Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR: The surrounding greenery and a park metres away were the deciding factors when Ernest Wester decided to buy a single-storey terrace in Section 22, Petaling Jaya, 14 years ago.

After moving in, going to the park almost daily became a ritual for him and his two young children.

Things have changed drastically since then — in place of the 0.61ha green lung storm catchment area is now a 17-storey condominium, while the park has shrunk. 

Wester and his children hardly visit the park now, and complain about the loss of peace since the condominium came up in 2007 and the influx of “all sorts of people” since 2011.

“[Despite our protests] and laws in place, we could not do anything to stop [the building of] the condominium,” he told The Malaysian Insider.

Compounding their woes, the condominium also has no access road of its own, and has [taken up] land designated as drain reserves.

“We feel cheated of our original quality of life,” said Wester, adding that the neighbourhood felt less safe now because of some condo residents who liked to loiter around at odd hours of the day.

“This is no longer the neighbourhood I moved into,” he said.

So profitable is the property sector that even small plots of land by roadsides are not spared, as clusters of new houses or a condominium sprout up in once open spaces.

Statistics in 2010 show that PJ, for example, fell far short of the recommended area of open space relative to its population size.

By the first quarter of 2014 in Selangor, there were 21,041 units of serviced apartments and 207,950 units of condominiums and apartments, according to the Valuation and Property Services Department’s Residential Property Stock Table 2Q 2014 report.

In the same period, another 19,249 units of serviced apartments and 35,139 units in the condo and apartment category were under construction in Selangor, according to the report.

Established neighbourhoods saw new developments sprouting in their backyards, like in Wester’s case.

Other examples include Jalan Kinrara 1 in Puchong, Selangor. A short distance from the grounds of the old Kinrara military hospital, land that once buffered a playing field surrounded by existing houses is now cramped with rows of new houses under the Kinrara Park project.

In Taman Aman, PJ, controversy brewed last year over the open space near the Taman Paramount LRT station as existing residents in Jalan 22 protested against land clearing for 18 units of three-storey houses as media uncovered irregularities in the land title documents.

And where the Paramount View condominium in PJ now stands was once open space that the local authority should have preserved under land use policies.

If Klang Valley residents are feeling suffocated by the growing concrete jungle and increased traffic congestion, chances are guidelines that stipulate the area of open space relative to the population are being ignored.

 

Policy on open spaces

The Department of Town and Country Planning Peninsular Malaysia has a policy for all local councils to reserve and gazette 10% of land as open and recreational space for all types of housing development, as well as for commercial, industrial, institutional and mixed-use projects.

It also requires that such spaces be fitted with public amenities, such as toilets, phones and gazebos.

There is also a rule under the National Urbanisation Policy that stipulates 2ha of open space for every 1,000 people, said former PJ City Council (MBPJ) councillor Mak Khuin Weng.  

This rule was added to the policy in 2007 during the administration of former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, said Mak.

“(But) none of the councils adhered (to it),” Mak told The Malaysian Insider.

Using PJ as an example, Mak said that based on its 40,000 residents, according to the 2010 national census, there needed to be 1,280ha of open space.

Based on Petaling Jaya’s total area of 9,720ha, there should at least be 972ha of open space. However, there were only 328.6ha of open space in 2010, according to the Selangor town planning report that year, Mak said.

National House Buyers Association honorary secretary-general Chang Kim Loong said football fields, unused open spaces, playgrounds and even open oxidation ponds were all fair game to developers. 

The popular 1 Utama shopping mall in Bandar Utama, PJ, now sits on land originally zoned for a school, while the 8 Petaling condominium in Sri Petaling was built over a former oxidation pond, Chang told The Malaysian Insider.

Asked about these claims, Mak said it was hard to verify but added that there have been many other similar instances where the status of land gazetted as open space was later changed to accommodate new development.

“I was also told of a major development planned at the open air car park next to the Store in Sri Petaling, a potential traffic nightmare,” Chang added.

He said these developments were driven by high demand for housing, especially in urban areas, adding that developers would not build otherwise. 

“Developers are capitalising on this demand and making a big buck and negating the quality of life in the process,” he said.

 

Dictated by developers

Chang agreed that ultimately, it was the residents who suffered, from noise pollution to safety issues during construction, and when the properties are ready, from increased traffic, parking issues and the loss of peace and quiet.

Mak agreed that development was currently “dictated by developers”, and the scarcity of land was causing the rule on open spaces to be ignored.

Under rezoning exercises carried out by the MBPJ, Mak said dilapidated buildings could potentially have been turned into parks, but there were no such proposals in the recent drafts of the Petaling Jaya Local Plans 1 and 2. 

There were instead, proposals for turning parks, land meant for schools, and government land into high-density developments.

In theory, said Chang, there should not be any instances where planning deviated from the predetermined zoning. So, if local plans incorporated open spaces, there should be sufficient laws to ensure the plans are followed, more so if the plans have been gazetted.

Mak confirmed this, noting that under the Town and Country Planning Act, it was illegal to do anything on a piece of land other than what the land was zoned for in the local plan.

People have a right to be consulted and have a say over proposed development projects, he said, adding that such provisions were in the Act.

However, the problem is that the Act does not state specific mechanisms as to how such consultations should be carried out.

“Ideally, the consultation process should be institutionalised so that resident groups are automatically given a copy of the relevant documents without the need for them to even request for it. [This will enable them] to make informed decisions,” said Mak.

Most times, however, by the time residents are aware that a new project is taking shape, the hoardings are already around the site with a notice on the development.

While development may be “dictated” by developers, Chang also blames the local authorities.

“It is lax enforcement that is the worrying trend. Enforcement is our country’s weakest link.” — The Malaysian Insider

 

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on January 14, 2015.

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