Singapore's population

My first concrete definition of the word “sustainability” came from my lectures in Evironmental Economics. The idea is quite neat: you get the golden eggs without killing the goose. The problem is that it takes a certain amount of self-restraint on our ever-unsatiated grubby fingers to be a bit patient for the goose to do its thing.
Some time back, the news was that the MND minister said Singapore was aiming and preparing for a populations of 6.5 million. That certainly set a lot of locals (and some foreign student friends of mine) talking. 6.5 million?? Are they nuts?? And a couple of days later the great MM Lee said it was nuts: he said 5.5 million would already be a squeeze.
These couple of years I’ve often been lamenting to friends: ten years ago, shopping malls in big town centres were quite comfortable hang-outs in weekends. Nowadays, even places like Choa Chu Kang Lot 1 or Sun Plaza are absolutely overflowing on weekDAYS… There has been a housing crunch in university hostels, leading to widespread unhappiness: foreign students think locals should be given lower priority, locals hate having foreign students coming in to compete with them for resources in their own homeland, and both wonder why NUS keeps increasing its student intake if it knows lecture slots, teaching staff and living space is cramped. Is it for the money?
On the whole, Singapore’s tiny living space has a limit to how much you can cram in under the banner of economic growth. Beyond that, leaders should start considering if they’re killing the economic geese.

Cheers,
Kwek