Planning and Execution

I attended a committee meeting for organising a conference on world class cities last Monday. While everybody was so excited about getting eminent speakers from Vancouver, Sydney, Glasgow, Singapore and Belfast to speak on their experiences and lessons learned in turning these cities into a world class cities, one of the question raised was, can Malaysian cities achieve the same feet?

It is easy to get outsiders here to share their success story. It is also easy to sell the ideas of having high density development yet manageable and livable to the players in the building and property sector. It is also a dream for those in the regulatory bodies to see a just, equal and livable city for all. It is however, NOT that easy to convince the community members that HOW and WHEN to execute WHAT are in a plan. The overwhelming public critic ms on Draft KL Local Plan for the past few months vindicated the dilemma of Planning and Execution.

While developers quote examples of well developed high density projects in Hong Kong and Singapore, people are simply not convinced that similar thing can be done in Malaysia due to the negative perception of people on poor maintenance culture. While more than often planning portraits a well planned and comprehensive transportation system to overcome the traffic congestion problems, it is hard for people to believe it with the current chaos they have to encounter daily.

So, what went wrong and how to address the negative perception on local planning? It is a challenge for planners and city builders to deliver services up to the expectation of stakeholders. It is also a challenge to local authorities and other government agencies to show their commitment and dedication of delivering the services with quality and within the time frame. It is also a challenge to the community leaders to show that they too care and committed for their living environment betterment. It is a responsibility of everyone, and the most critical one is the Local Authority. Local Authority has to lead by example and pledge loudly to the stakeholders on a workable implementation plan.

Until then, the objections on local planning will continue. The question on the competency of professional will remain.