Lee was explaining why he has decided to overcome personal misgivings about gambling in order to back his son and current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's decision to scrap a four-decade- old ban on casinos in the city-state.

With China and India chipping away at Singapore's manufacturing and service businesses, the city-state can't remain a top draw in Asia for money and talent simply because it's ``a healthy and wholesome society, safe and secure for everyone,'' as the 81-year-old leader put it.

Lee's diagnosis is correct. Still, Singapore should concentrate on having casinos to fulfill a limited objective of attracting more tourists and creating more jobs. Any goal of creating ``urban buzz,'' which is the jargon often used in Singapore to describe what the city is lacking, is largely a serendipitous outcome. Even a government as efficient as Singapore's can't manufacture it.

Bangalore Benchmark

A build-and-they'll-come strategy doesn't guarantee urban vigor. It's hard to predict if the two casino resorts that Singapore plans to have -- along with a new, more colorful downtown -- will realize Lee's new vision of the city as ``an economically vibrant and an exciting city to visit with top-class symphony orchestras, concerts, dramas, plays, artists and singers and popular entertainment.''

Before one compares Singapore with its own chosen benchmarks for vitality -- New York, London and Paris -- it might pay to look closer home at a city like Bangalore, whose population of 5.7 million is similar to Singapore's 4.2 million.

While there are many things Singapore can teach Bangalore, what it can learn from the Indian city is that a lively urban landscape need not be a planned outcome.

Bangalore, which is often referred to as India's Silicon Valley, doesn't have a fraction of Singapore's amenities. Its airport is a mess; roads often exist only to join one pothole with another; water is scarce; only three-fifths of the city's garbage gets cleared; and computer-software companies keep enough fuel handy to run backup generators in case power goes out for a few days.

Bangalore's Buzz

And yet, Bangalore is buzzing. Between April and December 2004, hotels in the city charged an average $199 a night, more than double Singapore's average room rate of $71 in the same period and a whopping 80 percent increase from a year earlier.

It's true that Bangalore has a crunch of hotel rooms, though shopping malls, art galleries, lounge bars and pubs also are booming. Bangalore has displaced the Taj Mahal from the itineraries of visiting dignitaries. It's also emerging as a hub for popular culture, having served as host for rock stars like Elton John, Sting, Bryan Adams, Mark Knofler and Roger Waters during the last few years.

It's all being made possible by the thousands of new jobs that are being created every month. Motorola Inc, which last year closed its semiconductor design units in Singapore and Taiwan and moved them to China and India, has 2000 researchers in Bangalore, a number it wants to boost by a quarter each year, Indian newspaper Hindu Business Line reported this month, citing the company's chief technology officer, Padmasree Warrior.

The ``sudden'' buzz in Bangalore is actually just a new chapter in a 100-year-old saga. No amount of planning could have telescoped the process into 10 years.

This isn't to say the government has no role to play. Deutsche Bank economist Sanjeev Sanyal recommends a change in Singapore's trust laws because philanthropic institutions ``play a very important role in cities like London and New York by funding a variety of activities such as art, architecture, environmental protection, esoteric research, and so on.''

Buzz is too nebulous to plan for. Not every city that allows chewing gum -- or casinos -- is a fun place.

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