My comments point at one time at double figure and then it went south to zero now, but it probably can be negative soon, c'est la vie.
The place that is now Singapore had less than 1,000 people when Raffles got there. So what happened?
There’s lots of places with strategic locations or natural resources or such advantages. The U.S. has the largest contiguous stretch of fertile land connected to one of the largest navigable river systems in the world. But the north american indians did essentially nothing with it. It’s not easy to make a modern civilization out of even a favorable geographical situation.
The British took over Malaya from Dutch with minimum effort, by exchanging some of their Indonesia colonies after an agreement with another colonial power. Fun facts, that's how Batam Islands got under Indonesia.
The first thing they did was to create Strait Settlements with strategic and rich Malayan States including Penang, Malacca and Singapore, definitely any of these was not an obscure fishing village [1]. These are the major trading ports for Asian major empires including Langkasuka, Srivijaya, Majapahit, Chola, Malaccan Sultanate, etc.
[1] Straits Settlements:
It's mainly its strategic location and it's always been the the busiest maritime route chokepoint since recorded history between east and west, specifically between India and China two of the most populous nations in the world.
It sit right at the tip of the Strait of Malacca, the busiest and the longest strait in the world. This one famous quote by a 16th CE Portuguese explorer Tomé Pires, who declared: "Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice".
Secondly is the people, and the third is the governance policy. Essentially, you must have be a bone-headed to screw up Singapore, like the one who can bankrupt a central bank.
My original top most comment on the great lie of Singapore was just an obscure fishing village during the early colonial time but it's has already downvoted to oblivion, you can check them out if you want.