{"id":71925,"date":"2026-07-27T03:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T19:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=71925"},"modified":"2026-07-27T03:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T19:38:13","slug":"singapore-is-trying-to-bring-orchard-road-back-to-life-but-weve-forgotten-what-made-it-work-in-the-first-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=71925","title":{"rendered":"Singapore Is Trying To Bring Orchard Road Back To Life \u2014 But We’ve Forgotten What Made It Work In The First Place"},"content":{"rendered":"


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As an older Singaporean, my initial response to turning Orchard into a live-work-play area was: are you joking?<\/em><\/h2>\n

Personally, I find it a bit irritating because I recall a time when Orchard Road was <\/em>a vibrant live-work-play area in Singapore. Back then unique subcultures found a place along the retail corridor, and Orchard Road resembled what Bugis \/ Midtown is like today.<\/p>\n

An Orchard Road scene that attracted young and old? Check. A time when people saw it as a place to really hang out with friends, or express themselves? Check. A time when it was as much about social events as it was about shopping? Most definitely. And as I recall, we made extensive efforts to stomp it all out.<\/em><\/p>\n

Consider the now demolished Ming Arcade. Today, most people who remember it at all will remember a run-down building with a KTV, or perhaps associate it with cheap beer buckets and chicken wings. But in the 1980s, Ming Arcade housed Rainbow Lounge, which was formative to Singapore\u2019s early music scene. Local bands such as The Quests and Tokyo Square performed there, not because URA designated the area as an arts precinct, but because the conditions were right for such venues to take root.<\/p>\n

Ming Arcade definitely wasn\u2019t celebrated for this. It had a reputation for being rowdy, noisy, and attracting an unruly crowd (because a lot of the men kept long hair. I kid you not, ask your parents or grandparents). Ming Arcade was often targeted by the police and authorities.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, Orchard Road also became home to another phenomenon: the <\/strong>Centrepoint Kids<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hundreds of teenagers used to gather around Centrepoint, Far East Plaza and Daimaru. They came to meet friends, browse record stores, watch breakdancers, and just hang out together.<\/p>\n

Much like Ming Arcade, they weren\u2019t embraced. I recall multiple news reports (though you\u2019ll likely have to search NLB archives<\/a> to find them now) that portrayed them as a social nuisance. Shopkeepers complained they scared away customers. Security guards regularly chased them off.<\/p>\n

Despite the name, they weren\u2019t confined to Centrepoint. These youths were part of a developing subculture in the Orchard area, which was actively discouraged. So it\u2019s ironic that, decades after they\u2019re gone, we see efforts like *Scape trying to lure back youth into the shopping district.<\/p>\n

This was also around the time when the Christmas Lights along Orchard started to become a big event. While it\u2019s still featured today, it was almost an annual pilgrimage for some back then. Couples came for dates, friends met to soak in the atmosphere, and families would walk down the whole street.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My point here isn\u2019t nostalgia. There was <\/em>a time when people went to Orchard not to buy something but to hang out and socialise. Now, after sterilising it to make it an almost purely commercial zone, there are top-down efforts to bring it back.<\/p>\n

Many of the proposals to do this seem to focus on <\/strong>refreshing old malls<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Redeveloping ageing properties, introducing more mixed-use developments and improving public spaces are all sensible ideas. I agree that most ageing malls today are due a makeover, becoming a place to experience <\/em>rather than simply shop. Amidst all of this, I can\u2019t help but feel we\u2019re overlooking the obvious.<\/p>\n

Orchard Road once possessed many of the qualities we\u2019re now trying to engineer back into it. <\/em>And perhaps it\u2019s time to go back and identify what it had, prior to becoming a more sterile (yet slick looking) retail district.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not because we should recreate the Orchard Road of the 1980s, but because knowing the cultural and economic conditions that once made Orchard Road feel alive, we might have a stronger start in its rejuvenation.<\/p>\n

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First, Orchard Road used to have better retail diversity.<\/h2>\n

An example is the now demolished Tanglin Shopping Centre, which housed a mix of antique dealers, specialist retailers, family-run restaurants \u2013 and at some parts of its history there wasn\u2019t even a single anchor tenant \u2013 before it was demolished in December 2024.<\/p>\n

That kind of commercial diversity attracts a wide range of people into the area, but unfortunately it\u2019s hard to sustain this type of retail business model today. Most of the major malls along Orchard Road are now owned or managed by REITs and large developers. That\u2019s not inherently a bad thing: they\u2019ve professionalised mall management.<\/p>\n

The challenge is that those same entities can also make Orchard Road feel stiflingly standardised. If every mall uses the same formula of international brands and familiar chains, then Orchard Road will remain a slick-looking gallery for tourists.<\/p>\n

To some extent there is an awareness of this, with pop-up stores allowing for newer players with smaller budgets to make their presence felt along the shopping belt. Orchard also has existing strata malls (Lucky Plaza, Far East Plaza, Far East Shopping Centre, and Orchard Plaza) and spaces like *Scape. The question is whether we\u2019re willing to embrace commercial inefficiencies to enable small or niche businesses to sprout there and thrive.<\/p>\n

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More from Stacked<\/p>\n

Living in the Central Business District (CBD) may be convenient for some professionals and executives, but I think a typical\u2026<\/p>\n

\n Ryan J. Ong<\/span> \u00b7
\n 21 Jul 2026<\/span> \u00b7
\n 0 comments<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Perhaps we might go so far as to provide support or incentives for select strata-titled malls, to give them a facelift and support the niche businesses they carry (not shady massage parlours and the like obviously, but the family-owned eateries, antique stores, and niche hobby shops).<\/p>\n

If these strata malls are demolished, it\u2019s unlikely that expensive new modern malls can attract the same kind of small businesses.<\/p>\n

Second, Orchard needs more businesses that give people reason to linger<\/h2>\n

How about we start with putting some benches back, especially in the malls here? If we want people to hang out, especially retirees and teenagers, we can\u2019t expect them to keep buying $7.60 lattes just to sit down and talk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That aside, the biggest challenge with Orchard Road is getting people to linger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ironically, *Scape already demonstrates<\/a> many of the ideas we\u2019re trying to encourage across Orchard Road. Its management deliberately provides free seating and gathering spaces. It encourages youth-led communities, and even instructs security officers to adopt a lighter touch. Yet from the linked article, we can see it\u2019s still a major challenge, partly due to the retail and restaurant mix as mentioned above.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As an aside, the decline of cinema has really made things harder. Movies were once a reason for friends to gather for longer periods, both before and after showings. At this point, art studios, escape rooms, cooking classes, board game caf\u00e9s, and live music spaces may have to be deliberately incentivised.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to be a long, slow process, and highly dependent on how much each industry player wants to co-operate and contribute. It\u2019s also much tougher now that land values along Orchard Road are so high. It\u2019s not like Joo Chiat or Tiong Bahru, where undervalued plots or properties allowed independent businesses, artists and caf\u00e9s to transform the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But if we do make it, perhaps we\u2019ll also remember the mistake of stomping it out to begin with, and not repeat that.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile in other property news\u2026<\/h2>\n