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In-Depth Information
as it speaks to the increasing social, spatial and scenic worldliness of tourist destinations as
they undergo change.
Enworldment is the process of 'encompassing of all worlds in one' resulting from the
collapse of barriers between cultures and nationalities (Terkenli, 2002: 231). Themed urban
landscapes such as festival marketplaces are good examples as they blur boundaries of space
and time, promising visitors a mix of the old and new, east and west conveniently telescoped
onto a single site. The process of enworldment is often precipitated by deworldment, where
landscapes and activities are aestheticised for the exchange value they are expected to generate.
Here the world of commerce reigns supreme as cultures and landscapes are 'staged, sacralised
and commodifi ed' for mass tourism purposes (Terkenli, 2002: 242).
Enworldment and deworldment often lead to unworldment, or the loss of local distinctive-
ness and identity. Tourist environments lose their sense of place as 'old landscape geographies'
are unravelled to cater to new leisure needs (Terkenli, 2002: 240). For residents with long-
standing links to a site, landscape transformation leads to placelessness as cherished ties to people
and place are severed. For them, unworldment is synonymous with the unmaking of place.
Finally, the process of transworldment involves the rapid transport of ideas and informa-
tion across borders, creating 'scapes and fl ows' that tie places together within a networked
community. Success stories in tourism are often quickly noted, prototyped and 'simultane-
ously and instantaneously replicated, communicated and disseminated around the world
electronically or through travel literature' (Terkenli, 2002: 246). This parallels Appadurai's
(1996) notions of 'ideoscape' and 'mediascape', where innovations are passed along, connecting
places as they share a common information fi eld. Transworldment may be regarded as
the impetus for the other worldment processes, setting cultural diffusion in motion and its
subsequent effects of enworldment, unworldment and deworldment.
As urban globalisation and tourism leads to the worldment processes, negative outcomes
need not be an inevitability. In what might be described as 'creative destruction' (Mitchell
et al.
, 2001), what is 'lost' to one group can represent a 'gain' for another. Therefore, as
unworldment takes place and some may feel alienated by landscape changes, others might
rejoice as new spaces are created for their consumption and pleasure. How tourism planners,
business operators, local communities and global travellers negotiate the worldment processes
ultimately determines the making or unmaking of places for them.
Marketing, making and unmaking place in a worldly city
As the most public and visible of tourism landscapes, the urban waterfront offers an opportu-
nity to examine the simultaneous processes of place
making
, place
marketing
(see also Lew,
Chapter 23
of this volume) and place
unmaking
. Focusing on the Singapore River, we will
look at how tourism planners and business operators attempt to create a worldly landscape
refl ecting a global city (
place marketing
). However, tourists and residents react differently to
this vision of worldliness. Some praise the redevelopment process as a way to re-energise a
historic landscape for a new economy (
place making
) while others criticise it a prelude to a
soulless city, one that is lacking in uniqueness and identity (
place unmaking
) (see also Knudsen
et al.
in
Chapter 26
of this volume).
From the time modern Singapore was founded in 1819 until the 1970s, the Singapore
River had served as the heart of country's entrepĂ´t trade. Trading companies and warehouses
lined the banks of the river while bumboats plied its three-kilometre stretch transporting
goods into and out of the country. Following a massive clean-up of the river in the 1970/80s,
the waterfront was reborn as a site for entertainment, retail and upmarket residences.