SINGAPORE: A tourist’s glowing review of Singapore has drawn attention online after he praised the city-state for being unexpectedly clean, relaxed, and spacious, especially when compared with Chicago, the most recent city he lived in.
“I visited recently, [and] almost instantly it became starkly apparent to me how damn clean Singapore is,” he wrote in a post on the r/askSingapore forum on Tuesday (Jan 27). “Not only that, but the overall vibe felt insanely relaxed compared to what I’m used to.”
The tourist went on to say that, compared with Chicago, roads in Singapore appeared far more orderly, with both drivers and pedestrians showing greater consideration for one another.
“[There’s] way less honking, if any at all; drivers are using turn signals and not flying all over the place, pedestrians are more respectful of each other, and people seem friendlier and less aggressive,” he explained.
By comparison, he said that in Chicago, honking is used for almost everything. “Even if they’re just annoyed to be sitting in traffic, they sometimes will lay on their horn to express that,” he wrote. “Or if one person holds up other drivers, seemingly everyone behind them will lay on their horn and oftentimes yell at them when going past.”
Moreover, despite having heard from others that Singapore is “really dense,” the tourist said his experience did not match that perception.
“It didn’t feel that dense to me at all,” he said. “If anything, it felt very spacious and green, and like you had tons of breathing room everywhere.”
“Compared to Singapore, Chicago feels massive, and everything is way closer together. Chicago feels about 4-5x bigger and denser than Singapore in just about every way, and like there’s much less room to breathe.”
Completely in awe of the city-state, he asked local users, “How does Singapore achieve this? How is Singapore so ridiculously clean, relaxed, and spacious? I thought it was lovely.”
“Our urban planning is frankly some of the best and most detailed in the world.”
In the comments, many pointed out that Singapore’s appeal has a lot to do with how well the country has handled modern urban planning over the years.
One user explained, “Singapore does modern urban planning very well. For example, take zoning. It is a very simple concept to allow/disallow/require certain structures to be built in certain places. “
“When a set of sensible zoning policies is applied consistently over decades, the urban landscape will gradually become fairly well-ordered and (hopefully) livable.”
Another remarked, “Our urban planning is frankly some of the best and most detailed in the world.”
Regarding the city’s cleanliness, many attributed it to the dedicated team of cleaners working quietly behind the scenes
One said, “If you look close enough, you’ll notice we have lots of workers cleaning up after all of us.”
Another commenter echoed this view, saying they were “glad the visitor enjoyed” Singapore but stressed that much of the city’s cleanliness comes from people who are “paid to clean the streets” and maintain public areas.
As for why the city feels less ‘dense,’ one commenter explained that it’s largely due to the relatively low level of road congestion.
They added, “This is deliberate. It’s expensive to own a car here, not because car sticker prices are high, but because owning and operating a car requires a Certificate of Entitlement (COE) that on average costs S$100k SGD per vehicle… and it needs to be renewed every 10 years.”
In other news, a Singaporean employee took to social media to vent about a company intern, who reportedly complains frequently, shows little initiative on tasks, and appears disengaged from both work and the office environment.
In a post on the r/nus subreddit, the employee said the intern constantly grumbles about being “bored in the office” despite having been given reading materials and asked to learn the company’s drawing software.
