Social Transformations in the Global City: Singapore

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increased interest in testing the thesis that global city emergence is accompanied by increases in social polarisation. Given the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region in the global economy, this paper makes a timely contribution to the social polarisation debate by discussing the social transformations occurring with reference to Singapore. It is suggested that within Singapore, rather than the development of a polarised structure, there is a trend towards a professionalised occupation structure and a growing middle-upper income-group.