Public and Private

Layman will be able to tell us public area means places or facilities that are commonly owned or used by everyone regardless of their status and background and private area means it is exclusively used or owned by somebody who might have claimed the ownership by way of accreditation by the authority. For example, the house owner by virtue of having the land title to show that he is the rightful owner and hence is exclusively for his own possession. Like wise, public space must be a place or facilities that allowed public access or use by way of authorities declaration or owners' permission. For example, the local authority might have gazette the time for parks to be opened to public subjected that certain rules are observed. The shopping complex management might have allowed public access for visitation provided some code of conducts are followed.

What about five foot corridor in front of the shops? This is privately owned public access. Although it is owned by the building owner and it is his responsibility of maintaining it in good order, he has no right to deny public access simply because the corridor has been declared a public corridor with consent from the owner when he submitted his building plan for authority's approval. This allows the local authorities to enforce order and law against those caused obstruction onto the pathway. If similar analogy applied for the shopping complexes or public park in the vicinity of commercial centres or industrial park, what will happen? Although highly hypothetical, we should not discount the possibility of it will happen eventually. Well, we have to think deep into it.

For landed residential property development in which subdivision of land is required, the local planning authority will normally ask the land for public facilities be surrendered. But the question is why this is not done so for multi storeys residential buildings? Some argue that for this type of development, it is governed by the Strata Titles Act in which management corporation is to be established to look after the maintenance of the common properties within the guarded area. Well, presently the property owners not only paying higher assessment rate but also folk out more money for service charge and sinking fund. If the local planning authority has required that public space be surrendered, then I presume it will reduce the service fee. Some might argue that requesting the developer to surrender the public space in a strata property will affect the viability and marketability of the project. Well, owners might have thought about exclusive use of the facilities, but if the service cost is extremely high, they might have thinking of not maintaining the facilities even though it means of sharing the facilities with others. However, the question of management capacity and competency of local authority will arise. Simply many have no confidence of local authority to impose this condition of surrendering the public space and for their upkeep.

The argument can go on and on and a solution will not on sight the soonest.

Whatever the decision made, my concern is always on principle of fairness and equality. We can set a precedence, but that precedence should be known to the public in advance and further to apply in all qualified projects regardless of area, status and project proponents.

Sustainable City Award

Judges for the Malaysian Sustainable City Award competition visited Petaling Jaya on 24 and 25th June 2010. The purpose was to evaluate the sustainability performance of the Council based on reports and documents submitted. MBPJ together with MPSJ, MP Miri and MB Sibu have been shortlisted this annual award organised by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and Ministry of Housing and Local Government. Apart from briefing, the judges were brought for tour to Beautiful Gates Disabled Centre, SS2 Town Centre, Bukit Gasing Hill, Sungai Way River and SK Sri Kelana, some of the project site under the auspicious of Local Agenda 21 Petaling Jaya initiative.

I believe the judges must be impressed with enthusiasm shown by us as well as our partners in service. One of the significant point to make is the presence and involvement of stakeholders in all projects. I am sure no other areas have seen such dynamism and diverse groups of working together for the betterment of city environment. It is enlightening to see that bottom up rather than top down approach has been widely applied here. The programmes themselves are wide range, from social, neighbourhood, economy to environment at community or city level. Importantly also the sustainability of stakeholders, the most difficult element when it comes to the community development.

New Adventure

Since 17/4/2010, I have been entrusted to oversee the operation of One Stop Secretariat of MBPJ. It is an exciting journey for me in furthering the purpose of town and country planning as well as incorporating the principles of sustainable development in actual physical form with impacts on social and economic development.

For the past 2 months and plus, I have been keeping myself busy in familiarising the rules and regulations as well as the procedures. Surprising me, it took some time to right my frame of thoughts on the existing practice with those provided for. For example, I have thought that with local plan in place, it must be very easy of checking the compliance of planning standard and guidelines, but to my surprise many are still fell back to the old practices of "enquiring" the best deal even though it was stated clearly allowable intensity of development in the local plan.

Another excitement was the Council decision in allowing views of public been considered by way of public views hearing session rather than shut the door down completely even though it is allowed for areas within the local plan coverage. Although it is not a mandatory requirement for Council to notify and consult adjoining land owners on proposed development within the vicinity if a local plan has been gazetted, The Council decided to hear them out. I think it is Local Agenda 21 in practice.

Yet another interesting turn of event was the decision of Council to declassify the condition of planning permission for a project recently. This must be the first time that a local planning authority in Malaysia has made known to the public the details of planning approval. I believe in the spirit of good governance and freedom of information, this must be a foresight and way forward, and break through for local governance.

Well, I believe more will to come.