Singapore Singles Scene – the Bridge of Love
As part of the government effort to ensure survival of the species, or at least of the well-educated Chinese Singaporean portion of it, the National Institute of Education was relocated to Nanyang Technological University 13 years ago. A huge new campus was built for NIE, located in an old durian orchard just across the street from the vast NTU School of Engineering. The student body at NTU is largely male; that of NIE largely female. To ensure cross-fertilization, the street was blocked off and the two campuses were connected by a footbridge. We call it the Bridge of Love:
To ensure that people actually cross the bridge, all major services were located on the left, in Engineering: banks, convenience stores, many different restaurants, with air conditioning. The NIE side boasts only an open-air canteen and a stationery shop. So plenty of traffic as the NIE folks go to eat or bank at NTU.
But has it worked? How many marriages (and dearer to the government’s heart, children) have resulted from this architectural nudging? Anecdotal evidence suggests not many, and the reasons are legion. 1) Singaporean males are afraid of really bright well-educated females; 2) those who aren’t tend to marry other engineers, computer people or accountants; 3) it’s just not fun being a mother in Singapore – as in other countries we could mention, it’s too damn hard to find good child care. The teachers I know are married to other teachers, or to civil servants, often in the Ministry of Education. But then my sample is pretty small.