SINGAPORE-Orchard Road is Singapore's most famous shopping avenue.
For a nation whose favorite pastime is shopping, that is a serious qualification. Strolling down the avenue, one finds expensive hotels, upscale department stores, haute couture fashion boutiques, windows displaying the latest in consumer electronics and trendy coffee shops.
In many ways, though, Orchard Road is not that different from the rest of the city. The streets are clean, most of the high-rise buildings are newly built, and people look prosperous.
The one impression that sticks with foreign visitors is that Singapore is rich, very rich. Indeed, in many ways it seems more advanced than most countries in the West, including the United States.
What is behind Singapore's success?
Singapore and Miami have similar roles in their respective regions.
Both cities have climbed to prominence in the past few decades and they have comparable geographic positions in the region.
They symbolize modernity and serve as models for development. The way Indonesians or Malaysians view Singapore and try to emulate its success is not too different from the way that Venezuelans or Peruvians look at Miami. Private capital from the region converges to find profitable, secure, and discrete investment in both cities.
The regional elites express their status through extravagant shopping trips to these cities. Most important, Singapore and Miami each have multi-ethnic populations from the region and each city symbolizes a regional success story.
Notwithstanding the partially Western appearance of these cities, Asians - Chinese, Malaysians, Indians - made Singapore just as much as Latin Americans made Miami.
But there are important differences between the two cities, as well.
First, unlike Miami, Singapore is a city-state.
This term is sometimes used in a casual way to refer to a whole cohort of aspiring world cities, but that is a mistake. In fact, of all prominent world cities, Singapore is probably the only true city-state.
This conglomeration of 4 million people on a small island off the southern tip of Malaysia is at once a city and a sovereign state.
The urban government and the national government are one and the same, dealing with everything from national defense to urban planning. Singapore's competitiveness as a world city is, in large measure, that country's first national priority. And Singapore's success is financed with the kinds of public funds that Miami could only dream about.
Another difference is the heavy involvement of the state government in Singapore's economy. It is a far cry from the laissez-faire economy of Miami and the United States. It is a peculiar mix of socialism and capitalism, and one that has paid huge dividends since the country's independence from Malaysia in 1965.
The Singapore state is also strongly involved in education - traditionally the second-largest government expenditure after defense - and its policies are impressively forward-looking, particularly in its support of information technologies and engineering.
The project "ONE" (One Network for Everyone) is intended to hook up every single household in Singapore to the Internet. For a small fee, the state will provide all imaginable software that can be downloaded into every living room in Singapore.
Much of Singapore's success is attributed to "social engineering."
The government plans and controls just about everything. The workforce is highly trained and has a work ethic far beyond what we are used to in Miami.
Wages are relatively low and taxes are high. Some 85 percent of all housing is public and almost all education is public. Public transportation is excellent.
To buy a car, on the other hand, one has to get in line for a special permit and the wait can take years. Luxury durables are highly taxed: a mid-class Mercedes costs close to $100,000.
Even social behaviors are regulated and monitored: jaywalking, spitting, and chewing gum in public are among a wide range of misdemeanors and legislation is strictly enforced.
Corporal punishment - particularly, caning - is common and crimes such as drug smuggling are deterred with the death penalty.
As a result of all this, Singapore feels oppressively orderly and sterile. The state's single-minded focus on progress and economic growth is pervasive, almost totalitarian. The price for progress is the lack of freedom and lack of choices for its residents.
In Singapore, you have to walk the line. Whether this is worth it is an impossible question to answer without invoking ideological debate.
The difference with Miami, to be sure, is enormous. Seen from Singapore, some of Miami's shortcomings are painfully evident. But during my stay in Singapore, and while observing the "politics of control," Miami's freedom, creative drive, and gritty character became increasingly appealing. You can't have it all.
Jan Nijman is professor of Geography and Regional Studies at the University of Miami.