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There's a quicker need to make our existing urban neighbourhoods liveable.
There's a quicker need to make our existing urban neighbourhoods liveable.
Our cities are expanding faster than our population.
Malaysia's urban population increases 1.8% per year, but our urban area expansion rate outpaces it at 2.7%, from 2010 to 2015, according to the Rancangan Malaysia Ke-12. Cheaper housing & cost of living and a perception of better natural environment on city fringes are factors. The construction of new, low-dense suburbs by developers allows for this.
But actually, the increasing expansion of our cities isn't sustainable!
Excessive urban sprawl will come with higher costs to maintain infrastructure/services over a large area, higher vehicle ownership, higher wastage of energy, loss of forests and agricultural land, and will bring decay to our city centres.
Improving our existing neighbourhoods to be better.
Improving our existing neighbourhoods to be better.
We've seen the complaints on social media of how there's not enough green spaces and convivial public facilities. How hard it is for urban Malaysians to get around by walking. Noisy highways & wide roads everywhere, yet segregating us even more.
Some factual examples; according to the 2040 Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan, there's only 11m2 of public space for every KL resident. In fact, 61% of residents ride vehicles to parks and open spaces due to the lack of access through walkability or transport.
Things do not have to be this way.
We believe we can and should make our urban neighbourhoods clean & convivial, safer and healthier, easy for everyone to move around and enjoy themselves free of stress. And this will require us to retro-fit, upgrade and redevelop our neighbourhoods.
What do our IRL policies currently mention for this?
What do our IRL policies currently mention for this?
Contrary to popular belief, we also do have policies that dictate the urban & physical planning of our neighbourhoods. Examples include the Rancangan Fizikal Negara (RFN), the National Low Carbon Cities Masterplan by Kementerian Alam Sekitar & Air (KASA), and most importantly, your local council's local plan (Rancangan Tempatan) and state's structure plan (Rancangan Struktur Negeri).
To simplify, we took some of the general policies from the Rancangan Malaysia documents, the mother of all policies in our country.
Rancangan Malaysia Ke-12
Rancangan Malaysia Ke-12
Chapter 6, Priority Area B - Developing Sustainable Cities
Promoting effective urban planning and governance. The need to strengthen development planning with data collection and analysis, and promoting sustainable & smart city approaches.
Fostering sustainable urban economies. Enhance urban agglomerations and ecosystem by through densification, encourage growth of economic activities in cities, and leverage city competitiveness to attract investment.
Building sustainable urban societies. Improve liveability & inclusiveness by promoting mixed-use developments that blend affordable housing, commercial developments and infrastructure.
Chapter 8, Priority Area A - Implementing a Low-Carbon, Clean and Resilient Development
Moving Towards a Low-Carbon Nation; promoting green & resilient city concepts such as the low-carbon city, sponge city, smart city and equitable transit-oriented development (eToD).
Rancangan Malaysia Ke-11
Rancangan Malaysia Ke-11
Chapter 8, Priority Area F - Increase Competitiveness of Urban & Regional Economic Corridors
The government wanted to focus on increasing the competitiveness of Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu by creating City Competitiveness Master Plans for them, that was based on these 6 principles:
Enhancing economic density
Expanding transit-oriented development
Strengthening knowledge-based clusters
Enhancing liveability
Adopting green-based development & practices
Ensuring inclusivity
This can be emulated by other cities or development corridors that want to do the same.
What are DMM KPKT's suggestions?
What are DMM KPKT's suggestions?
*These are never our final solutions, and are based on what we've learned so far in our past 2 weeks of research (and daily urban life).
Sharing mandatory facilities between developments instead of separate facilities
Building micro-mobility routes to ((actually)) connect housing to amenities
Identifying and rectifying inaccessibility points of our public parks & facilities
Encouraging simpler, but more practical & accessible pedestrian infrastructure
Sharing mandatory facilities between developments in neighbourhoods, through creative planning
Sharing mandatory facilities between developments in neighbourhoods, through creative planning
To create community cohesion, facilities should be shared amongst residents from different areas, as spaces for interaction.
But due to state and local council requirements that make building individual facilities mandatory for individual developments, often housing developments have their own individual facilities; suraus, halls, green spaces, etc, even when placed right next to each other.
This makes for absurd allocation of facilities in neighbourhoods.
Check the image carousel as an example, showing how there's 2 suraus and 1 masjid placed in a radius of 500 metres, in a neighbourhood in Presint 18, Putrajaya.
Not only does it increase building costs, these facilities can be under-used due to lower usage since they're placed deep in housing areas. Not to mention if the developments are public housing, paid through taxpayer's money.
Suggestion.
Instead of a one-off facility mandate for facility requirements, local councils need to be more involved, meticulous and creative in planning our neighbourhoods, precincts & districts, especially in facility placement.
The end goal is to allow important facilities to be accessible by everyone to make sure neighbourhoods feel more integrated, closer, and convivial.
What could be done:
Create a developers contribution plan (implemented in Australia and NZ), levying new development to fund planned infrastructure needed by the future community, giving power to local councils to plan.
Or allow for shared facilities agreements between developers with developments close by, funding and controlling facilities together (implemented in Canada).
More public-private partnership agreements for developers to allow facilities.
Local councils need to masterplan neighbourhoods to plan where even smaller facilities should be placed; parks, suraus, etc.
In Chicago (1342 W Taylor St.); public housing consisting 73 units including 37 public housing units, 29 affordable units, and 7 market rate units, on top of a public library branch.
Leboh Pasar Besar (beside Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad), Kuala Lumpur
Building safe micro-mobility routes to ((actually)) connect housing to places
Building safe micro-mobility routes to ((actually)) connect housing to places
Micro-mobility = bikes, scooters, skateboards, segways, etc.
In the past, Malaysians used rickshaws and bikes to get everywhere in our cities, we now congest our cities with cars. And everyone knows this isn't sustainable.
Local councils "want to make people cycle". They then build bike lanes... only in commercial or government centres. They forgot to connect it to public housing, where lesser transportation costs can benefit them most. So they end up being used by rich, recreational cyclists.
The "bike lanes" built are also often unsegregated painted lanes that cars can park over, or take over existing pedestrian lanes, both posing danger to cars, cyclists, and pedestrians!
But micro-mobility lanes isn't THE solution. But is PART of the multi-modal transport plan for cities we need, which includes public transport.
Video of cycling in Assen, the Netherlands. While we can't replicate it 100% (different climate), there are elements we can take; bi-directional segregated cycle lanes, housing buildings close to them, connect lanes to shops & schools.
What could be done:
Grants for local councils to create transportation plans for their district that include micro-mobility plans, with criteria
Creating more detailed guidelines for bike lanes that follows the safest standards through PLANMalaysia
Collaborating with JKR to amend road design guidelines to be more micro-mobility friendly (rather than slip roads)
Micro-mobility allows people to extend their range of mobility without cars. Here are the criterias we propose local councils to follow:
Ensuring mid to high dense housing are prioritised to build bike lanes, finding connections to facilities & commercial centres.
Parking for micro-mobility vehicles at bus stops; making micro-mobility the first/last-mile connection to public transport.
Identifying and rectifying inaccessible points of facilities & public parks from housing
Identifying and rectifying inaccessible points of facilities & public parks from housing
If you want people to benefit from the amenities you've built, you need to make them accessible and welcoming. Many complain that PPRs and public housing are placed far from parks, community centres, and commercial areas.
Now, there are PPRs that are placed right next to lakeside parks, facilities and train stations. The problem is they often lack of safe, visible, and welcoming access points to facilities from them. Often, they're are either gated, hidden, or even lack paths from the housing areas to them.
The image carousel below shows some of the accessibility issues of housing to facilities in Kuala Lumpur.
Based on a study by Universiti Islam Antarabangsa on access to parks and recreational opportunities in urban low income neighbourhoods, while 60% of respondents in PPRs agree that green spaces in their complex are conveniently located, 62% disagreed the green spaces were adequate, and respondents were more neutral to negative on whether there was enough play & recreational facilities for all ages in their area.
Residents should be allowed to enjoy their neighbourhood realm that's wider, rather than just their residential area.
What could be done:
For housing under its jurisdiction, KPKT should identify accessibility issues, create plans to rectify them by collaborating with PBTs, stakeholders, land owners and the community in the area to build (or remove) infrastructure for residents to access the facilities easier
KPKT can also offer infrastructure grants and technical advice to local councils and state governments that need help to connect and integrate facilities into the neighbourhood realm
Architects & landscape architects are needed to create welcoming realms between housing and facilities
Encouraging simple, but more accessible pedestrian infrastructure
Encouraging simple, but more accessible pedestrian infrastructure
Despite high costs, pedestrian infrastructure that has been built by local councils are either tall footbridges & skyways, or subpar pedestrian crossings without regard to user experience.
In 2011, Dewan Bandarraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL) built 5 pedestrian bridges over Brickfields, over merely 2-3 lane roads, with a cost of RM11 million to "help the blind community".
After cases of vandalism, looting, and frequent vagrant takeovers, DBKL is now suggesting to demolish it.
Our local councils haven't learnt. Dewan Bandarraya Kota Kinabalu (DBKK) spent RM31 million on a skybridge connecting various malls & parking lots. Construction had been delayed by over 4 years, and when it opened, it still failed to connect some mall entrances to the bridge.
Pedestrian bridges, although practical when roads are too wide to cross, are often more car-centric than pedestrian-centric. They allow cars to drive fast on the ground while pedestrians have to climb the stairs up & down to get to the other side. Not to mention how terrible it'd be for the disabled.
Resources
Resources
Development Contributions explainer for Victoria, Australia
Shared Facilities Agreements Will Soon Be Mandatory - Davidson Houle Allen (dhacondolaw.ca)
Pop-up bike lanes in Berlin | use: urban sustainability exchange (metropolis.org)
DBKL to remove bridges in Brickfields | The Star
Kerajaan Negeri Akan Cari Jalan Selesai Projek KK SkyBridge Terbengkalai – Sabah Post
Urban Street Design Guide | National Association of City Transportation Officials (nacto.org)
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