Contrast@PJ: Recycling for good

During a recent visit to a land fill site located at PJS 3, i noticed that recycling activity for construction waste was carried out by the workers. Construction materials such as wood, brick, sand, steel, tiles and etc were separated before other wastes are dumped into the lake. The privately owned lake has been used for waste disposal purpose with the view to fill it up for development. While the 3R approach is commendable, the process is rather slow and suspicious. After 7 years of operation, less than 15% of the total area of the lake has been filled. At the same time, monitoring on the type of waste dumped into the lake is not done properly, hence disposal of organic and kitchen waste which produce methane gas during fermentation process is not impossible. Perhaps thorough recycling process for construction waste will help in solving the problem.

SS2 Cares CNY Street Carnival 2009

For the last 4 years, SS2 Cares, Local Agenda 21 in collaboration with the residents groups, disabled groups, NGO and the traders organised the SS2 Cares CNY Street Carnival at the SS2 Town Centre. It is a fun-filled and informative event organised in conjunction with the Chinese New Year celebration. This year saw 76 traders included 4 disabled friends set up their stalls. Variety of goods for festive celebration are on display and sale.

Capitalising on the big crowd, Local Agenda 21 PJ in collaboration with TetraPak and Justlife organises the awareness campaign for recycling and environmental. While TetraPak offers public to recycle beverage carton by giving out goodies in exchange of empty carton, Justlife offers shoppers come with their own shopping bag for a bottle of garbage enzyme. This is a good out reach opportunity to promote sustainable development. It is so difficult to get people to come to learn about good environmental practice, more so to get them practicing recycling habit. It become a easy task to get shoppers to stop for a while to listen to the explanation. Perhaps more awareness and information dissemination programmes shall be done at the functions with high turn out of people.

Community Development

The Community Development Working Committee of Local Agenda 21 has the first focus group meeting last Tuesday. The meeting was briefed on the past and current programmes as well as the proposed direction for community development in Petaling Jaya. It was told that previously, the Committee was named Social Integration as lacking of social interaction and mutual understanding amongst members of the multi ethnic and social background community was identified in early year 2000 as one of the three concerns for PJ community. Based on the identified issue, an action plan entitled Strengthening the Neighbourhood Spirit with the participation from various stakeholders was formulated. While the meeting acknowledged that the action plan is still intact and on going programmes should be carried out and enhanced so that a united, harmonious and caring society of PJ can be created, it is time to look into other focus as well.



After much deliberation and drawing from the experiences and observations of the members, it was agreed that aspect on children be given due consideration. Children, as outlined under the Chapter 25, Agenda 21 is a global concern. It mentioned that as children and youth made up of 30% of the total world population, it is primarily important involve this group in the sustainable development process. Every sphere of governance system has to incorporate this group and focusing on the poverty, nutrition, health, education and right aspects. Focusing on children issue is also a pulling factor for greater participation from other segment of society as generally every one is concerned about children. Having said this, YB Dr Nasir, the chair reminded the committee to be wary about possibility of over exploiting the interest of the children.



The Committee decided to draft an outline plan on children for further discussion. A plan with the goal to develop A Child Friendly City of Petaling Jaya. Friendly in the sense of safety, health, education, opportunities and participation. The experience of Community Support Network headed by Datuk Ghazali bin Dato' Yusoff will be invited to share their thoughts and works during the next meeting scheduled on next month. Other resource persons will also be invited.



It is definitely a good start.

Idle Footing

This is not footing under construction, but the abandoned one. At least 20 of similar footings along Jalan SS25/2 fronting with the LDP were found during my recent walk there. The footing was first set up for billboard structure but leave behind after the structure was relocated. This is a common phenomena with any site for advertising board. The billboard contractors have not factored in the maintenance culture and simply do not bother to remove the footing after the site is no more in use. If this trend is not checked properly, i am worried that soonest we will see a lot of footings idle at the side of walkway, junction and open space. The footing is dangerous to the pedestrian and park users. Perhaps it is good to set up a mechanism to monitor and act on this unscrupulous act. May be a sinking fund in which part of the deposit by contractors shall be retained to remove the footing or structure, if necessary.

Anti Illegal Buntings Campaign

Members for the Neighbourhood Watch SS25A organised an Anti illegal Buntings Campaign last Sunday. I am proud to be part of the team. The Campaign was held to take down excessive hanging and displaying of buntings on the trees, lamp posts and buildings. Buntings and posters advertising plumbing and roof leaking repair services, loan facilities, properties information, offer for educational opportunities and telecommunication offers all over the place has become a common phenomena in Petaling Jaya. Public area with public notice boards, phone booths, substation and bus stops are draughted by the advertisements, at time blocking the information. This is definitely a nuisance to the neighbourhood and city scape.

The Authorities have to get rid of this nonsense. In order to do that, the authorities have to act fast, precise and efficiently or else it is no ending story as it is becoming easier and cheaper to hang and stick the advertising material onto public structure. Perhaps the approach for broken window policy shall be applied. The Authorities have to restore or to repair or to reinstall whatever stickied or hanged back to the original state immediately after any irresponsible act or else it will portrait wrong impression to others that such thing is ok to do or no act is to be taken. Once a damaged structure is repaired faster than the anticipated time, presumably people might not want to repeat the same act again.

Having said this, the hands of the authorities are tight in which close monitoring and speedy action is almost impossible. With regard to this, the participation of the stakeholders is crucial. Residents group to keep monitoring and clean up any unwanted buntings and posters as soon as possible. As local residents for their neighbourhood, they are in better position to watch over unwanted activities. By incorporating residents, sense of ownership of having a clean and tidy living environment can be inculcated.

Perhaps the Authorities should organise a public structure adoption scheme. Public structure such as the lamp posts, telephone posts, substation, railing, telephone booth etc can be adopted by the residents. Residents will be rewarded for keeping their adopted facilities in good health of condition. I believe, this is do-able and the impact will be much better than the authorities fighting the battle alone and with tight hands.

Contrast@PJ: Directional vs Advertising Sign

The directional sign was erected at Jalan SS25/2 to provide information to the motorists heading to Kampung Chempaka, Taman Mayang, Dataran Prima, Taman Emas, Jalan SS25/23 and Lebuhraya Damansara Puchong. It is nothing unusual, but the location for the signboard. The signboard was erected in no where near to the junction closes to the above places as mentioned. The orientation of the signboard is sliding towards the coming traffic from Lebuhraya Damansara Puchong, thus making the advertisement at the back side is visible to the motorists.

With the above observation, i can only assume that the signboard was put up mainly for advertising purpose, rather than for the purpose of public notification.

Catch 22@PJ: Gated Storage Space

Gated storage space? It happened in my own neighbourhood. A gate was put up at the entrance of the back lane as a deterrent to the deteriorating safety situation in SS25 but turn out to be the storage for a rojak seller. The hawker store his tables and chairs, umbrella, bins and even a refrigerator there for safe keeping. Is this considered an abuse of usage for public space or an intelligent way for optimising the resources? While the gate was put up to prevent stringers to loiter in the neighbourhood, it is not meant for keeping private goods in the public area. We are in the Catch 22 situation now that it is a common scene in PJ seeing many residents and premise owners encroaches onto the public space. It is common to see the piling of construction material on the road shoulders, the placing of gas cylinders, rubbish bin and stalls on top of the drain, the pre-booking of parking lot with the tyres, signboard and bins on the road.

What should we do? Perhaps to educate people that encroachment onto public space is equivalent to raping the green area and vandalising the public properties, and it is a punishable offence. Shame based approach could be applied so that people's conscious is clear. Until this concept is implanted into everyone mentality and value, these kind of "offences" will continue and having a tidy and beautiful city scape may not be possible in the near future.

Sustainable Planning

I have a chit-chat with a friend from Singapore recently over the issue of landslide at Bukit Antarabangsa and its' impact on the future challenges for planning. We agreed that with this climate change era, planning within the carrying capacity of environment is inevitable. Environment, and not solely the economic gain should be the bottom line for designing the quantum of a development. Disaster is there to happen if development is over built or goes against the nature.


Sustainable planning is looking beyond creating the houses, but home building. It is about community cohesion rather than physical neighbourhood area. It is about interaction between human and the nature. Human value and scale should be incorporated in the structure and the structure should have been built according to the form of the natural environment.


Some might argue that with technological advancement, any changes is possible. They are of the opinion that technologies can help in restoring the damages, in changing the soil form and structure and filling up the uneven soil form. While it is possible to have a solid state of development for an individual project with much engineering care, it is a challenge of getting coordinated efforts amongst different project proponents. Many of the time, project proponent is only interested to study and propose measures for their project or within the vicinity. For example, to project traffic and trip generation for a particular project without considering other contributing factors from nearby development projects. The coordinating efforts are put on the shoulder of the authorities.

While it is not wrong for the project proponents to build and sell their properties and let go any saleable space they have, it is their social responsibility to ensure the future prospect as well as risks. It is not ethical to wash entire hands after selling off the properties without considering the risks associated to it, or the maintenance part. While local authorities is entrusted to look after the built environment and the inhabitants, i believe the project proponents can still play some role. For example, project proponents for high rise development can contribute to a fund similar to the sinking fund for strata properties for the monitoring and up keeping of sloped projects.


Planners have to move beyond the ordinary land use and layout planning. It is not sufficient to justify a good layout plan by looking at cost effectiveness and economic return only, but meeting the needs for sustainable development, namely social justice and cohesion, economic vibrancy and environmental sustainability. Planning for a city that is vibrant, energetic, harmonious, friendly, efficient, connected, accessible, caring and importantly sustainable. A fine city does not necessary reflection of sustainability. For example, a zero littering city due to the efficiency of waste collection and cleaning service but not because of the 3R habit of the residents, to me is not the sustainability that we are looking forward. For that to happen, planners have to plan the follow through by incorporating mankind's habit, maintenance culture and practices, climate change, technological advancement into the design. Physical design to prevent crime, to encourage sustainable and healthy lifestyle, to reduce travelling and consumption, to promote neighbourliness and to protect the environment.

Planners have to be braved enough facing the stakeholders, not the client or other fellow consultants only. They have to talk to stakeholders and convince them about the concept and principles. We have to learn to market our plan and design in which engaging the stakeholders at the earliest stage is essential. The time for briefing the stakeholders on what you intend to plan is long gone. The stakeholders demand to be involved in the planning process, not to the mere comment after design has been finalised. Towards that, planners have to polish their skills on negotiation, presentation, constructive discourse, public relationship, marketing and selling and above all competency level.

To me all these are essential if planners are to be entrusted to lead other professional for a development consortium or to earn the respect from the community.

Happy New Year 2009

It is time to greet everyone a Happy and Sustainable New Year. 9 months have passed since i first started blogging. I have reported the happenings or events about Local Agenda 21 Petaling Jaya; I have penned some of my thoughts about sustainable development with reference to some events; and my suggestions for improvement over some programmes. Perhaps, it is time for me to summarise major pieces of news/write ups for year 2008.

1. For year 2008, LA 21 PJ experienced a major structural changes after the 308 General Election and The Liveable Cities Workshop. The Working Committees covering different aspects identified during the Workshop were established. These include Environment, Community Development, Economy, Safety, People with Disabilities, Good Governance, By-Laws and Policies, Infrastructure and Transportation.
2. The presence of new players and partners. The players especially those representing the political parties were replaced with others. Having said this, the active participation from existing NGO and CBO representatives remained unchanged. In fact, new initiatives were brought in. These include the household composting, tree planting, park adoption, lake rehabilitation, recycling programmes, introduction of garbage enzyme making etc
3. The PJ Best Neighbourhood Competition comes to the 6th Year. The Awards to recognise the sustainable initiatives of CBOs gain momentum with the interests shown by many residents organisation and State Government.
4. The PJ Recycling Expo into the 4th Year. The Expo, organised in conjunction with the National Recycling Day celebration was held in a shopping complex, signalled the new venture of LA 21 PJ to out reach the private sector.
5. LA 21 for Ramadan Bazaar was introduced for the first time. A stall promoting recycling of beverage cartons were set up at 4 Ramadan Bazaar to encourage recycling. The response is very encouraging with many participation and enquiries about the next event to come.
6. Liveable Cities Workshop to identify and to formulate the way forwards for PJ was held in conjunction with the City Day celebration. The Workshop co-organised with Malaysian Institute of Planners saw participation from members of the community, professional, academicians, businesses, government officers and elected representatives.
7. The starting of household waste composting pilot project, a project led by CETDEM and funded by DANIDA-SWMC and Ministry of Housing and Local Government is aimed at providing training to 50 household in PJ to learn and to do composting at source.
8. The Merdeka Celebration reached its' 8th year. The celebration continued with activities organised by various stakeholders at different localities. Elements of sustainable development principles were found in many activities, an improvement from the past years.
9. The launching of Transit for People With Disabilities. First of its kind introduced and operated by local authority in Malaysia for the PWD. The commuting service is provided free of charge within the vicinity of PJ. The response is overwhelming in which a 2nd van will be purchased in year 2009. Similarly, the community bus service was introduced to ply the route serving people with low and middle income.
10. Public participation is experiencing tremendous changes in term of context, content and process. Participation of stakeholders are encouraged for all kind of development. This trend is expected to blossom with the ever willing residents to step forward to participate in the development process.

Once again Happy New Year.