Singapore, a country where locals are renowned for their huge appetites, and often described as a food paradise. This is emphasized with the ever present aroma of cooked food that sets mouths watering, through the various eating spots situated throughout the heartland, such as hawker centres, kopitiams, eating houses, single shop eating spots, fast food chains, food courts, restaurants and for the upper classes, fine dining.

The roots of this massive food complex of an island city first started out in Singapore during the 1950s and 1960s, when numerous hawker stalls lined the streets, providing inexpensive and convenient food. It was such a good trade then that at the peak of the business, there were more than 24,000 hawkers all over the island.

However, as these street hawkers operated in poor sanitary conditions, resulting in food contamination and pollution, endangering the health of citizens and the environment, the government decided to relocate them to hawker centres. Hawker centres were basically places with better cooking and sanitation facilities, while being a convenient eating place for the residents.

By 1986, all the street hawkers were no longer on the streets, but in stalls in the hawker centres, and to date, there are more than 140 hawker/market centres, more than 17,300 occupied stalls, and of these about 7,000 are cooked food stalls. 

But a hawker centre is more than some void-deck food court that provides convenient and cheap food. It is a place of social gathering for the old uncles who sit around drinking coffee and chatting; It is a place of camaraderie as fellows gather together to watch football and cheer for their teams; It is a place that brings together the best in local food and atmosphere. And it is unknown as to how it has happened, but over the years the hawker centres have become a part of Singapore's Identity, perhaps even a better symbol than the Merlion.

Despite hawker centres having become such an integral part of an average Singaporean's life, air-conditioned food courts such as Koufu and Kopitiam are increasing all over Singapore in place of the more traditional hawker centres. In a way, globalisation, with the need to cater for the wants and needs of tourists and foreigners, has called for the increased comfort of air-condition food courts, notwithstanding the colder 'city' atmosphere that comes with it, over the friendlier and community bonding environment of the hawker centres.

 Although it is unlikely that hawker centres will be totally wiped out and replaced by these air-conditioned comfort houses, the increasing replacement of hawker centres and resulting loss food heritage and community spirit will be a devastating blow to our Singaporean Identity. One would do well to see (or read) that food bloggers in Singapore, such as Dr Leslie Tay in ieatishootipost, more often than not post about hawker stalls, though there are the occasional comments about a some high-class fine dining or fast food chain.

One weekly routine of my life used to be to visit the hawker centre at Commonwealth Avenue Blk 40A for lunch on Sundays. The stalls here have often been featured in the popular food blogs, and some of the more famous ones are Xin Ji Chicken Rice, Queenstown Poh Piah and its famous poh piah skin making stall on level 2, ShangHai Tim Sum, a traditional you tiao making stall, the list goes on. Sadly, the hawker centre, along with 3 other HDB flats, was torn down in February 2011 in the name of urban renewal, where by this prime spot would be used for residential development.

Want to know how old this Queenstown area is? Check out this song by Liang Wenfu titled Singapore Pie. The '70s cinema in his song possibly refers to the current converted Church of Our Saviour at Margaret Drive, Queenstown.

In a lifestyle survey carried out by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). Food ranked second as what the 65.3% of the surveyed Singaporean miss most about Singapore, which shows the importance of food in our lives. Housing estates are the top places in Singapore where people experience their fondest memories, and of these neighbourhood estates, 81.5% feel that the amenities, i.e. the hawker centres, are the most important, with 96.6% agreeing that hawker centres should be maintained as one of the key amenities in the housing estates. From this, one can clearly see that hawker centres are a key part of "Singaporeaness", and to tear down hawker centres would be a definite loss in our Singaporean identity.

So what are the current 'solutions' set in place for the affected stallholders?

• Eligible shop tenants will be given an ex-gratia payment of $60,000 per tenancy.

• Singaporean small and medium enterprises shop tenants will be granted a relocation assistance benefit of $30,000 per tenancy if alternative premises to continue their business are found before the clearance deadline.

• All shop tenants will be given a 10% rental discount on their successful bid for other HDB rental shops or when they are assigned HDB rental shops

• For stallholders who wish to quit the trade, an ex-gratia payment of $23,000 per tenant will be offered to first-generation stallholders (of which the few stallholders still present are steadily decreasing)

Other than grants, the National Environment Agency (NEA) may build a replacement hawker centre to continue to serve the residents, such as at Woodlands Town, and the hawker stallholders may choose to move to a new stall at the replacement centre instead. 

Although the government may grant the stallholders financially, the sentimental value of these hawker centres to the residents will still be lost. As some of these residents have grown up frequenting these hawker centres, the loss of their common space would be a further blow to their Singaporean Identity.

In addition, the stallholders themselves are conflicted in their next move. Speaking in Mandarin, Madam Tan said: "It would be hard to relocate to another place since in other places, the rental and bills would definitely increase a lot." While the government tries to tackle this monetary problem with their ex-gratia payments, it is hard to conclude if the extra money is enough to help the hawkers tide over the increase in financial input over the following years.  However, for many of these stallholders, some of which are second generation stallholders, they would still continue their food trade as without this daily work activity, they would be at a loss of what to do. While the increased payment may make the going get harder, but our lovable hawkers are fully determined to continue their service.

The rojak names present all over Singapore is a clear sign of the ongoing relocation of stalls overtime.

Queenstown Popiah at Yu Hua Food and Market Centre, Jurong East

Tiong Bahru Chwee Kueh at Blk 505, Jurong West

Macpherson BBQ Fish at Blk 505, Jurong West

In order to preserve our sentimental value and place of our dearest memories, I wish to advocate for hawker centres to be granted special conservation status.

Firstly, what does this conservation status imply? According to A love of labour for conservation in Skyline, before a building achieves heritage status, it has to undergo a conservation study first, which entails evaluating a building's architectural merit and rarity, historical significance, contribution to the environment, identity and economic impact. Aside from the architectural design, a hawker centre has 50 years of significance history as stated in the beginning, contributes food and sociality to the environment, is a part of Singapore's food identity, and its economic impact is defined by its trade.

People form attachments to hawker centres because of the community that gathers in the name of food, which forms bonds and treasured memories. I feel that as a community, hawker centres are already high on our list of values in Singapore, as can be seen from the URA Lifestyle Survey, and as for whether we can afford to keep at least something of our treasured past, I say definitely.

Understandably, Singapore depends much on our development as a nation, and we must balance conservation of old buildings with development into a new technological age. As the social gathering of community to enjoy a meal, which of course includes the stallholders themselves, is one of the main aspect of the hawker centre, and not the physical structure itself, therefore the conservation I am referring to is of the activity that is carried out in that area.

The increased sanitation facilities and hygiene that comes with upgraded hawker centres is undeniably important to Singapore's economic development. Keeping Singapore's land demands in mind, it is hard to keep the normal large spaced hawker centres. While hawker centres may have to increase in height to compensate for increasing scarce lands, this does not mean that they should be removed without a trace.

Thus this conservation status awarded to hawker centres will protect the land that the hawker centre once stood on. Whatever tearing down of buildings or renovation may take place, a hawker centre will eventually stand again on that piece of land, continuing to serve the community. The previous stallholders in that hawker centre should be given priority and a reserved stall to return if they wish to.

In addition, to allow residents and other locals who frequent the area to continue to eat at their favorite stall, a temporary centre should be set up near the community, and stalls be allowed to relocated to the temporary site, so that the locals would still be able to catch up with their friends and enjoy their meals at the same time.

This conservation of hawker activity serves to allow the community spirit fostered by the hawker centres to remain. After the renovation is complete, the community bonds and the familiarity of activities will continue. In addition, the rental of the stalls in the same region should not change, and the hawkers can resume paying the more affordable rents. Their regular customers can also continue to purchase their favorite food.

Perhaps, one unfavorable consequence of the conservation status is that it restricts other buildings of other trades to be built on that particular spot. This may slow down the implementation of the developmental plans of Singapore as urban renewal will have to factorize in the location of hawker centres. This will restrict them in doing a total makeover of the area, such as perhaps changing the residential area into a tourism district, as the out-of-place hawker centre may not suit the new setting.

However, I believe that maintaining the spirit of hawker centres while still allowing infrastructural development is a way to go for the government to continue to facilitate globalization while still maintaining the social contract for the citizens to be happy and contented, with the ever traditional, ever satisfactory, and ever 'Singaporean' hawker centres.