ABSTRACT
This chapter contrasts State-promoted tourist sites such as the Botanic Gardens with the grassroots-led battle to preserve Bukit Brown Cemetery, using empirical examples from field research conducted in Singapore to paint a picture of grassroots activism in the authoritarian tourist city. Political activism has grown as the City-State has increasingly embraced, and also felt, global capital, global ideas and global visitors. The promotion of the gardens to UNESCO for World Heritage Status fits within Singapore's broader state policy agenda: the gardens are part of the Prime Minister's vision for Singapore to be a City in a Garden, along with other similar spaces such as the Gardens by the Bay and the River Safari. The chapter has conceptualized guerrilla tourism as an extension of Michel de Certeau's ideas on spatial practice, the act of walking itself as a form of transgression/resistance by charting new pathways within the hegemonic urban landscape.
