The aspiration for Greater Kuala Lumpur/Klang Valley (Greater KL/KV) is to drive rapid growth parallel with upgrading the city's liveability, according to the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP)'s A Roadmap for Malaysia. For this National Key Economic Area (NKEA), the Greater KL/KV extends beyond the boundaries of Kuala Lumpur. It is defined as an area covered by 10 municipalities, each governed by local authorities - Kuala Lumpur City Council (DBKL), Perbadanan Putrajaya, Shah Alam City Council (MBSA), Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ), Klang Municipal Council (MPK), Kajang Municipal Council, Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ), Selayang Municipal Council, Ampang Jaya Municipal Council (MPAJ) and Sepang District Council.
In 2010, the Greater KL/KV population was estimated at six million and it contributed about RM263 billion to the nation's Gross National Income (GNI), proving that Greater KL/KV was indeed the engine of the nation's economic growth and hence designated as a NKEA. Greater KL/KV is a unique NKEA as it has a geographical focus rather than the industry focus of the other 11 NKEA's. According to the ETP, Greater KL/KV was selected as a NKEA to reflect four important dynamics, the first one -- that urbanization is a driver of GNI growth, where urbanization was one of the most important drivers of economic growth in any country.
Secondly, the Primary City Matters Most -- that Greater KL/KV dominates Malaysia's urban economy and by a large margin and over the next decade, Greater KL/KV was targeted to grow in population by five percent per year and achieve GNI growth of 10 per cent a year. The third dynamics is that Urban Productivity Does Matter -- that the challenge for Greater KL/KV was to harness the power of urbanization while shaping it to maximise urban productivity to simultaneously pursue efficiency and liveability. Finally a great city needs to be a liveable city -- because while urbanising intensively, Greater KL/KV must also focus on improving liveability and among challenges for Greater KL/KV according to the ETP are stiff competition from neighbouring cities because liveability lags compared to many other Asian cities, public transport remains inadequate and natural assets remain untapped.
ETP has also outlined nine Entry Point Projects (EPP) as pivotal towards achieving the aspiration by 2020 and the economic aspirations for Greater KL/KV was to raise its GNI contribution by 2.5 times, from RM258 billion to approximately RM650 billion per year. The EPP's aim is to attract 100 of the world's most dynamic companies within priority sectors, attracting the right mix of internal and external talent and connecting to Singapore via a high speed rail system. Other EPP are to build an integrated urban mass rapid transit system, revitalizing the Klang River into a heritage and commercial centre, greening greater KL/KV to ensure every resident enjoys sufficient green space, creating iconic places and attractions, creating a comprehensive pedestrian network and developing an efficient solid waste management ecosystem.The successful implementation of the nine EPP will lead to additional business opportunities within Greater KL/KV that will continue to enhance Greater KL/KV's liveability and generate incremental GNI.
Greater KL/KV will need to house one million new residents by 2020, and the current projected housing supply was expected to be sufficient to meet demand.Since the challenge of Greater KL/KV NKEA is a monumental one, it will require a significant amount of funding and that will be achieved via a public-private partnership model. Across the 12 NKEA, Greater KL/KV has the largest public sector funding requirement of RM58 billion or 34 per cent of the total investment requirement and for all the nine EPP, a detailed implementation plan has been developed. There are only three roles above the EPP, the Prime Minister as ultimate sponsor, a Greater KL/KV Steering Committee and a Greater KL/KV Corporation that would act as Secretariat to the Steering Committee. The Greater KL/KV aspiration can be summarized as 20-20 by 2020 --- that is, to be the only city that simultaneously achieves a top 20 ranking in city economic growth as defined by city gross domestic product growth rates while being among the global top-20 most liveable cities by 2020. The KL/KV will pursue both growth and liveability
sources : Economic Transformation Programme Report by Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU), Prime Minister's Department, 2010 and BERNAMA, 2010
Comments :
In my opinion the terminology of Greater Kuala Lumpur has been adopted from the term of Greater London which had been used well before 1965. Particularly to refer to the area covered by the Metropolitan Police District (such as in the 1901 census), the area of the Metropolitan Water Board (favoured by the London County Council for statistics), the London Passenger Transport Area. The area defined by the Registrar General as the Greater London Conurbation. The administrative area was officially created in 1965 and covers the City of London, including Middle Temple and Inner Temple, and the 32 London boroughs (including the City of Westminster). It covers 1572 km2 (607 square miles) and had a 2006 mid-year estimated population of 7,512,400.
According to Tewdwr-Jones and McNeill (2000), the term ‘city-region’ has been in use since about 1950 by urbanists, economists and landuse planners and refers to a strategic and political level of administration and policy-making, extending beyond the administrative boundaries of single urban local government authorities to include urban and/or semi-urban hinterlands. This definition includes a range of institutions and agencies representing local and regional governance that possess an interest in urban and/or economic development matters that, together form a strategic level of policy-making intended to formulate or implement policies on a broader metropolitan scale.
In 1996 , The New Local Government Network (NLGN) in United Kingdom also proposed the creation of city- regions as part of on-going reform efforts, while a report released by the Institute for Public Policy Research’s (IPPR) Centre for Cities proposed the creation of four large city-regions based on Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Greater Manchester. Edinburgh and it's hinterland strong economy (Forth Valley, Fife, West Lothian, Midlothian and East Lothian) means it has been named a one of Europe's fasting growing city-regions.
Furthermore in 2001, the term of city-region has been used concurrent with the era of globalization. Allen J. Scott (ed.) (2001) with his book Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory Policy has gave a new meaning of City-region as a function of command and control centers of the global economy. City-region is a nodal points that function as organizing centers for the inter dependent skein of material, financial, and cultural flows that together sustain contemporary globalization. Research on city-region is founded on two key observations. First, the worldwide distribution of economic activity necessitates strategic control functions that are found in a limited number of locations: globalization in its various guises has led to increased geographical complexity, which calls for some control points to ensure the smooth functioning of the global system. In other words, city-region contain a disproportionate quantity of strategic agents in the global system (e.g., headquarters of multinational corporations and international institutions, and specialized and inter nationalized business firms), and this functional concentration mirrors the deepening of processes of global integration and interdependence.
Second, the exercise of this strategic control is ac complished through the capacity of these world/global city agents to network across space. From the 1970s on ward, two distinct advanced technologies, computers and communications, combined to create a new enabling infrastructure for global organization. As it became more pervasive and sophisticated, this global infrastructure implied that spatial organization became increasingly conceptualized through networks (in which interaction is defined by simultaneity) to the detriment of territoriality (in which interaction is defined by proximity). Envisaging city-region in the context of a ‘network society’ particularly gained momentum in the 1990s, when in fluential authors like Manuel Castells asserted that globalization processes are basically all about transnational processes operating through numerous networks.
In 2006, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a number of studies on city-regions, including an assessment profile of the Newcastle-Gateshead city region and a review of numerous city regions across the world. Therefore, there are many reasons why city-region could become a valuable alternative in stead of Greater Kuala Lumpur to the current system and why Kuala Lumpur city-region worth a closer and further examination, including:
• New Localism: devolution of power to a more appropriate level
• The economic case: Kuala Lumpur city-region in the context of global competitiveness and regional disparities
• Urban governance system works for Kuala Lumpur city-region , why not elsewhere?
• Continuing issue of democratic deficit at regional level
• Low levels of public engagement
• Efficiency - Need for more strategic service delivery solutions in planning, transport,
waste, housing etc.
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