If you look at every city 50 years ago, you will see the "barren" look, lacking in skyscrapers and only shop-houses, except NY and Chicago.
Shop-houses were the architecture of the day and if you want anything newer, it would be Art Deco, like some of the older cinemas and Tiong Bahru.
Singapore did have a good number of good quality colonial buildings, not only those you now see around the Padang. The whole of Raffles Place and Collyer Quay, land side, were colonial buildings.
The first to go was the old Medical Hall, where Bank of China is today. Then sometime in the early rule of the PAP they pulled down everything reminding them of the British rule - including all the buildings around Raffles Place and Collyer Quay.
I can still remember the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, Maritime Building and Ocean Building and at Raffles Place, other than John Little and Robinson's Buildings, the Mercantile Building. The entire heritage was demolished in a surprisingly short time, with no room for contemplation, together with the Raffles Institution site which had survived more than a hundred years before that.
You can say that 50 years back most cities will look like that with some good quality colonial buildings and the rest were mainly shophouses. Shanghai too had its share of colonial buildings in those days fronting the Bund. They have the good sense to keep these until today, amidst the skyscrapers, giving the city a unique waterfront, especially imposing at night viewed from a cruise. Although Shanghai has overtaken NY as the city of skyscrapers, it maintains its rich cultural facade.
In contrast, Singapore is often called a cultural desert. Yes. A desert is often barren. For Singapore, we could have done more.
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Originally Posted by wikiphile
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