Urban planning for sustainable urbanization

Abstract

This paper perceives sustainable urbanization as an ideal to be achieved by the urbanization process and urban growth in Malaysia. Sustainable urbanization should become the common shared value for every citizen and urbanite. Yet the concept is still far from being clear to guide city governance and planners. Cities keep on expanding in size in the country. The urbanization of capital at the global level in the thirty years has made it possible for Malaysia to adopt industrialism as a means to bring itself out of the third world to first in the 2020. In the process industrial estates have been developed in strategically planned areas either close to or within existing major cities’ contiguous areas. The impacts of the industrialization process are physically and socially clear, ranging from those changes that contribute to the betterment of livelihood in the city to negativities that threaten the urban ecosystem health and the urban environment as a whole. Can urban planning guide the urbanization process to achieve sustainable city? It is argued here that the state of the art in urban planning does pay tribute to sustainable city ideals but there seems to be a gap between planning for sustainable city, that is sectoral, and planning sustainable city that is holistic. Parts of the problems lie in the concept of sustainable development from which sustainable city concept is derived. Apart from being culturally biased to the developed western countries, we need to find commonalities embedded in the concept that is meaningful to us. Urban planning in Malaysia has paid much attention to physical planning, with emphases on meeting standards. Overall, urban planning does not consider the total urban ecosystem dynamics, albeit in recent years the guide lines for structure and local plans do pay due attention to the environment