Simone Shu-Yeng Chung is Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore. She holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and a M.Phil. in Screen Media and Cultures from the University of Cambridge and has practiced as an architect in the UK.|Mike Douglass is Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning, University of Hawaii. At the National University of Singapore (2012-2018), he was a Professor at the Asia Research Institute. His research includes globalization and the city, progressive cities, creative communities, and environmental disasters.

The virtue of Hard State, Soft City lies in provoking challenging questions to the reader. Do humans live by bread alone?, Susan S. Fainstein, Pacific Affairs, Volume 96, no. 1 (March 2023).

• Introduction: The Master Narrative and the Lived City-Half a Century of Imagining Singapore,Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass, Part I (De)-Constructing Master Narratives of the City, 1. Singapore Songlines Revisited: The World Class Complex and the Multiple Deaths of Context,Mark R. Frost, 2. On the Banning of a Film: Tan Pin Pin's To Singapore, with Love,Olivia Khoo, 3. The City State of Singapore's Territorial and Social Management Dilemmas: Reminiscing about Classical Athens,Rodolphe De Koninck, Part II The Arts as Prisms of the Urban Imaginative, 4. The Address of Art and the Scale of Other Places,Weng Choy Lee, 5. Forming Cityscapes: Small Interventions and Appropriations in the City,Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo, 6. The Sinophone as Lyrical Aesthetics Redefined: In the Case of Contemporary Singapore Chinese Language Poetics, Chow Teck Seng, 7. Noisy People, Noisy Places: Trouble and Meaning in Singapore,Steve Ferzacca, Part III The City Possible in Action, 8. Place Management/Making: The Policy and Practice of Arts-Centred Spatial Interventions in Singapore,Hoe Su Fern, 9. Conviviality in Clementi: The Flowering of a Local Social Housing Community,Goh Wei Leong, 10. Mediating Community in Bukit Brown,Natalie Pang and Liew Kai Khiun, 11. Collaborative Imaginaries: Social Experiments, Free Schools and Counterpublics in Singapore,Huiying Ng, 12. The Invisible Electorate: Political Campaign Participation as the Production of an Alternative National Space,Emily Chua Hui Ching,Conclusion,Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass, Index.