ideology with environmental possibilism, where humans see nature as mere opportunities to aid their developmental agenda. This becomes the government’s legitimisation to recreate notions of nature in its “conquest” of environment. In this regard, since the 1970s Singapore has focused on building, within the country, a “Garden City”. This included physical changes such as the eradication of “pollutive and unhygienic landscapes” as well as establishing a clean and green image. The latter include programmes such as “Tree Planting Day”, “National Recycling Day”, “Clean and Green Week” and the mass creation of urban parks (Savage and Kong 1993, p. 4). The CIB programme fits into this overall greening strategy with the added explicit goal of fostering community bonds. The economic track record of the Singapore ruling political party, the People’s Action Party (PAP), has enabled the party to preserve hegemonic rule since the nation’s independence in 1965 (Chua 1994, Chong 2005). This hegemonic control extends to “managing” civil society lest it interferes with state developmental plans (Rodan 2003). Civic activism and civil society involvement among the grassroots in Singapore has therefore been significantly curtailed. Yet, Lee (2000, p. 93) argues that there has been a “tradition of active participation of civil groups” in pre-independence Singapore. She argues that civil society was more vibrant than it is now. In fact, the potential influence of civil organisations back then was significant enough for the PAP government to “cripple” their strength “to eliminate any alternative centers of power” (p. 94). In doing so, the PAP government reiterates the importance of “survival” through development and political stability while at the same time believing itself to be “the only authority that is capable of running Singapore” ( p. 94). The strict control on civic activism has seen the creation of Residents’ Committees (RCs)1 as the sanctioned grassroots authority in Singapore. Purportedly, the RCs are the neighbourhood facilitators in building communitarian spirit among neighbours. Downloaded By: [National University Of Singapore] At: 07:56 16 September 2009 532 L.H.H. Tan and H. Neo However, as Chua (1995, p. 197) writes, such “communitarianism is constrained within the ideological/conceptual space of national interests [such that] no individual or group can assert its own right as a basic condition of existence lest the assertion be read as unacceptable self-interest, potentially detrimental to the whole”. In other words, beyond fostering community spirit, the RCs are “extensions” of the ruling party that minimise the possibility of local community spirit contradicting the national agenda and weakening the party’s grip on local power. Hence, outside the sphere of RCs, “alternative” local community bonding and grassroots activities are circumscribed to a considerable extent. Not surprisingly, the CIB scheme falls under the gambit of the RCs. However, one must not overstate the decline of civil society in post-independence Singapore. In a landmark speech made in 2001, the then Minister for Information and the Arts, Yeo (2001), argues that the government’s cautious and guarded attitude towards civil organisations must be moderated: We worried about the lack of a civil society in independent Singapore . . . In the long term, if we depend only on the state, we will be weak. To create a sense of Singaporean-ness, citizens must do more things for themselves and be less reliant on the state . . . More space between the family and the state can be freed up for civil society to grow. A year before this speech, he had also written that “allowing” civil society to grow is imperative because “civil society can flourish in a way which strengthens the state” (Yeo 2000, p. 24). However, in the same article, he also notes that “oppositional activities in the past politicised many civic organisations” hence we (i.e. the government) have to be “watchful” (p. 24). Overall, he argues that in an increasingly globalised world, good state – society relations will enable Singapore to “survive and compete” (p. 25). Despite such proclamations, state – civil society relationship in Singapore continue to be ambiguous and the result (or, perhaps, the cause) of this is that civil society organisations have either been suppressed, co-opted by the government or work closely with it (Lee 2000). Clearly, such civic activism as existing in Singapore is at odds with “true” grassroots activism understood in the conventional sense: one that is largely free from state influence. Before we proceed further, a short note of our methodology is helpful. Informal interviews were conducted with the residents of the two chosen public housing precincts to ascertain their attitudes towards their community gardens. In-depth interviews were conducted with the direct users of the community gardens as well as the managers from the RCs and NParks involved within the programme. While we specifically looked for the main gardener in charge in both gardens for interviews, other participants were chosen randomly. All interviewees were given pseudonyms at their request. Participatory observation was conducted and the two gardens were chosen for greater contrast in terms of their years in existence; their relative sizes and comparative range of flora and food crops grown. The research was conducted over a period of 4 months from late 2007 to early 2008. Community gardens in Singapore The Ghim Moh community garden and Lorong Ah Soo garden were established 20 and 2 years ago, respectively. Both gardens are linked to the CIB programme (the 20-year-old Ghim Moh garden was assimilated into the CIB programme after the latter was launched while the Lorong Ah Soo garden was built under the auspices of the CIB programme) and their day-to-day running devolved to the RCs. It is envisaged that through the programme and their RCs, residents will be able to sustain their passion for gardening. Downloaded By: [National University Of Singapore] At: 07:56 16 September 2009 Local Environment 533 Due to the difference in the length of time since establishment, some distinctions are clearly evident in the layout of both gardens. The longer established Ghim Moh Garden was bigger and more organised. The Lorong Ah Soo garden was smaller with no clear distinction in the planting and organisation of different plant varieties. Users of both community gardens can be categorised into three groups: The “Gardener” (the main person in charge of day-to-day management of the gardens); “Garden Members” (residents who assist the “gardener” in the garden undertakings); “Community Participants” (members of the community who benefit from the garden but are not actively involved in gardening roles). There is a pronounced involvement of senior citizens in the establishment and continuation of the gardens. Similar studies conducted in North America (SaldivarTanaka and Krasny 2004) also acknowledge the active role that senior citizens play within community gardens. Most of these senior citizens are retirees who voluntarily manage the gardens as their pastime. In both cases, the “gardener” was a male senior citizen who had prior experience and expertise in horticulture and gardening. The “gardeners” would organise the workload among the “garden members” and usually have the final say in all decisions affecting the community gardens. The leadership of gardeners is evident as they contribute the most time and effort into the gardens and solely ensure the smooth operation of the garden. All external affairs, feedbacks and request from the community are directed to the “gardener”, who then decides on the course of action to be taken. Both “garden members” and “community participants” respect the “gardener” and accept his leadership. This is evident in the good relationship and popularity of the “gardener” within the community. The “gardener” becomes the key player within the garden setup and seemingly plays a large role in bridging the community together with the garden. Discussion A Community in Bloom? Those who are directly involved believe that the gardens have been effective in enhancing community bonding and social interaction within the communities they serve. The gardens have instilled a sense of belonging for the community especially the gardener and the garden members. Tony, the gardener of Ghim Moh garden, expressed that users of the community gardens find a sense of community pride when they see or visit the garden: “They (users of the community garden) are proud of their nature corner and treat it dearly as their own.” This observation is echoed by the gardener of Lorong Ah Soo garden (Yeo): This bonding can be also been seen in the active support given to the maintenance of community gardens by some of the “community participants”. . .We have a very supportive neighborhood. The pots, fertilizers, flowers and soil have mostly been donated by the residents. This grape seeding was even “smuggled” in from Malaysia by one of the residents. As alluded to earlier, community gardens elsewhere have facilitated greater interaction within the community. Community gardens in Singapore reflect this to an extent as well, where gardening members share daily experiences with each other while maintaining the garden. Furthermore, the garden can be seen as a node for informal information sharing within the wider community network. What is perhaps different is that the community gardens in Singapore are not predominantly geared towards agriculture. Most gardens in Singapore grow ornamental flowers and where food (e.g. spices, fruits or vegetables) is grown, they are not meant for sale or distribution to the wider community. Downloaded By: [National University Of Singapore] At: 07:56 16 September 2009 534 L.H.H. Tan and H. Neo Community gardens also serve an educational purpose. Holland (2004) claims that the late twentieth-century urbanisation has “removed the possibility of widespread farm ownership, and city life discourages activities that re-engage humans and nature”. Due to this increasing “disassociation” with nature, parents expressed concern with their children’s misconceptions of nature. Mary, a housewife who brought her child to the community garden, mentioned that her child could not identify the chickens within the community gardens because her child believes that chicken had no feathers, just like those sold in the supermarkets. Such misconceptions of nature by children were also mentioned by Mr Yeo: “When I asked the kindergarten children where does rice come from, do you know what the reply was? It was the rice cooker!” The community gardens are hence extremely vital towards children’s education within the local context as everyday spaces have become more urbanised, limiting contact with nature. Tony also agrees that community gardens are crucial in the general education and leisure of children: “There is no other place where little kids can catch fishes and get their hands dirty with soil other than here [Community Garden]” (interview with Ah Toh, Ghim Moh garden member). Other than being a space of leisure and education, some senior residents feel a sense of “kampong [Malay word meaning ‘village’] nostalgia” while maintaining the garden. Working in the community garden space reminds them about their younger days of helping out in their kampongs (see The Straits Times 2006, Tay 2007b). Furthermore, in the local context, the rural village or “kampong” has been totally eradicated by development priorities. Together with this destruction, the communal life that bonded the villagers together was inevitably lost. The community garden has hence been widely accepted by the gardeners and its members as a substitute space that allows communal activities and replicates attitudes that were once present in the “kampong” context. Reconnecting the rural lifestyle of communal living through communal labour can be sustainable and possible through community gardens in the cityscapes of Singapore. Tony speaks for other gardeners we interviewed when he remarks: Development is a must for Singapore. This [Community Garden] is the closest you will ever get to working in a kampong in Singapore. That’s why they are all here [pointing to the elderly gardeners in the garden]. Community gardens as contested space The community garden, however, can be a contested space within the neighbourhood. Contestation over the gardens range from everyday complaints, clashes of management ideologies to exclusionary barriers which deny access to social capital that the gardens generate (Schmelzkopf 1995, Glover 2004). Maintaining the gardens has resulted in complaints made directly to the gardeners or indirectly through the RC. Residents have voiced out their unhappiness at the supposed negative externalities produced by the community gardens. For example, a grassroots administrator we interviewed notes that “the residents singled out the garden as the cause for the recent Aedes Mosquito outbreak and the National Environment Agency came to investigate the running of the garden”. Tony, the gardener, gave another example: There was this lady who lived at this block (pointing to the nearest block) who was very unhappy as she claimed the noise produced by the birds and the burning of dried leaves Local Environment 535 Downloaded By: [National University Of Singapore] At: 07:56 16 September 2009 disturbed her. There was once we were burning the dried leaves for compost and someone called the fire brigade. Such small disputes and disagreements, including compost odours and mismanagement of public utilities, faced by the local community gardeners have been noted in earlier discussions of community gardens in other areas (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny 2004). They are also present in both gardens we surveyed. NParks and the gardeners have been informed about these incidents and acknowledge that the community garden programme can cause discontent among segments of the community. As Mr Yeo, the Lorong Ah Soo gardener, points out: “It isn’t possible to please everyone, there are bound to be problems. But the garden is a part of the estate and much of it is accepted by the community members”. There are also conflicts among users and between users and the larger community. As the garden is a shared space, members often hold different ideas on the management of the community garden. This often results in disputes among the members: Lily and the rest prefer to plant beautiful flowers like the rose, while I prefer to grow a variety of local plants and spice plants. There was this once I went on a tour of China and when I came back, much of my plants were destroyed and roses were being cultivated instead. (Yeo, Lorong Ah Soo gardener) On top of that, the gardeners often tolerate comments given by community participants and residents who are not actively involved in the daily maintenance of the community garden. As described by Tony, these comments are often unappreciative of the gardeners’ efforts: “These people can only talk and talk. Always asking for this or that to be planted. But I would not do it. If they want a say I would tell them: ‘come get your hands dirty’ ”. On further probing, Tony revealed that he considers “community participants” involvement in the garden annoying at times as it can affect his work: “If a lot of visitors come, I can’t work, so what to do? I come earlier so I am not disturbed”. These issues of displeasure with the community participants have been seen as “minor opinions” to the gardeners and have not escalated to open arguments. However, such incidents have led the managers of the community gardens to believe that membership should be controlled. As an RC administrator explains: “The locks and fences are to prevent any mishaps. We want to protect the garden from those who may damage it. Anyway, less people, less problems”. Clearly, as the next section will show, the idea of community gardens as an open, social space is not yet a reality. Community gardens as exclusionary space The presence of locks and fences around the garden has made the community garden a physical exclusionary space where access is determined by the managers and those directly involved with the garden. Garden members control access to the garden as only members are given keys (see Tay 2007b). This control of access has greatly reduced the potential number of residents involved in the programme. As observed, the lock at Lorong Ah Soo community garden can be breached with a pull, this was only told to those who were trusted by Mr Yeo. Only residents within the network of the gardeners have information on the opening hours and methods to enter the garden. Most community participants interviewed are not aware of the opening hours of the community gardens, especially so for residents who did not know the gardeners or the other members personally. Mr Tan, a resident of the Ghim Moh estate, reflects that he was not aware of the actual opening hours of the garden as the gardeners seemingly worked Downloaded By: [National University Of Singapore] At: 07:56 16 September 2009 536 L.H.H. Tan and H. Neo ad hoc hours. However, the resident’s observation is untrue. The Ghim Moh community garden is opened from 4 pm to 6 pm daily. Nonetheless, both Tony and Mr Yeo admit to the presence of an ideological barrier that prevents access to all members of the community: “It’s not that they [residents not involved in the community garden who may like gardening] don’t want to join. It is because they don’t know they can join” (interview with Tony). Mr Yeo concurs: “It’s only people that recognize me who come by the gardens. Some other residents who do not know me or the other RC members will even stay clear of this place because they think this is another social club that belongs to the RC”. The ideological barrier exists because excluded residents have imperfect knowledge of the operations and rationale behind the community gardens. Their distancing from the community garden members’ network has further hindered them as they shun away from the unfamiliar community network which is sustained by the gardens. As hinted in the preceding paragraph, this ideological barrier may be linked to broader national-scale politics as well. The community gardens are closely linked to the government-sanctioned grassroots group, the RC. Both gardeners are appointment holders within the RC structure and the community gardens members are part of the RC or associated with the RC’s Senior Residents Club. In addition, both gardens have signboards which display the RC zone which the gardens are under. RC functions such as Senior Citizen’s Day and RC Family Day have also been held within the garden space. Hence, such community gardens are not the product of “spontaneous” civic action at the local level. The close association of the scheme with that of a top-down government initiative has clear impacts on the level of community participation within the garden. When community projects in Singapore are linked with governmental bodies, such as the RC, a portion of the population would avoid participation (Chua 2000). This behaviour by the Singaporeans has been acknowledged by NParks: “we call it Community in Bloom but not NParks so upfront because people tend to shy away from things that are very ‘government-ish’ [government linked]” (interview with NParks Community in Bloom Regional Manager). This challenges the definition of community and the “community” that the programme serves. The community gardens obviously exclude residents who do not wish to be involved with perceived government-linked programmes. The social capital and benefits that could have been accrued to them are thus lost (Glover 2004). Yet, the RC plays a pivotal role in the success of the community gardens: specifically, in its setup and longterm sustainability. The CIB guidelines state that the Housing Development Board and local Town Council must approve all proposals for land usage before community gardens can commence. Although not mandatory, the CIB programme has strongly encouraged interested individuals to approach the RCs to play “middleman” between the public and the HDB2 as well as the Town Councils (Jiang 2008). The CIB programme actually sees the RCs as the most suitable grassroots to play this role: “RCs are the most tangible and visual place to go first . . . as RCs know the official channel in the setting up of the community gardens” (interview with NParks CIB Regional Manager). The CIB Regional Manager added that “there are no prerequisites or credentials such as race or gender but passion, rationale and sustainability behind it (setting up a community garden) is crucial”. Cases of abandonment of community gardens have been a consequence of a lack in funding, lack of support and the change in leadership of the gardens. These reasons have been echoed by NParks: “Funding and leadership is very crucial. Supportive RCs and Town Councils can play a crucial role in the sustainability of these community gardens” (interview with NParks CIB Regional Manager). Downloaded By: [National University Of Singapore] At: 07:56 16 September 2009 Local Environment 537 By essentially devolving the community garden to a “stable” grassroots organisation such as the RC, funding and succession problems are reduced (Schmelzkopf 1995, Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny 2004). The RCs have both the capital and manpower to fulfil the requirements of sustaining a community garden. In the opinion of Tony, the RCs remain the most suitable form of authority to control and promote community gardening in HDB estates: “You take away the RC and you see what happens. There will be chaos and conflict over the garden. People will take this and that but never return”. This state of affairs clearly throws into doubt whether community gardens in Singapore can be truly seen as a grassroots affair. Much of the angst and problems of building social capital in order to sustain community gardens are absent in the Singapore case (see Glover et al. 2005a) because the latter are invariably “planned for” in Singapore. Although the involvement of the RCs has clearly reduced the outreach of social capital and the “entire” community involvement in community garden, it is highly impossible to set up and sustain the project without the support of the RCs. This is a “Catch 22” scenario that has often been experienced by other local communal/civic projects that do not have supportive backing of governmental bodies or civic groups [see Neo (2010) for a case study of recycling in Singapore]. Conclusion From the discussion of the RCs’ role in community gardens, we can conclude that a truly communal project has to be depoliticised from state control. The political tainted agendas and government-linked structure of the community gardens may be unacceptable for segments of the community. Moreover, such a state of affairs is arguably at odds with the ideal of voluntary participation and communal bonding. For example, Glover et al. (2005b) have noted the positive connection between civic organisation participation and the development of democratic values. In the case of the government-backed community gardening programme in Singapore, there is little evidence of this valuable link. To make the community garden truly communal and more accessible for the entire community, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have to replace the RCs’ grassroots role within the programme. NGOs role as managers of community gardens may present a less daunting (ideological) barrier for the residents wary of governmental intervention in all facets of life. Genuine, non-partisan civic activism can only help increase community involvement and passion. Yet, the CIB programme has, at the very least, demonstrated potential positive changes in the management of the greening of Singapore, as well as the opening up of civic spaces. The most obvious change is the transfer of ownership and maintenance from the government to the residents and members of the projects’ community. Nonetheless, as discussed earlier, the latter is in effect a de facto extension of the government and the CIB programme is thus still largely state-driven. Community gardening in Singapore is thus exceptional in its intractable association with nation-level partisan politics. Despite some promising signs of opening up in the early 2000s, the soft authoritarianism of the Singaporean state continues to be wary of non-governmental (or non-governmental sanctioned) communal projects and civic activism. Such an attitude may prove to be resilient for a long time to come, thereby preventing the “CIB” programme from fully blossoming. Notes 1. Among their many roles, RCs also work closely with People’s Association grassroots organisations and selected government agencies to improve the physical environment and safety of 538 2. L.H.H. Tan and H. Neo the local precinct (People’s Association Singapore 2008). The People’s Association is essentially the social community arm of the PAP and the RCs come under the purview of the former. The Chairperson of the People’s Association is the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong. 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