18/7/06 Do you care about your neighbours?
Woke up this morning and all I see is Siti Nurhaliza's face on the front page of the local papers. Before I went to bed I thought there was a 2m high tsunami that hit our neoghbour's West Javan province... Ah well, so much for our caring Malaysian, huh?
15/7/06 Cineplex safety
I find the exit passages of cineplexes around KL to be a potential hazard in case of emergency. Even the newer state of the art places such 1-Utama new wing do not seem safe. Patrons leaving 2 cineplexes simultaneously had to squeezed through a 10ft wide fire escape. In other cineplexes you have to wind through a very long maze in semi-darkness, sometimes climbing or descending staircase before you re-emerge at another part of the shopping complex. I dread to think of the possible consequences should I ever need to evacuate a cineplexe with severatyoung children in tow.
13/7/06 Metrobus again...
When will Metrobus drivers ever learn to adopt better driving etiquette? Why do we tolerate bad bus drivers? I was nearly sandwiched between 2 Metrobus-es when l was trying to switch into the right lanes on Jalan TAR at Maju Junction. I had signalled well ahead but one of the buses came up from behind and tried to overtake me in order to reach the bus stop a short distance in front, ahead of the other bus on my left. I wonder if this situation hos ever happened to any of our Ministers and elected MPs?
3/7/06 Posh apartments
I can't understand the rational that we have to build expensive residential properties on all the prime land that we have. Who are building them for? Well-heeled foreigners? OTOH, you don't get similar commitment or enthusiasm to build affordable or low cost housing in other areas.
9/6/06 From The Star…
JPS said 29,000sq. km. or 9% of our land is prone to flooding incurring RM950m/year of losses. Among the contributing factors are over-development and the lack of proper planning. Most of the affected areas are in towns. The rate of run-off is doubled when 40% of the land area is developed.
30/5/06 Rain=Traffic jam
Why is it that every time it rains the roads in KL will be clogged with traffic? One drop of water and the traffic backs up 10km. Traffic jams are the biggest waste of money that we indulged in day in and day out but no one take serious action about it.
25/5/06 A Wish List
1. JPBD take full ownership of the Local Plan reports during SPC meetings and not insist on the consultants to answer all the queries. The consultants should be there to help them answer the questions;
2. University Professors in Town Planning should not be made to undergo the 2 year Graduate Membership of MIP. For goodness sake, the Professors are training our town planners. Let's accord them due respect.
5/5/06 London Tube
The London Underground service is set to run 1/2 hr later on Friday & Saturday nights and starts an hour later on Saturday mornings, the London Mayor announced... effective from the middle of next year. In this country, an announcement like that usually take effect midnight tonight. We never give ‘early warning’.
12/02/06
Maintenance culture – Pusat Sains Negara
Took my daughter to her friend’s birthday party held at Pusat Sains Negara in Bukit Damansara today. I took my other two girls around the centre while waiting for the party to finished. It is sad to say that the place has become a victim of the Malaysian malaise – poor maintenance. There were many interactive exhibits that were broken and have not been repaired. Or is it a victim of bureaucracy, instead? Perhaps the centre is still waiting for budget approval from the Treasury to repair those exhibits? Places like Pusat Sains Negara should have some autonomy in terms expenditure for maintenance of exhibits. I dread to think that the place is a victim of the worst Malaysian malaise – apathy. This would be unfortunate because the centre is indeed a fun place for kids.
11/02/06
Friends and neighbours
Are your neighbours your friends? Do you know their names? Are they just someone who happen to live next door to you? The Chief Editor told me that he had to help his neighbour restrain their maid who had a nervous breakdown the other night. At that time only her teenage son was home and she also have a two year old toddler to look after. Even when the police came, it took three grown men to subdue the little woman. It was only when the police support team came over with a straight-jacket that the maid could be taken away to the hospital for treatment. For the two preceding hours, besides the Chief Editor, no other neighbours came over to help. Now the question comes to mind – can you rely on your neighbours in a time of crisis? This is a reality of our urban society now.
29/01/06
Abbreviations – do we translate that too?
In English, should we write JPBD or TCPD? JKR or PWD? DBKL or CHKL? JPS or DID? How do we write the names of Government agencies in a report written in English? I believe we should not translate the special names into English when we write reports in errr... English. Otherwise the Chief Editor will become Mr Isaac. As a rule of thumb, we should use the abbreviations used in the official logos of the respective departments. Otherwise it gets awfully confusing.
27/01/06
Self-centred habits – can planning overcome this by design?
Is it possible to counter or overcome the bad Malaysian habits, such as indiscriminate parking, queue jumping, vandalism and blatant disregard of traffic regulations through urban design? Education may be the best option for the long term but I believe we can facilitate the “education process” through design and planning. Please give a lot more thoughts to these matters the next time you design a site layout. Say, the next time you want to provide a toilet for the disabled, just check to see if there is proper access for the disabled person to get to the toilet first.
15/01/06
When the river is too polluted, just hide it.
The local authorities seem to be taking the easy way out these days when it come to restoring and rehabilitating our natural environment. In this country there is no river that flow through a city that is clear and clean. Singapore took ten years of concerted effort to clean up Singapore River. In this country, we took less than a year and a few strokes of the pen to solve (sic!) the problem - one authority just cover the stretch of the dirty river that flow through the city centre with hard landscaping, while another authority just “privatised” the rivers It is easier than cleaning it themselves.
07/01/06
“Saya dulu” culture.
This is my pet hate – the Malaysians with “me first” attitude. It transcends the generations and social class. You see it among the elderly, the males, the females, the professionals, the rich, the poor and even the children. It seems that every Malaysian wants to be a VIP and to be given preferential treatment all the time, especially in by-passing queues, whether in a traffic jam or the local grocery shop. How do we get rid of this attitude? This is an issue which is so deeply embedded in our culture and society. It cannot be allowed to persist.
05/01/06
“Give Way!” Least understood traffic regulation?
How many times do you see a car or motorcycle darted out from a slip road into the main traffic flow without regard for the traffic already on the main thoroughfare? How many times do see cars coming out of a road junction and causing the other cars on the main road to brake to avoid a collision? There is a traffic rule called “Give Way”. It is sometimes represented by an inverted triangle symbol painted on the road at junctions. The “Stop” sign at road junctions also mean give way to traffic on the main road. If we make it a point to observe the Give Way rule at all time, I believe our roads will be so much safer.
30/12/05
Where do pedestrian walk?
Why do we always find new housing areas built with roads that do not have any sidewalk for people to walk on? Is the 12 metre road reserve adequate to provide safe passage for both cars and pedestrians in a housing areas? Perhaps we should be looking at coming up with new design guidelines for roads in residential areas. We have to teach people to walk on the sidewalk and drive on the road or we will continue to see people drive (motorcycles) on the sidewalk and walk on the road...
29/12/05
Who does all the planning work, actually..?
Consultants are preparing the structure plans and local plans, complete with the development strategies and all. Consultants are also preparing the layout plans. So who shall we say are doing all the planning for our country? The Government or the private sector?
27/12/05
Tallest skyscraper in London
The proposed DIFA Tower, Bishopsgate, London, 300m tall, and 50 storeys high, is going to be the tallest skyscraper in London. The Empire Tower in KL is much taller... ;-}
23/11/05
Ugly yellow Jersey barriers
Don’t you find the yellow painted Jersey barriers used as road dividers around our cities an eyesore? I don’t think the Jersey barriers merit as permanent hardscape feature. They should remain as a temporary barrier during road construction work. They are also not safe either. While they may be effective in preventing runway cars from jumping the dividers, they won’t save lives or limbs. Instead they would cost lives and limbs if you hit them head on. What would you rather hit in an emergency – the new wire road barrier, the old corrugated metal barrier or the RC concrete Jersey barrier?
07/11/05
Safe City
Just imagine, if we were to collect all the money spent on employing private security guards to patrol the residential neighbourhoods by the Resident Associations and give it to PDRM, we could help expand the police force and have professionally trained police personnel patrol our neighbourhoods instead of the security guards with dubious trainings...
02/11/05
ITIS – IT IS not telling us what we don’t already know
The electronic signboard before Ampang Point said, “Kesesakan di persimpangan Pandan Indah... kelewatan dijangka. Guna laluan alternatif jika perlu” (congestion at Pandan Indah interchange... delays are expected Please use alternative route...). Yeah right! Pray tell what alternative route do I have between Ampang Point and Sri Petaling on a rainy 6.00pm traffic rush? I am not impressed by ITIS and its electronic signboards all over KL. It doesn’t really tell anything more than any seasoned commuter of the infamous KL peak hour rush already know. I am not sure if the system has actually reduced the traffic jam by any amount either. Perhaps the Chief Executive of the company that installed ITIS could be so kind as to provide us with some monitoirng data to verify his earlier claim that traffic jam wil be reduced by 40% after ITIS is installed.
25/5/05
Alien tree invasion!
I am sure you have noticed by now that our country have being invaded by an alien tree species. Nice effort by the authority to mask the ugly steel towers but I wish that they would have designed the “trees” to look more local.
20/5/05
Mapping out aftershock areas
Perhaps we should start mapping out the buildings around our country that experienced effects of tremors and aftershocks. We might find a pattern with respect to location, geology, soil structure, topography, foundation design and even height of the buildings. I believe we can identify a pattern that can help us draw up a comprehensive emergency response plan for each city.
26/5/05
White line painters!
Who are these people? Do they ever drive on public roads with dual carriageways? There I was happily driving down Jalan Maarof, Bangsar, one fine Sunday morning when suddenly the lane that I was on was truncated into a “right-turn only” near McDonald’s and a new lane appeared on my left…
24/5/05
Self-defeating one-way streets
The first thing that usually happens when a one-way street system is introduced to an urban centre is that crossing the road becomes a very difficult task. Another thing that always happened at peak period is the streets get clogged up because everyone ended up blocking everybody else so in the end no one could move. Try visiting the Maybank near the ?Chief Editor’s office in Taman Melawati at lunch time and you’ll know what I mean. Similar examples can be seen elsewhere, even in KLCC and the Mid Valley City (especially!).
12/5/05
Internship & volunteer programme
MIP should set up a training programme for the unemployed planning graduates to provide them the opportunities to gain some work experience. With the kind of fresh graduates that I have come across these few years I think they should pay employers to give them a job before they can get paid. It is not merely their 'clueless-ness' about getting the job done, their attitudes to work need correcting too.
5/5/05
Protection of views
The Mayor of London has set out revised rules on protecting key strategic views in London. A draft supplementary planning guidance (London View Management Framework) detailing how such views are to be managed was issued recently. I have not come across any similar guidelines for our cities except for the Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan which indicated the intention towards achieving a similar objective.
1/5/03
Tsunami – 4 months on.
What is our contribution for tsunami so far? Let's hear about some local initiatives by the Malaysian planners. Information on international reconstruction efforts for the recent disaster can be found at the tsunami recovery network website, www.tsunami-recovery.net.
29/4/05
What is the role of consultants in DP?
Listening to my friends who are involved in preparing local plans and structure plans raises this question in my mind. I though the consultants should answer to their client (JPBD/PBPT), not the public queries, if the client has accepted the plan prepared by the consultants. Upon submission of the plans to the local planning authority, JPBD should defend the proposals at the “seranta” sessions, not the consultants. The consultants’ role should be to assist JPBD in providing the answers. But that is if I understand the concept of client-consultant correctly.
25/4/05
You don't need to go to London...
With our RM exchange rate at 1960s and salaries at 1980s levels these days, overseas travel is not as affordable as in 1990s or even 1980s. However, we don't have to go to London to visit Dorchester, Windsor Tower, Queensgate, Mayfair or Kensington Park; or to New York to visit Times Square & Park Avenue. You can find them all here in good old KL! You can even go to Harrods - yes, the real Harrods, albeit just the branch, in KLIA... In fact, you can find a lot of “foreign places” and eat foreign food in our country. There's even a clone of a French medieval town in Bukit Tinggi. The only thing we don't get is the balmy, dry weather, although we can play in the snow up in Genting. At this rate, I pity the foreign tourist who come to SEE Malaysia. An architect friend told me that once when he was driving his European friend around Langkawi, and heard the Caucasian said, "Oh! So beautiful..." He was referring to the padi fields.
27/4/05
Leaf litter- what's the problem?
What is the problem with leaf litter? If we keep them to the grassy areas or the exposed soil on the pavements, they'll help to nourish the soil and negate the need for fertiliser.
25/4/05
Engineers
We probably have many engineers experienced in building roads but few who are well verse in building railways. Is that why we have more highways than LRT proposed and built in Klang Valley?
24/4/05
Planners and politicians
There should be more interaction between planners and politicians with respect to Structure Plans and Local Plans as statutory planning instruments. These are the only plan that are gazetted, and hence makes them a powerful tool for decision makers.
14/3/05
Overhead bridges - do people use them?
How often do people actually use them? Has anyone studied this?
4/3/05 Charging contractors for road space rental?
Should we charge contractors using public road space some rental for the amount of road they took up/closed for their works? This is practised in Europe and it works to ensure contractors finish their jobs without too much delay.
15/2/05 Traffic safety & illegal racing
I cannot believe that after decades of dealing with the illegal racing problem the police still don't have an effective strategy to overcome the problem? Are the mat motors outsmarting our PDRM?
12/02/05 Houses with chimneys
There are houses in Section 1 PJ built that have chimneys. It's a relic from the early late 1950s and 1960s urbanisation process in Klang Valley when terraced housing started to take root. The linked houses concept was adapted to provide accommodation for the fast growing population of KL, our new of post-independent capital. House designs were imported wholesale from the UK. It seems weird but on second thought, it is not a bad idea at all. Chimneys, with some modifications, may be the answer to help provide ventilation to our homes! Combined with louvers and wall vents they form the design components of a thermal comfort house. I don't think this is a preposterous idea at all. I have seen old houses in the Middle East designed with structures that resembles 'modified' chimneys to provide ventilation. Now, let's see if any architect is bold enough to take up this challenge.
02/02/05 Bus drivers
Bas Mini, Sri Jaya, Intrakota, Park May, or Rapid - call it what you want, the buses still do not stop in the bus lay-bys provided. Bad habits die hard.
16/12/04
How do we keep track of Treasury's policy changes?
My friend was fuming today when I met him for lunch. He just got a letter from Bahagian Pengurusan Perolehan Kementerian Kewangan Malaysia saying that he cannot renew his registration under the category "Kajian Alam Sekitar" concurrently with the "Perancangan Bandar & Wilayah" category. It's a no-no. The reasons? One is because he's not allowed to do that. Second is because he does not have an architect or a QS in his company. FYI, to register under "Pengurusan Alam Sekitar" you need to have 3 of the 4 categories of professionals: (a) engineers, (b) architect or QS, (c) economist, and (d) scientist/biologists. Town planners don't figure anywhere. So is the architect and QS more qualified than planners to carried out "Kajian Alam Sekitar"? Perhaps the Board and MIP should take this up with Kementerian Kewangan?
8/12/04
Middle Lane Hogging
The Highways Agency in the UK have started a programme to educate drivers to keep to the correct lane in an attempt to ease congestion and improve safety. The Agency has installed signs that read: "Keep left unless overtaking" and "Don't hog the middle lane" at key points around the motorways network in the north and east Midlands. It will measure people's reactions to the signs. If successful, the signs will be placed over the whole network. We have similar signs installed along the North-South Expressway but do we measure its effectiveness?
4/12/04
Dead & Buried, and to be forgotten
We are so materialistic these days that we no longer have any respect for the departed and do not even want to share our neighbourhood with them. A cemetery is sacred. It's where we put to rest our departed beloved. It is also where we will be buried one day. I don't know why some people make so much fuss about the expansion of a cemetery near some apartments in one of KL's upmarket suburbs. The cemetery was there long before the apartments came up. It is also one of the very well kept cemetery around. Would they rather have an STP or a karaoke lounge nearby? These people should go and drive around Melaka City. People in Melaka City have lived in "harmony" with cemeteries for as long as they can remember. It is like there's a cemetery around every corner, be it Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Chinese. I have never heard anyone complains.
30/11/04
Save the tree, eat a beaver
Whose bright idea it was..? Chopping down a 60 years old Ketum tree, the only one in town because the townsfolk are using its leaves 'to get high'. Will this stop the addiction? Does that mean that every single Ketum tree in this country will be chopped down? In the same argument, perhaps we should ban cars from our roads because traffic accident is killing 15-20 people a day.
29/11/04
Slope repairs
Do we know what we are doing'. Slope protection expert told me a disturbed slope is stabilised after it failed or collapsed. Why do we mess it up by scraping out the failed slope and then putting a rubble wall (or all things!) to hold it in place. Just avoid steep slopes in the first place. Otherwise, try bioengineering approach of biotechnical slope protection.
25/11/04
Smart traffic lights, dumb traffic lights
Traffic lights that self adjust their timings can reduce unnecessary congestion at road junctions. Proof? Ever since the traffic lights at Jalan Beringin/Jalan Setiamurni junction in Bukit Damansara (near Pusat Sains) were changed to fixed timing, long queues were generated during off-peak hours. A case of the traffic lights being more intelligent than the people who maintain them? ;-}
22/11/04
Ugly Malaysians the bad neighbours
Some heartless Malaysians living close to Zoo Negara went overboard with their celebrations of Hari Raya recently. The ugly Malaysians reared their heads again by proving to be heartless, inconsiderate and downright stupid by throwing firecrackers into the animal enclosures in the zoo. The most appropriate punishment would be to lock up these unneighbourly ugly Malaysians in jail and throw firecrackers inside it as they were sleeping (I would have preferred throwing them into the tiger's pen). The Zoo was there first, the housing estate came later. We should respect the neighbours when we joined their neighbourhood.
08/11/04
Road Safety is No Accident
This is the theme for WHO Day 2004. Neat :)
07/11/04
Structural Plan?
Why do reporters keep writing "Structural Plan" when they talk about "Structure Plan"? I noticed this going on for aeons. Didn't anybody ever educate them? Didn't they ever read the press kits? Or did the planning authorities ever produce press kits for reporters? Do any reporter, sub-editor and editor ever read any Structure Plan that they have been reporting about for the last 15 years? Somebody should start educating them. For as long as the public cannot write the name right, they will never understand what the structure plan is all about. :-(
06/11/04
Vindictive thoughts
Yesterday the South bound carriageway of Jalan Duta turned into a river at the underpass after Duta Vista apartments. I noticed that metal grill covering the inlet to road side drains have all been nicked along most roads. Although the flash floods we have been experiencing are attributed largely to the abnormally high rainfall on the central & southern parts of our country, clogged drains in the urban areas must have made them worse. I hope those dumb thieves have their houses flooded during these flash floods. That'll be poetic justice. >:-[
03/11/04
The elusive "Official" Guidelines
My Chief Editor friend has been grumbling to me lately about the difficulty in getting hold of official government guidelines announced recently, namely Garis Panduan Ternakan Burung Layang Layang and the National Wetland Policy.
Garis Panduan Ternakan Burung Layang Layang is as elusive as the subject it addresses. He has been given the run-around from one Ministry to another and one Government Department to another. Firstly, JPBD asked him to get a copy of the guideline. Since swifts are wild birds, he started with Perhilitan. Perhilitan pointed him to Jabatan Alam Sekitar (JAS). JAS pointed to Ministry of Natural Resources, who pointed him to Veterinary Department, who subsequently asked him to check with Perhilitan. So this is what ISO is all about - I Send you Over?
Don't bother looking for the National Wetland Policy. It has been approved by the Cabinet but it is still "RAHSIA" Kerajaan, I heard.
01/11/0405/11/04
Wither Bus Lanes?
Iirc (?), only a few months ago the Datuk Bandar of Kuala Lumpur announced that the "bus lanes" will be enforced again. Subsequently there was a flurry of fines dished out to offending motorists caught using the bus lanes during restricted hours. Now it looks like business as usual. No more enforcement officers, so the bus lanes are clogged up with private vehicles again.
27/10/044
Did our layout plans worked as we intended?
Planners should go out a lot more. Go and see places that you planned. Did those sites you so laboriously planned turned out as you intended in reality? Just look at the Government Precinct in Putrajaya. The users of the areas do not seem to utilise the sites as they were planned. Guess who gets the blame for the congestion and the confusions? Certainly not the architects.
16/6/04
The Inductivist Turkey
This was a topic of one of the lectures that I had to attend as an undergraduate. It completely changed my "scientific" approach to dealing with anything. We had been taught in our Physics lessons that repeated experiments giving the same results will reinforce the hypothesis that we are testing. Well, the philosophy lecturer destroyed all that one morning when he told us the inductivist turkey story. The turkey must have studied under my Physics teacher, too, because it observed that every day, at 7am and 7pm, its owner will come to fill up its feeding bowl outside its cage. So by induction process, the turkey concludes that when owner comes in at 7am and 7pm, it is feeding time. Everyday at the appointed time the turkey voluntarily stuck its head out anticipating food. So it was every day until the 24th of December. That day its owner came with a kitchen chopper and the inductivist turkey ended up as Christmas dinner.
15/6/04
Minyak Geliga Syndrome:
One big flaw in our system is that we always seek the universal panacea to our problems. We always want something like the cure-everything minyak gamat (the bad news is that we are running out of gamat supply). We want planning guidelines that applies to all planning situations. We want housing guidelines that can be used equally in KL, KB, KK and Kuala Krai. We want environmental guidelines applicable in Putrajaya, Petaling Jaya and Parit Jawa. I suppose there are even planners who believe in this ubat geliga planning. They thought they can replicate a local plan report from one place into another local plan by merely substituting the names of places.
13/6/04
No more gamat in Langkawi?
Oh dear! In just 15 years after Mahsuri's curse being lifted off Langkawi, one of the island's well known product is now near depletion. How can we let this happen? This is becoming the classic case of killing the goose that lay the golden eggs. It just goes to show how critical it is to pay great attention to environmental factors in development, particularly for an island ecosystem. It is not just providing the tourist infrastructure and facilities that generate the local economy. We have to closely monitor and scrutinise what they do to its environment too. We have to invest in a monitoring system to keep track of things in the long run. It's a good thing that I still have 8 bottles of the 10-pack minyak gamat bought on my last trip to Langkawi three years ago. Otherwise, what will the missus use to cure my little girl's stomach ache, bruises, sprains, etc?
12/6/04
Expressways at 80kph?
Why do we keep building new or upgrading existing roads, called them expressways, charge exorbitant toll rates but imposed a speed limit lower than the 90kph limit of the single carriageway Federal roads?
29/5/03
ECO-Products International Fair
It's interesting to note that there will be an ECO-Products International Fair at Mid Valley Exhibition Centre, 2-4 Sept 2004. Here's a definition of a green consumer: "...being a green consumer ....means questioning both the nature and volume of our consumption since all products, no matter how "green", cause some pollution, use resources and energy, and cause some ecological disturbance...don't buy unless you really need the item".
25/5/04
World Consumer Report
· 12% of the world's population live in North America & Western Europe consumed 60% of goods & services produced, while one-third living in South Asia & Sub-Saharan Africa account for only 3.2%;
· US$17b was spent on pet food in the US & EU whereas only US$19b is needed to eliminate hunger & malnutrition in the world;
· US$14b was spent on ocean cruises but only US$10b is needed to provide clean drinking water for all;
· US$15b was spent on perfumes when only US$5b is needed to achieve universal literacy;
· US$18b was spent by the world on make-up, only US$12b is needed to achieve reproductive healthcare for all women;
· Europeans spent US$11b on ice-creams, when US$1.3b is needed to immunise every child; and
· Livestock flatulence is 16% of global methane emission, a potent greenhouse gas.
15/5/04
Safe neighbourhood
How safe is your neighbourhood? Why do we designed & built houses that we do not want to live in ourselves and in an indefensible space? Houses are no longer designed for our climate. We assume air-conditioning will be installed in the house. Hence we preclude the potential for natural lighting and ventilation. Hence, we locked ourselves within our own abode and become oblivious to the happenings outside our house compounds. In the process, we lost control of our own territory. [The focus of our next issue shall be on the subject of safe neighbourhood - Ed.]
21/3/04
Integrated Transport System
Definition of integrated transport system: having one ERL station, one Komuter station, one monorail station and one LRT station next to each other in three separate buildings within 300m radius. That should encompasses one or two bus routes, too.
20/3/04
F1 - world class design, a blunder in planning?
Attended my first Sepang F1 this year, although it was only for the Saturday qualifying session. I am big fan of F1 since Niki Lauda's days (so l am almost ancient, huh?). However, I have never been tempted to attend any of the F1 events at SIC. One reason is that it's a very expensive affair. It's not just the F1 ticket price but when you total up transportation, food & parking, it comes up to a hefty sum. If you have more than 1 child to take along, say bye-bye to your month's take home pay. The cheapest way to watch F1 is to take a motorbike, a picnic lunch, a golf umbrella and the hill stand.
The main reason I hate going to F1 Sepang is the hassle to get there and back. How did we ever forget to extend the ERL or Komuter station to the F1 track? What's a new world class F1 race track without an integrated mass transit system? We could have planned for mass transit station right underneath the main stand.....
.... Oh, btw, they forgot to put a roof or shady trees in the mall of the Grandstand. That would preclude the need to put all those huge floor-standing fans that also spray water mist all over the place to cool the area. I guess that's the Malaysian SOP. We never think through down to the last detail. Form is more important than function?
15/3/04
Congestion charging
The statistics are out now for the London Congestion Charging Scheme ("Congestion Charging: Update on Scheme Impacts and Operations") - traffic delays inside the charge zone are down 30%, bus reliability is improving, and there is an 18% drop in traffic entering the zone. It seems to be working in terms of alleviating congestion but there is a dispute from some retailers who claimed their businesses have been adversely affected.
11/3/04
Private beach? What private beach?
Is there such thing as a privately owned beach? As far as I know, there is no law in this country that allows for ownership of a beach to a private interest. You cannot impede public access to the beach even if you own the property immediately fronting the beach. You cannot own a river or river reserve either. Next time a client wants you to promote their project as having exclusive rights to a beach or riverfront, you better check what the law provides.
5/3/04
Taking things for granted
Why are all new buildings erected in this country designed with the assumption that the occupiers will install air-conditioning? On the one hand, we have the Ministry of Science, Technology & Environment and other environmental agencies and NGOs working very hard to educate and raise the level of awareness of Malaysians on sustainable development. On the other hand we have professionals who designed and constructed buildings as if we are living in Europe.
1/3/04
Where are the REAL graduate town planners?
Why is it that every year we produced more straight As students but it did not seem like we are producing many straight As graduates? Can anyone explain this? 2003 SPM produced an amazing 40% more straight As students than the previous year - 6,358 compared to 3,359 in 2002. If only 1%, just a miserable one per cent, of them took up Town Planning, that's a substantial number of potentially outstanding planning graduates. But this is certainly not happening. WHY?
29/2/04
Why our integrated public transport system is not attractive...
Have you tried going out (to KL City Centre) using the mass transit lately? I tried the monorail to Times Square this afternoon. Drove to KL Sentral, parked at the open air car park then walked across the road to climb up the stairs to the KL Monorail station. I have no idea how long I will have to wait for the next monorail. If you walk around at ground level you will see the buses have outdated or no schedule at all posted at the bus stop. If you don't know your way around or have never use the bus services, you will have no clue where to get your bus. Even the buses don't tell you where it is going sometimes.
27/2/04
Bad traffic circulation plans
Why is it that there are so many projects that spend billions of dollars on fancy architecture and world class infrastructures but end up with poor traffic circulation and management? Take KLCC for example. The service road around it are so narrow and have so many very tight turns that tour buses have difficulties navigating through them. I have seen a tour bus stuck at the bend right in front Petronas Tower 1 during the first year KLCC opened. Now we find tour buses hogging the outer lanes of Jalan Ampang and Jalan P.Ramlee and disrupting the traffic flow because tour operators now know that their buses cannot go through the internal roads of KLCC. The lay-bys in KLCC became redundant.
15/2/04
Tacky lights & decorations
Local authorities should be more creative and original in their attempts to light up our towns and cities. I am sure we can come up with something more creative than those tacky lighting and decorations they put up. They should reflect some themes or philosophy behind the lighting scheme. The lights must have something meaningful to be significant. At the very least, it should be able to stand up as a work of art.
2/2/04
Caring for our heritage ?
I drove past Bukit China cemetery in Melaka Bandaraya Bersejarah last weekend. I thought this cemetery represent an important part of the history of Melaka. It is one of the oldest anyway. It has ties to a Princess who married one of the Sultans in the great days of Melaka. However, driving along the road that skirts around the hill does not give any indication of the significance of this place. The construction of the road itself showed signs that some parts of the cemetery itself was destroyed. The only part of the Bukit China cemetery that seem to received attention is the place where all package tour tourists where unloaded from their buses.
BP1 - 22 October 2003:
Wither Roadside Teh Tarik?
Isn't it just great. My good friend volunteered himself for Berita Perancang Editorial post over a glass of iced mocha. Now he has done better by getting me to contribute my blogs over a mere roadside teh tarik by the open drain - a soon to be relic of Klang Valley, with the on-going beautification programmes by all the local planning authorities around the Klang Valley. We will soon be able to enjoy our roadside teh tarik on shining terracotta tiles sans the open drains. The sad thing is that they removed all the green patches of grass too, and they totally sealed the sidewalk with a layer of concrete, making it totally impervious. Rainwater will no longer be absorbed by the sidewalk that used to have interlocking pavers laid over sand. I reckon that there will be a significant increase in the volume of run-off onto the road surfaces and into our rivers during the inter-monsoon rainstorm. In simple words, we'll get more flash flood, at higher frequency, in a shorter time frame, occurring in the upstream areas if we don't keep all our monsoon drain clear off any debris. Don't take my word for it. This is mere speculation.
So I agreed to contribute my blogs for as long as he wants me (or the MIP Council approves it).
BP2 - 23 October 2003:
Heritage laws - a bull run?
We have our Town & Country Planning (Amendment) Bill on heritage conservation due for a reading in the Parliament (the Editor told me that the details should be covered elsewhere in the newsletter [not in this issue - Ed]). I was told that it has a lot of things in it that will involve every level of the planning community in its implementation - from the State Government planners to the local planning authorities down to the academicians, NGOs and consultant planners (I am sure this will translates into more projects for the planners, huh?). Let's hope the planning community is better prepared for this one. We don't want to be seen groping in the dark wondering where to go from there once the Bill is passed by the Parliament (I am being positive-minded here!). It was supposed to go into the Cabinet Meeting yesterday (22nd October 2003). Let's hope the planning profession turn this anticipated new opportunity into a bull run and instead of slipping on its droppings in its implementation. All eyes (or at least the Jabatan Muzium & Antikuiti and Jabatan Kerajaan Tempatan) will be on us...
BP3 - 27 October 2003:
Went through my archive of stuffs I wrote many years ago. Found this quote:
Wisdom Of The Bum:
"Nature is full of surprises: who would have thought of growing a fly swatter on the rear end of a cow?" (Organic Farmer's Almanac)
How's that for lateral thinking. As planners we should do a lot of this kind of thinking otherwise we will keep on repeating the mistakes we already made... :)
Here's an excerpt from the accompanying article: "...Issues concerning the environment have been high on the agenda since the turn of the 1990. In the sixties it was psychedelia; in the seventies it was red politics. The eighties was smothered in pastel shades of pink and yellow. The nineties belongs to the greenies..." Entering the new Millennium, everyone seem to get back to our confused state because everything revolves around ICT where the life span of anything created today was 3 days ago. Everything get reinvented to stay relevant, and thus, household garbage became 'recycled raw materials'.
Further excerpts: "...The Netherlands, for example, went so fast into Greenism in the early 1990s that they were stuck with a huge stockpile of "organic raw material" (it's cow dung to the layman) because their dairy farmers are not allowed by law to 'waste' them. When some farmers try to dump them into neighbouring Belgium they have to introduce a new law to prevent smuggling of cow dung across their national borders!" Then some Dutchmen came up with the idea of exporting the organic raw material to India for use as organic fuel, but that didn't work out either. After the butter mountains and wine lakes in the 1970s, the EU get saddled with another stinking problem involving a lot of bull...
BP4 : 29 October 2003:
Did you know that the Agenda 21 presented at UNCED in Rio contained more than 900 pages with 115 programmes divided into forty chapters - it was the conference brief. With a 'brief' like that it is no wonder everyone is struggling to get it implemented... even ten years after :)
BP5 : 31 October 2003:
The traffic jam was worse than usual this evening. It's the Ramadhan phenomenon? Funny huh? For years traffic planners & engineers and the traffic police have been grappling with the KL traffic problem but are yet to arrive at any really workable solution. Now we have a group of IT people armed with some applications claiming that they can reduce the traffic jam by 40% - just by using the computers. That's a HUGE amount, my dear. Even the London planners are modest when introducing road pricing in Central London recently. They only hope to bring down the traffic level by 10%. I wonder if those IT guys would like to test out their software on my SimCity 3000 first? ;-}
BP6 : 6 November 2003:
Hurrah! The Planning Bill (on Heritage Conservation) was tabled at the Parliament today. The first reading is set for the 11th of November 2003.
BP 7: 7 November 2003:
Why are we choking our roadside trees...? I know it is a beautification programme but covering the road shoulders, dividers and sidewalk with concrete and leaving only 1 square metre open ground for trees? How are the trees going to breathe? We should rethink this method of landscaping. Trees are living things and they breathe too. Their roots absorbs oxygen and other nutrients, as well as water. But if we only leave then 1 square metre of ground, how much water and oxygen will it get? If only trees could talk.
BP 8 : 14 November 2003:
Who do we plan for? Cars or people? This question always lingered in my mind when I go around town. We know that we planned our development for people but more often than not, we put together designs and layout that do not cater to real human needs. Think about it. Do we put pedestrian sidewalks on our streets? Do we put together one-way street system with pedestrians in mind? Do we provide ramps that wheelchair bound persons can easily manoeuvre without assistance? Do we layout residential streets where children can safely walk let alone play? Do we provide fire escapes that we can really use to escape from fire? Do we design road junctions that we can actually cross safely?
BP 9 : 16 November 2003
A Prisoner in Our Own Homes
Residential neighbourhoods nowadays reminds me of The Emergency period. They looked like the New Villages - what with barriers & sentries...
Why do LPAs insist on providing backlanes in new housing schemes but later allows resident associations to fence them up and deny access to others? Backlanes in residential areas are now prime examples of urban (planned!) wasteland. We might as well not insist on backlanes in planning guidelines and instead request for 'backparks'. That'll make for better utilisation of land, minimise increase in impervious surface, increase absorption & reduce run off, green the environment, cools the atmosphere, etc. Just imagine the cumulative effect from all those backlanes now under locks & chains'.
BP 10: 28 November 2003:
Still wondering why Selangor State Government committed huge resources to replacing old leaky pipes? PUAS statistics show that of the 3,500MLD water supplied to 1.3m a/c holders 1,400MLD is NRW. That's 40% of water that we have treated and make safe for drinking lost through leaky pipes. Out of the 60% that actually flows through our faucets, we wasted at another 10%. That means 50 % of the money spent treating our water supplies just flow into the drain. Thinking in simplistic terms, any investment for new water supply dams or treatment plants will result in only 50% return at the maximum. The other half is already guaranteed to
