ABSTRACT
Saturday afternoons in Singapore bring mobilization exercises for all male citizens who remain in reservist units even after the mandatory full-time military stint known as National Service. Male civilians are both citizens and standing military reserve, much as the miles were. Not all reservists are mobilized, but all are potentially mobilized and mobilizable on any given weekend exercise and at any time for military conflict. In an “open mobilization exercise,” battalion code names are broadcast over cable TV stations, broadcast television, radio stations and in cinemas. Global Positioning Systems (GPS), developed by the US military to track and co-ordinate terrestrial positions from space, also relay messages to reservists via Short Message Service (SMS) systems or through mobile phone calls from commanders. If a reservist in the center of the city is without a hand phone or is away from immediate broadcast equipment, all he need do is glance at one of the ubiquitous TV screen façades of buildings positioned along the main shopping artery of Orchard Road or near the Convention Centre and Suntec City. The heart of Singapore’s financial, commercial, shopping, and entertainment districts is littered with such screens, allowing broadcast commands to go out rapidly to the entire standing military force. With this brief broadcast, the civilian becomes the military in a matter of seconds. Much of the urban environment is just as easily convertible. The highway system along which the reservists speed to their designated military camps also has military implications. As is the US highway system, the highways connecting Changi Airport and the commercial center of town have been designed as emergency landing strips for air force fighter planes as well as the easy circulation of conscripts. Hausmann’s wide boulevards for soldiers to march down have been updated in cities around the world. The Singaporean Saturday open mobilization broadcast, or call to arms and readiness, displays a densely interwoven and interdependent system of information technologies, broadcast capabilities, urban space, infrastructure, architecture, commercial and financial interests, and nation-state security interests, all ultimately under the command and control of military demands. From geo-orbital space to one’s living
room and hand phone, the built and un-built environments of the city-state, at all levels, can be understood as bearing the imprimatur of militarization that marks global cities around the world. That, in Singapore, this stamp is beamed electronically bespeaks its status as a Broadcast City, the most recent and advanced manifestation and articulation of militarization in an urban setting. That it is used most overtly for military purposes every Saturday bespeaks its embeddedness in daily life. The Broadcast City and the trajectory from its earlier incarnations to its present form are the foci of this essay.
