Airports on the move? The policy mobilities of Singapore Changi Airport at home and abroad

Abstract

Understanding airports as both objects and agents of policymaking, this paper critically examines the policy mobilities of Singapore Changi Airport by exploring its constructions, travels, and consumptions as a ‘model airport’ within and beyond Singapore. The argument presented is twofold. First, a historical approach to policy mobility usefully highlights how contemporary policy flows cannot be understood in isolation from earlier historical travels or reduced to movements triggered primarily by processes of urban neoliberalism. Second, such sensibilities are especially vital when approaching Asian cities where modes of regulation are not straightforwardly neoliberal, but are also underpinned by diverse nationalist imperatives that filter into policymaking motivations. This paper also emphasises the complex path-dependent relationship shared by travelling models and their cities of origin, illustrating how such territorial linkages function to both enable and constrain policy travels, but are nevertheless difficult to detach from travelling models.