Topic: Orchard Road facelift.

After reading the article and its comments, I agreed with the opinion that the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) should not invest S$40 m on enhancing the face of Orchard. As far as I am concerned, firstly, the purpose of enhancing the face has not been achieved; the changes are not conspicuous. Secondly, the constructing facilities contributed to the flipping down of economy in Orchard.

First of all, the purpose of enhancing the face has not been achieved. STB spent lots of money on constructing the glass panels. But the glass panels are not noticeable because of their position. Meanwhile, some pedestrians complain about the danger caused by the glass panel. Joyce Tan, who is a teacher, said: “the glass panels are impractical, especially at night, when people may get drunk and smash it, or into it. The money is not well spent on the glass.” The purpose of constructing the glass panel is to make Orchard be more beautiful so as to attract more tourists. But the situation now is, the glass panel is not noticeable and is being a subtle danger to pedestrians. Therefore STB should not spend so much money on it.

Then, the constructing facilities contributed to the flipping down of economy in Orchard. Nowadays, the economy in all the countries are flipping down, Singapore as well. The STB, which is one of the government departments, is trying to beautify the most famous shopping junction orchard road in order to get more and more tourists hence get more income. But unfortunately, the effects of constructions are not as good as the initial proposal. For hawkers, the places they standing at will not be seen by the pedestrians at the opposite side of the road. This resulted in far fewer people come to buy their things. For shops, the new constructing buildings blocked the road and led to the shops. Customers need to walk a long way to get the shop, and thus the number of buyers of the shop fell down rapidly. For pedestrians, the dust made by the constructing process forced them to swathe there nostril with their clothes tightly. It is a tremendous influence to the mood of the pedestrians. An Australian named Mrs. Jackie Stevens, 30, said: “we thought Orchard Road would be prettier and nicer, because we saw it in the travel books. I did not know there was going so much noise and construction.” Therefore we can see the makeover did not achieve the purpose of developing economy, on the other hand, it contributed to the flipping down of Singapore economy. Hence STB should not throw so much money into the useless constructions.

However, we should not be only focusing on the faultiness of the makeover. Makeover will surely be good to the development of Singapore economy as well as its service industry. The concept of this makeover that should be changed is the ways to make over.

In one word, the construction has not achieved its goals of attracting tourists and developing Singapore economy. So STB should not put so much money in making over.