Human emotions are strange and unaccountable. This explains why females remain an enigma and why we should probably be kind to them. I’ve seen the females in my house reduced to tears by a TV sitcom but watch unflinching as CNN reports on mass deaths from earthquake or starvation.
We have to accept the illogicality of our emotional response to external data. I could tell you that 70 million died as a result of Mao Tse Tung’s Great Leap Forward. I could also share the snippet that Mao never bathed or cleaned his teeth and his breath was horrible. Which, I wonder, would cause you the most revulsion?
Calibrating human emotion is obviously not yet a science which explains why Melbourne was recently voted the world’s most liveable city. To me, it is a collection of aged wet Victorian buildings housing a collection of aged wet Victorians. Obviously there is a body of opinion out there which inexplicably disagrees with me.
The exact meaning of “liveable” needs more study and I’m willing to bet that even if you can pin it down, there will be cultural variations you can’t begin to imagine.
Malaysia is a world leader in developing master planned townships but I think the professional approach to master planning has become too empirical. When was the last time a town planner knocked on your door to ask if you really enjoyed living in his creation? Have you thought about what you might say before setting the dog on him? Yet, if he doesn’t get his leg bitten from time to time, Mr Planner is just going to keep churning out the same old blueprint.
If you accept the complexity of human response, the probability of cultural differences and the lack of primary research, then you will have to view town planning as an art as much as a science. Charles Landry, in his excellent book The Creative City, suggests that the town planner should be only one of the team when master planning a new community. Unlike science, art cannot progress without continual attempts to break new boundaries. Yet Malaysia’s new residential developments are mostly reflective of the “Garden City” model popular in England 150 years ago when philanthropists tried to give factory workers a taste of the farmland they had only recently left behind. I think Garden Cities are boring and they remind me of Melbourne. Shouldn’t we review their relevance to modern Malaysia?
Put your newspaper down and go and ask your son if he’d rather inherit a 2-storey terraced house in Klang, or an apartment over The Curve. There, I told you. Last week I stayed in a modest hotel in Central, Hong Kong. Even though I was within shouting distance of some of the world’s largest corporations my street was narrow and interesting and while having breakfast I could watch a man across the road strip the insulation off copper wire inside his little recycling shop. At night some interesting bars and restaurants would open up and I realised I was staying in a living community. I didn’t miss the lack of trees and three different kinds of lamp post and neither did I miss my car because taxis and rail services were all readily available.
I’m not sure I agree with the recent World Bank report which reckons Kuala Lumpur can’t attract sufficient human talent because it is not as liveable as London, Paris or New York. This seems to be a very Western-centric pompous pronouncement and maybe it was written by a woman or by a French person. However I am very interested in the argument that modern human settlements should be patches of very high density surrounded by green. This seems to be the opposite of current Malaysian planning practice which continues to roll out acre upon acre of monotonous low density suburb. So this might be an appropriate time to re-think. Maybe the Housing and Local Government Ministry should start a blog. Look for me there; I’ll be ‘Disgruntled from PJ’.
Chris Boyd is executive chairman of international property consultants CB Richard Ellis (Malaysia)
