A short monologue by Lilian Chee reflecting on Bukit Brown’s complex identity — simultaneously jungle, burial ground, cultural heritage site, and tourist attraction — and describing it as an example of the paradoxical blend of "urban nature" shaped by competing forces and infrastructure.
Well, I think Bukit Brown, as everyone knows, is probably a site where it's really hard to define, whether it's pure jungle or it's a burial ground or it's a cultural heritage site. And now it's become a tourist attraction, and it's all these places at once. And I think that it's really interesting because I think that's what the term, I think is a paradoxical term, urban and nature coming together. And perhaps the site itself is actually a product of urban nature, being somewhere that's like a pocket forest that's right in the middle of the city. It's cut through by major arterial roads, and now there's going to be a highway cutting across it. So all the debates that have been happening are actually, I think they do start to define in a little, with this complexity that.
The paradoxical term urban nature throws up. I think that the confusion that creates a space like Bukit Brown is interesting because it's about all these different confluent things, forces coming together, and that's how the world is, isn't it? It's never so clean and never so precise and perfect.
Day 1 - Policy Innovation for Urban Transitions | Future Cities Symposium & Exhibition 2025
