“The Planners” is a poem written by Singaporean-Australian poet Boey Kim Cheng that first appeared in his collection Another Place. Boey has won the National Arts Council's Young Artist Award and his poems have been included in the O-level and A-level syllabi in Singapore. From 2013 to 2018, except for 2016, the poem was part of the syllabus for the international O-level Literature in English and tested in IGCSE exams. Born and raised in Singapore—one of the most advanced and modern cities—Boey addresses urban developments and their consequences.
From the late 20th century onwards, the geography and urban landscape of Singapore changed rapidly transforming it into a high-tech city. Though Singapore is not mentioned as the city in question, Boey draws parallels between them to delve into the cost of urbanization. In the poem, the speaker mentions the planners as a collective initiating urban change in the once natural site with much authenticity. In an effort to ensure efficiency and convenience, the planners are ridding the city of the natural world and heritage it had in the past. He compares dentistry with urban planning in how both yearn for order, arrangement, alignment, and perfection. Even though the goal is to reach utopia, the speaker highlights that it will be more of the opposite in the near future.
The speaker points out that more planning degrades human connection since urban architecture and order foster isolation and social alienation. The poem is written in free verse with three stanzas that have no consistent meter or rhyme scheme. The structure aims to be ironic to the themes in the poem which involve the orderliness and perfection that the speaker detests.
