Branding a City

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is the national planning agency in Singapore. It oversees all physical planning work, grants public and private development and planning approvals, provides some public amenities and coordinates with other government agencies.

The motto of URA is "To make Singapore a great city to live, work and play in." Funny enough, the word "in" was a new addition to the slogan. Most of the URA stationery still says "...a great city to live, work and play". I guess they realized the grammatical error rather late. However, the all-encompassing but simple tagline has lost its ring due to this need for grammatical-correctness.

Interestingly, the old URA slogan was "Towards a Tropical City of Excellence." This was phased out aptly at the time when the government and the public were debating the issue of Singapore being a hotel rather than a home. Apparently, the image of a tropical city gelled more with a Banyan Tree 3Days 2Nights at Phuket.



Even more coincidental is that downtown Los Angeles, which I just returned from, has a similar slogan. "Live, Work and Play. Downtown Los Angeles" is used to revamp the image of the downtown, away from a dead and dangerous place after office hours and into a bustling 24/7 haven of activities and residential opportunities. Its slogan came at a time when the Japanese economy was stalling and foreign investment was trickling off. The adaptive reuse ordinance established several years back also helped resuscitate the ailing housing market within downtown. And as the Lakers moved to the Staples Center and were playing well, which was a few years ago, the entire downtown was clamoring for luxurious loft apartments and prime office space.

Granted that the idea of living, working and playing within a small geographical confine is a target for many cities, the Singapore planning authority's motto, in its attempt to be comprehensive ends up run-of-the-mill bland, a little clumsy and overly simplistic.

On a side note, someone asked me the other day for my definition of a great city for the in-house magazine. My reply - A great city is a city that sucks you instantly into the flow and vibe of the place, where every turn of the road is a surprise and that to anyone, it feels like home, is home and will always be home even when one is away.