

This transformation symbolizes the city-state's efforts to remake itself for the 21st century.Stephen Dobbs sets out the history of this waterway, and of the people who made it their home and workplace. The river has been transformed over the last 25 years from a polluted industrial sewer choked with traffic to a clean, placid waterway that forms the centrepiece of Singapore's financial, civic and entertainment districts.

For most of its modern history, to speak of Singapore was to speak of the Singapore River, physical centre of the city and site of the greater part of the colony's entrepot trade.
