Manufacturing space: Hypergrowth and the Underwater City in Singapore

• Singapore is experiencing hypergrowth that produces implications on space scarcity.
• The Underwater City is a technological innovation developed to create space.
• The new method follows the logic of industrial systems, hence space manufacturing.
• Space manufacturing reflects technocratic urbanism shaping the urban culture.

This paper illustrates how rapid economic growth results in a new method of space production. Focusing on the city-state Singapore, the paper highlights one technological innovation, namely “the Underwater City”, which embodies a futuristic infrastructure meant to expand the city-state’s limited land by creating useable space underwater. This paper offers the notion of “space manufacturing” to characterize the relation between technology and space production in this particular context. A brief account of Singapore’s economic expansion and its implication on space is presented. Following, the paper discusses the technical specifications of the underwater infrastructure to show how the new technology is designed to respond to space scarcity. Lastly, the paper examines how space manufacturing of the Underwater City reflects technocratic urbanism in Singapore as a rising global city.