The UN’s sustainable development goal 11 in Singapore: feminist urbanisms and the right to the city of low-income women in global cities

Abstract

Global Cities embody the tight link between capitalism and the patriarchy – as an Eden for economic development, and a Purgatory for low-income women burdened with care work. Androcentric urbanism has mainstreamed an urban model designed for capital accumulation and not for quotidian life, based on the pillars of Haussmanisation and the sexual division of labour. The resulting gentrified and functionalist metropolis undermines the Right to the City of that majority of citizens that by reason of gender, but also of class, race, age, and myriads other identities do not fit into the masculinised narrative of productivity underlying urban life.Paradoxically, Global Cities are praised as emblems of development and sustainability in the era of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, prompting a central question at the heart of urbanism: can Global Cities be sustainable if founded on capitalism and the patriarchy? Singapore illustrates this dilemma, in its status as a thriving financial and touristic city-state at the epicentre of Southeast Asia, showcasing high living standards in dense and mixed-use towns within a green, clean, and safe built environment. Yet beyond this prosperous façade rests a capitalist, patriarchal, and postcolonial semi-authoritarian government enshrining the middle-class heteronormative nuclear family as a national goal, at the expense of the Right to the City of low-income women facing unaffordable, eugenic, and depoliticised urban spaces. Feminist urbanisms, as the revolutionary alternative to capitalist and patriarchal cities, solves this paradox by embracing community and intersectional participation and politicisation, placing care at the centre of urban life.