World Class City

The vision of creating a world class city for Kuala Lumpur is commendable. Kuala Lumpur City Plan 2020 envisions to transform KL to the class of Tokyo, New York, Singapore, Melbourne, just to name a few. It is timely that for Malaysia to develop a world class city to better reflect the developmental achievement of the Country, after all we are envisioned to achieve the Developed Nation status by 2020. I was briefed by the planners of City Hall Kuala Lumpur last week on the rationale and plan to be implemented for achieving the goals. I must say well plan and well done.

Having said this, having a plan outlining what to do for a world class city is definitely not sufficient and holistic without having the world class mechanism, governance system in place and more importantly the world class mentality of the people. Be it the staffs of executing agencies or the general public. We need staffs and leaders with visions, management skill, leadership charisma, knowledgeable and importantly first class inter and intra-personal skills for moving the plan ahead. At the same time, the stakeholders especially the beneficiaries of the plan to reshape their mentality and thinking. Thinking for the long term benefits rather than the immediate impacts and petty urban issues.

In the globalisation and environmental decay era, city is becoming the centric for nation development. The competitiveness of a country is very much depended on how competitive the major city in competing worldwide for the capital inflows, brain, technologies and expertise. KL, the capital of Malaysia as the catalyst of development for the Klang Valley and Malaysia will determine how well other cities within the conurbation to perform and develop. The support of other local authorities is critical, especially the hinterland to provide excellent and world class manpower.

A fine city does not necessary mean a world class city. A world class city shall be resilient and adaptive to the changing environment and sustainable development. People in a fine city can live comfortably and with higher quality of life, but if the city government has to spend large amount of money to manage the waste, energy consumption, waste water, wastage from consumption and production due to the affluence lifestyle, then the city, to me is not a world class. Every city has the responsibility to sustaining the Earth, and thus any action by its citizen to create more waste, to pollute the environment and to consume resources excessively although with the capability to pay for it, is not a world class city. KL, has to ensure that sustainability by all is embedded in the plan.

Attaining a world class status is not possible without mutual understanding and cooperation as well as partnership amongst all stakeholders. It is no point for City Hall of Kuala Lumpur to set a high target, but later found that execution is a difficult task as supports and commitment from other agencies, private sector and community groups are not forthcoming. In this respect, communication and creating mutual understanding for trust building is critical. People suspects the implementable of a plan simply due to the doubt for execution as planned. The doubt might be resulted from the perception on current poor service delivery and enforcement control over the urban planning sprawl and management. In order to get rid of this suspicious, enhance the quality of service and communicating more often with the stakeholders can be helpful.

While those have opportunities to witness the well planned for some world class cities in other part of the world and convince that we can do the same for Kuala Lumpur, the task is to market to possibilities to the community at large. The lay man who engages with encountering daily and might not be so bothered about what happenings elsewhere need to be convinced. Ignoring them and owing them an appropriate explanation is unthinkable. Planners, in guiding development and protecting the public interest have a big role to play.