Terence Chong, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies here, said the results prompted Singapore’s leaders to reconsider their institutional animosity toward grass-roots activism. “Since the general elections, the government has been feeling its way,” he said. “They want to be seen as engaging civil society groups, but they also fear being seen as weak and bowing to public pressure.”

The wary dance between the government and civic activists has been on full display at Bukit Brown, a sprawling public cemetery that would be bisected by the highway, and later sprinkled with new housing.

Having persuaded the government last year to convert an abandoned rail line into a 25-mile-long “green corridor,” preservation groups and environmentalists argue that Bukit Brown — once the final resting place for Singapore’s most illustrious citizens and one of the last of the island’s traditional burial grounds — should be preserved as a nature reserve where people can connect to the past. They have organized petition drives and walking tours that have so far drawn more than 3,000 people.

On a recent Sunday, Beng Tang, 40, a schoolteacher, joined one of the tours with his parents, who were looking for a relative’s grave but also reveling in the overgrown vegetation and bird life that has flourished since burials ended in the early 1970s. Gesturing to his parents, Mr. Tang said that the older generation of Singaporeans was reluctant to stand up to the government but that he and his peers were increasingly willing to lobby for things they hold dear.

“If we make enough noise, maybe the government will change its mind,” he said.

Gay-rights advocates are embracing a bolder approach in their battle against discrimination, which they say is abetted by a law that bans sexual activity between men — even if it is seldom enforced. On June 30, they expect thousands to show up in Hong Lim Park for an event billed as Pink Dot.

Participants are being encouraged to wear pink and converge at dusk to form a large fuchsia human circle that will be illuminated from above. The first Pink Dot event in 2009 drew more than 1,000 people; last year attendance surpassed 10,000.

In a sign of lingering skittishness, organizers have been careful not to call the event a protest. They have also urged foreigners to respect a law that bars nonresidents from participating in rallies in a section of the park, known as Speaker’s Corner, which is the only legal spot for free-speech activities.