00:00hello and good evening i'm melissa idris welcome to consider this this is the show where we want
00:15you to consider and then reconsider what you know of the news of the day the urban renewal bill was
00:21tabled in parliament in august but resistance from certain groups from civil society from
00:28opposition leaders all forced a pause it will now be debated and voted on in the next parliamentary
00:36sitting in october now the government has promised some improvements but the question is whether those
00:43changes will address the heart of the concerns ensuring that urban rejuvenation urban renewal
00:51correctly balances between modernization economic revitalization and urban livability joining me on
01:00the show to discuss this further is dr shahana samsuddin who's the founder and president of the
01:04malaysian urban design association better known as pareka bandar which is a registered ngo championing
01:12good urban design practices dr shahana thank you so much for being back on the show with me i want to
01:19talk a little bit about the urban renewal act ura in short residents um have come up to say that they
01:26are worried about fairness about participation in the consultation the drafting of this act and also
01:33state overreach now wondering as an urban planner what you think the urban renewal bill in its current
01:41draft whether it addresses the fundamentals of good urban planning okay thank you uh melissa again for
01:49inviting me like i said this this aura uh um is now causing um a bit of an unrest especially to the public
01:58who now realize then when there's a lot of resistance what's the big deal why what what is the impact of
02:05ura to their life now we talk about because i'll be looking also into the aspects of a good urban design
02:12relation to the way we plan or our city or or why urban renewal is uh is a better option to deal with the
02:22problems of urban decay and urban blight as well as the problem which actually is not really resolved with ura the problem of
02:31lack of lack of lack of affordable housing that that is actually one of the major issues that has not
02:37been um fully uh resolved and we have more and more especially of the urban poor you know living beyond their
02:46means you know they either renting a house because they couldn't afford to to to to buy the houses offered in
02:53the market by the developer so this issue about uh aura what triggers this uh uh resistance is because of the
03:04way the act has been drafted uh to focus uh more about putting giving powers uh to the developers to become the
03:17driver of the urban renewal program and a big um a lot of the uh focus is on the consent thresholds which uh
03:29becomes a quite a controversy but now the constant threshold has been reduced in order to make it easy
03:35for the developers to acquire their properties and this leads to um dissatisfaction because you know even if you
03:45reduce the consent threshold to 80 percent what about the 20 percent who doesn't agree doesn't uh their
03:53point of view is uh it's not important why is it justified to deny their rights when the properties are
03:59actually just legally and and and also being acquired um uh through all the legal right so this this kind of
04:07issue and the other issue about the age of the breeding being the criteria to to decide whether the
04:17place will be going through the urban renewal because 30 years old that has been put you know
04:22as young as 30 years old for a building it can also be considered under the renewal program so another
04:30issue that has surfaced recently especially with the incident at kampung sunai baru is about heritage
04:38about social cultural dimension the cultural dimension that is not reflected in the way the
04:45draft is uh is being um put forth because a lot of frustration is more on economic development you
04:52know just to develop and so forth because if if you look at the best practices uh in the world because
04:58i've done like i said 20 25 years ago i've done two research one on urban regeneration one on urban renewal in
05:04malaysia at that time we were just focusing on comprehensive development tearing down the the
05:10old places and build new and and the development that that was built later on you know changes the
05:17character of the the place because there is just built to maximize uh profit and the people who are
05:25replacing the residents that has been displaced are those from a different socioeconomic background that actually
05:31are changes the the character of the place now that is why if you look at best practices in the world
05:37they have stopped doing this they go for urban renewal because in through urban renewal you don't necessarily
05:44have to tear down the buildings because there are other options such as rehabilitation and refurbishment
05:52adaptively use or retrofitting that means utilizing the buildings make good good use of the existing buildings
06:01as long as long as they are structurally sound and safe to be occupied dr shona can i ask you uh in the the
06:10current iteration of the urban renewal bill are those principles of rejuvenation and rehabilitation
06:17not present i'm wondering what makes you say that this bill gives power to developers or favors um developer
06:28driven redevelopment you see if you look at the grill they did mention about there's three three um
06:37aspects of uh urban renewal which is a redevelopment that one is the very the one that is causing um
06:46causing the issue of people not being afraid because redevelopment means you pull down the buildings
06:52and you build new and also talking about regeneration which is about but uh it is about um
07:00again areas to be uh that is neglected deputed or abundant will be subject to upgrading uh repairs and then
07:11um uh sometimes also involve landscape but if you look at the definitions that has been given you know
07:17and between urban redevelopment urban and they also put the urban revitalization the which is for
07:24invitation the the the focus on upgrading with defying or landscaping they are more or less the same
07:31so that we so when it comes to uh in practice later on implementation and this will be this that this will be
07:40uh becomes like a gray area you know when you when you when the definition doesn't really uh clarify
07:49in what situation will you go for total demolition in what situation you will you
07:55allow the residents you know to uh to have their houses being repaired or adaptive use mean you change a few
08:02retrofitting change the use of certain buildings and then uh furthermore it that there is a problem because
08:11when there is lack of clarity in that sense so we don't know how what actions will be taken
08:17later on as far as implementation is concerned because in Malaysia the issue is what the plan saves
08:25in the documents the written form is very good i mean it's really going for sustainable development
08:31livable city what else do they put inside there you know um inclusive city and so forth but when it comes to
08:40implementation it's something else so with this kind of um perception this kind of track records in the
08:48past uh where we gave lots of trust to the developers you know to be involved in this kind of development
08:56people are no longer convinced you know that if this act is being uh um approved they will be subject to the
09:06the same kind of problem in the past so i think what is needed you know before you before the
09:11interview is kind of they have to prove they have to prove that the developers and the local the
09:18the government agencies you know will actually make sure that this act will will will actually bring a
09:25better result not as what is happening in the past that's why in the like i said the best practices in
09:31other countries they don't put the developers as the main driver they will set up they will use and act
09:38like this to give power to an uh to a government agency uh or a public corporation but it cannot be into the
09:47private sector uh to lay this side because of one generation is actually a social agenda for urban reform to
09:55improve the quality life of the people not just their housing their environment to give them the
10:01opportunity to live their their life with their heritage value their tradition so forth so that's why
10:06you see because in the benchmarking exercise that i did in uk us australia japan so far you can see the
10:14urban regeneration for uh project is actually not high rise development they are utilizing the because most of the
10:23urbanization was done in areas of um industrial sites or inner cities where the infrastructure is already
10:30outdated you know the buildings are so they will build um they will build the environment is created with good
10:38urban design uh um they even have a master plan urban design framework so they are using urban design to
10:47improve that the quality environment so the outcome is actually the places from a rundown edge
10:53areas and so forth it becomes one of the places that's attract um people and give character to the
10:58city right so very quickly dr chana what would you like to see happen next ahead of the parliamentary
11:04sitting in october i hope that um because of the way the the acts has been drafted that to at its present
11:12form is not yet ready to be table for second reading and to have to vote what needs to be done is to go back
11:22to the drawing boards sit down first review back what is the whole objective of having this act what is
11:29the real problem that you want to tackle and how does the act actually can resolve the problem and helps to
11:36facilitate the implementation of it i think it's not to say outright no no no no no i i i'm taking uh i think
11:45more more more mature and more more more wiser wiser it's not to say we can maybe table the act once you
11:53have sit down and get everybody to to have a way the public to be really ready to accept such an act
12:00then only you could be doing all right dr chana thank you so much for being on the show with me dr chana
12:07samsuddin there from pereka bandha we're going to take a quick break here on consider this we'll be back with more
12:12stay tuned
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