Citizen Participation In Urban Planning In Singapore

Political participation has been an important issue in political science research. Itmust find the right balance between political participation and political order tomodernize a country. Because of that urbanization is an important part of modernurban planning and management process, the political participation of economicdevelopment and social stability is important.Singapore has been widely considered a highly centralized government. It stronglycontrol over the society. People’s participation level is not high. Thus, Singapore isconsidered to be the authoritarian state. So, how is the level of citizen participationin the actual government policy-making process?Singapore’s urban construction has always been praised by people, especially itsurban planning what is called of "top-level design" and the overall plan. In fact, wefound that citizen participation is also a key factor in the success of Singapore’s urbanplanning. Under this background, this paper attempts to answer the followingquestions: How the level of citizen participation in urban planning in Singapore? Howeffective is this level of citizen participation? Have some factors that affecting thelevel of citizen participation? In the context of citizen participation in increasingawareness and ability, which are challenges this civic participation will face?This paper is divided into four parts. Introductory section presents the origin ofthis study and the research related to the research results. The paper also definesthree main concepts of "city planning, citizen participation and citizen participationin urban planning". The main theoretical support public participation in this paper is“a ladder of citizen participation” and” Political system theory”.The first chapteranalyzes the status of urban planning in Singapore. This paper argues that since thenineteenth century Singapore citizen participation in urban planning has experiencedsprout stage, grow stage and mature stage; at this stage it belongs to the "cooperative participation", that limited participation, active participation,involvement and substantive participation in advance; this participation levels wellbalanced scientific and democratic decision-making and the public interest andprivate interest. The second chapter discusses the factors "cooperative participation".This paper argues that the entity subsystem, subsystem and system conceptssubsystem are the main factor. It includes high levels of economic development,complete legal regulations and political culture as the core of communitarianism. Inconclusion, this article discusses the importance of citizen participation and the nextstep of the study presents some ideas.