KUALA LUMPUR CITY PLAN 2020 - A Vision for A World Class City

Today I had visited Draft KL City Plan 2020 exhibition at Main Lobby, Kuala Lumpur City Hall, Jalan Raja Laut. The context of the report very interesting and help me for my phd thesis. Kuala Lumpur City Hall's officer had explained to me the future scenario of Kuala Lumpur City. The vision for ‘Kuala Lumpur - A World Class City’, encapsulates the ambition of Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan 2020 (KLSP2020) to make Kuala Lumpur a city that will assume a major global and sub-global role for the benefits of all its communities, workers, visitors and investors. The KLSP emphasizes that the vision and goals of Kuala Lumpur has been formulated with the aims of creating a sustainable city with City Hall ensuring that the planning for Kuala Lumpur will strike a balance between physical, economic, social and environmental development.

Kuala Lumpur City Plan 2020 is City Hall’s primary planning and development strategy. The Plan sets out a thirteen year plan on what must happen to achieve the vision for the City of Kuala Lumpur in 2020. This will guide decision makers, city planners, designers and builders the direction of growth for Kuala Lumpur and lead the city into a World Class City status.Kuala Lumpur’s vision to create a world class living and business environment coincides with the national goal on being competitive and knowledge-intensive. This entails a paradigm shift to the new economy where more knowledgeintensive industries are encouraged to locate and concentrate in Kuala Lumpur. This thrust is expected to permeate throughout the urban economy, creating more wealth for the people and business community, it shall leading to higher living standards, and a more conducive and creative working environment that will encourage active interactions among skilled workers, technopreneurs, innovators, creative artistes and k-businesses.

This new urban economy in Kuala Lumpur shall be characterized by an abundance of skilled human resources. Wealth generated largely from the intense sharing of codified knowledge and information, and new knowledge gained from R&D and intellectual property, increased collaboration between firms and institutions, the extensive use of information and communications technologies (ICT) and the development of more effective learning mechanisms across the entire economy. Spatial growth in Kuala Lumpur over the past decade has been closely associated with the growth of its urban economic activities. The new emerging economies envisioned for Kuala Lumpur shall strengthen it’s central role as the Capital City of Malaysia and the nation’s largest employment centre, where principal concentrations of business, finance, retail, tourist and cultural activities for the entire nation are located. It is thus crucial for the Draft KL City Plan 2020 to develop an urban structure that will meet the demands of this new urban economy. The plan will identify how this economic growth and expansion will be accomodated in Kuala Lumpur’s spatial and development built form. The Plan must also acknowledge the role of Kuala Lumpur not only as the Capital City of Malaysia but also its function as an important national growth node and gateway towards developing a global economy.

Planning for and with the people is a vital component of the KL Local Plan. The public is given the opportunity to participate in planning the development of their city. Their views are important because any change will directly impact their living conditions, income source, and interaction pattern of their community. Besides this, local communities normally know more about problems and development issues in their own backyard, and this knowledge will assist in the preparation of an effective and practical KL Local Plan. Public participation will be invited throughout the preparation stage of the KL Local Plan, and this will be done through public notices; focus group discussions, technical group discussions and workshops; and questionnaires at every stage of study.