How did the "hawker center" in Singapore become a "landscape"

For many people, traveling abroad generally has two wishes: one is to taste the unique local food, and the other is to get as much value-for-money experience as possible. Singapore's "hawker center" not only realized these two wishes, but also revealed the experience of urban management for our reference.

Today's hawker center has become an indispensable "scene" in Singapore's food culture, which embodies a kind of urban order and is even listed as "one of the places that everyone must visit in his life 1000".

There have been cases of setting up stalls at will.

As early as the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Singapore was also faced with the troubles caused by vendors setting up stalls at will. In his memoirs, Lee Kuan Yew described it this way: "Thousands of people sell food on sidewalks and streets, completely ignoring traffic, hygiene and other issues. As a result, street garbage piled up, causing congestion, rotten food stinking, messy and filthy everywhere, and many corners of the city became slums. "

This is actually the result of the long-term "double no policy" adopted by the colonial authorities against street vendors during the colonial period, that is, it is illegal and not banned. This almost laissez-faire policy has also brought another headache to Singapore, that is, private parties extort protection fees.

They usually demarcate the site and force vendors to pay protection fees, otherwise they will make trouble and smash the booth, making it impossible for you to do business. Over time, this has become an important income of underworld gangs, and it has also become an important incentive for gangs to often fight for territory.

However, the newly independent Singapore government does not believe that the above problems can be eradicated simply by strengthening law enforcement. Lee Kuan Yew said frankly, "When we can provide many job opportunities, laws can be enforced and streets can be rectified."

Registered street hawker

1968, the Singapore government began to take action to register street vendors. In order to make hawkers "fixed", the government also launched a hawker relocation plan. Through the Housing Authority and the Urban Renewal Authority, hawker centers with complete water and electricity facilities, ventilation and sanitation facilities will be built, and stalls will be subletted to street hawkers at very favorable prices to attract them to settle in.

The relevant preferential packages provided by the government continued until 1990. Lee Kuan Yew said in his memoirs, "We issued a cooked food hawker license and moved hawkers from sidewalks and roads to nearby cooked food centers that were strictly built and equipped with water pipes, sewers and garbage disposal systems. By the 1980s, all the vendors were arranged. Many of them are first-class chefs and tourists come here. Several of them have become millionaires, driving Mercedes-Benz cars and hiring waiters. "

After all the hawkers were resettled, Singapore began to implement the booth top rent system, allowing those first-generation hawkers who obtained booths in the form of government subsidies to transfer their lease rights, and new tenants must pay rents to the government at market prices. In this way, hawkers have greater autonomy in their own stalls, and even get a sum of income when they close their business. The government will regularly open vacant booths to the public for bidding. Nationals who are interested in hawker business can get booths at hawker centers at market prices.

However, the later unified centralized management led to the neglect of some traditional markets. For example, Chinatown, once known as Singapore Chinatown, has lost its former elegance in the eyes of Singaporeans, and even made one or two generations lament the disappearance of collective memory and tradition. To this end, the Singapore government later took measures to set up food streets with fixed street stalls in Chinatown and other places, and allowed grassroots organizations and the Federation of Industry and Commerce to host night markets or new year markets in an attempt to get some vendors to return to the streets under orderly management.

Ensure that hawkers are licensed to set up stalls.

Singapore is the only country in the world where all street vendors have to get permission to set up their stalls. In addition to introducing hawker centers for food vendors, mobile hawker licenses are also issued, which are divided into five categories: craftsmen, newspapers, frozen desserts, mobile cars and others. The Singapore government implements an orderly and limited opening policy for mobile vendors, restricting them from operating in a certain time and place, and meeting certain health standards. Divide the urban area into "absolute forbidden area", "relative forbidden area" and "diversion area", and adopt strict management, control and standardization management strategies respectively, and control the mobile vendors according to the road section management standards.

Singapore has a relatively complete legal system, and there are more than 400 kinds of legislation on urban management alone, so that every job has laws to follow. Among them, the hawker center supervision law is the Public Environmental Hygiene (Food Hygiene) Ordinance formulated by the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, which is implemented by the National Environment Agency of Singapore, and the Public Health Ordinance has been formulated, which has innovated the management mode of "foul scoring system" and distributed food hygiene manuals to every vendor.

While accepting management and enjoying rights and obligations, many mobile vendors also attach great importance to safeguarding their own rights and interests.

Small traders in Singapore usually join corresponding associations and are protected by trade associations. Zhang Yingying, who runs a delicatessen, joined the Small Food Sellers Trade Association and paid the association a weekly membership fee of S $ 10 (about RMB 46 yuan), which she thought was very necessary. She said: "I don't have much money and I am very practical. If I encounter any trouble, it will be much easier for the guild to negotiate than for her to solve it herself. "

In Singapore, trade unions and guilds are very powerful and an important force to protect workers. Usually, trade union members report problems to trade unions or trade associations, and these two organizations report problems to government departments. This has formed a smooth way of communication between the people and the government. Zhang Yingying said that hawker centers have become a part of Singaporean culture. Each hawker center has the leaders of vendors to manage vendors in the same industry and solve temporary problems or contradictions. They will reflect the problems and difficulties encountered in the market to the guild and get solutions and help.

Hawker centers enter urban planning

The location of hawker centers in cities is also very particular, and they are generally built near townhouses (public houses) or traffic intersections. With the development of community business model, neighborhood centers that provide supporting services for residents gradually appear. The government also regards hawker centers as part of the neighborhood centers of new towns, which exist in the form of one of the design requirements for medium-term use or urban land redevelopment. In this way, the hawker center, the neighborhood commercial pedestrian street and the community Little Square together constitute an important social space.

Singapore's experience in urban planning and construction has been praised by all countries in the world. Its conceptual development plan provides strategic guidance for urban spatial layout and industrial development, and also creates a good business environment. Singapore's commercial network development planning is divided into five levels. In addition to the central business district, the regional centers, small centers, marginal centers and neighborhood centers distributed in various residential areas are all planned according to the distance from the city center. Commercial centers at all levels have a clear functional orientation, and there are detailed regulations on site selection, layout scale and what kind of goods to sell.

Singapore regards hawker centers as public infrastructure projects, and they are also included in government planning like hospitals and schools, with unified layout and location. An average of 5.6 square kilometers will set up a hawker center with a service radius of about 1.3 kilometers.

Singapore's new model, the ratio of neighborhood centers to apartments, the necessary internal functions, the combination of shops and the grade of goods have all been carefully planned. At present, the number of shops in the neighborhood is basically 1000- 1200, and the number of neighborhood centers is 6000-8000. Its main store combination is: ordinary daily necessities store, clinic, restaurant and hawker center. A typical neighborhood center includes: 35 shops, 2 restaurants, 1 supermarket, 1 vegetable market and 1-2 ATMs.

Liu Taige, the "father of Singapore planning", said: "Every different city should have different characteristics, and planning that respects the identity of different cities is a reasonable planning." Singapore has always adhered to this goal, always based on the national conditions, with the concept of "building a garden city", and strives to build an "excellent city for living, working and leisure".

As Lee Kuan Yew described, hawker centers have gradually developed into a major feature of Singapore's food culture. In the 1970s and 1980s, Singapore Tourism Board and TV stations introduced hawker centers to the world, which was highly praised by many travel writers all over the world. Many social surveys show that hawker food with affordable prices and diverse choices has formed a unique "eating out" culture for Singaporeans.

Never think that the hawker center is just a place for ordinary people to eat. In Singapore, people from the prime minister, politicians, rich people to ordinary people may be frequent visitors to hawker centers. Nowadays, hawker centers have become an ordinary lifestyle of Singaporeans, which makes many people no longer rely on the kitchen at home for three meals a day, and cooking has almost become the pure pleasure of home life. People eat, drink tea, read newspapers and chat in hawker centers. Some people just order a cup of coffee, blowing the wind, watching people come and go, watching birds peck. Or make an appointment with one or two friends, order a cup of coffee and kill the afternoon.