Cities, Vol. 19, No. 5, p.

357–370, 2002
Pergamon  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd.
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City Profile
Kuala Lumpur
metropolitan area
A globalizing city-region
T Bunnell* and PA Barter
Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Kent
Ridge, Singapore 117570

S Morshidi
School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

The Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur is the national capital of Malaysia and forms the core of
the nation’s most populous urban region. It is the increasingly global orientation of the city and its
implications for the wider urban region which form the focus of this profile. Material infrastructure
and spectacular symbolic spaces facilitating the globalization of Kuala Lumpur have overwhelmingly
concentrated in a new southern growth corridor over the past decade or more. We detail the rise
and socio–spatial implications of an expanded Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area (KLMA). Three
interrelated dimensions – information and communications technologies (ICTs), transport and hous-
ing – are critically evaluated in turn.  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, metropolitan area, globalising, globally-oriented, city-region

Introduction: globalizing
greater Kuala Lumpur
The rapid transformation of Kuala
Lumpur and its wider urban region dur-
ing the last decade of the twentieth cen-
tury demands greater critical scrutiny
than it has so far attracted. Three issues
in particular motivate this profile. First,
an overarching theme is the Kuala
Lumpur region as a “globalizing city””.
Since the early 1990s, Kuala Lumpur
has undergone a reorientation from fed-
eral capital to aspiring national “node”
in global networks. It is this globalizing
∗Tel.: +65-6874-3862; fax: +65-6777-3091;
e-mails: geotgb@nus.edu.sg; geopba@nus.
edu.sg; morshidi@usm.my
shift or global reorientation which
forms an important focus of our profile.
A second motivation concerns the
dramatic nature of the development of
the city. Population increase, spatial
expansion and economic growth over
several decades are, of course, part of
this. Yet urban landscape change in
Kuala Lumpur has also been a story of
the ascendance of “spectacular space”
(cf. King, 1996). Perhaps the most
spectacular of all is the Kuala Lumpur
City Centre (KLCC) project, a “city
within a city” development which
includes the world’s tallest building,
the Petronas Towers (see Fig. 1). In
common with other large-scale urban
development projects in the city,
KLCC features a complex interrelation
of private and public sector interests.
Politically connected individuals and
companies have figured prominently in
numerous real estate and infrastruc-
ture developments.
The third theme demanding attention
in the Kuala Lumpur area is its emerg-
ing status as an urban region. While
urban development beyond the Federal
Territory of Kuala Lumpur has long
been recognized as forming part of a
broader Klang Valley urban region,
planners and policy makers are now
acknowledging the existence of a more
extensive Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan
Area (KLMA) (see Fig. 2). The urban
region’s governance characteristics,
increasing integration via networked
infrastructure and its developing urban
structure emerge as sub-themes.
We examine these interrelated

357

Figure 1 The Petronas Twin Towers and the global Kuala Lumpur Cityscape, Paul Barter, 2002
themes as follows. In the next section
we detail the location and historical
development of Kuala Lumpur and the
emergence of a larger Klang Valley
urban region. The centralization of
political authority, particularly within
Kuala Lumpur federal territory, has
made this the locus of ostensibly
national development projects. How-
ever, in the subsequent section, we go
on to consider how the political vision
and planning aspirations for the city
and its wider region have become
increasingly globally oriented. We sug-
gest that the globalization of Kuala
Lumpur is closely bound up with the
emergence of the extended KLMA
including the new high-tech Multime-
dia Super Corridor (MSC) zone. The
remainder of the paper then critically
examines globalizing KLMA focusing,
in particular, on developments in MSC
and the emerging “southern corridor”.
Three interrelated aspects are con-
sidered in turn: information and com-
358
City Profile: T Bunnell et al.
munications technologies (ICTs), trans-
port, and housing.
Location and historical
development
After its formation at the confluence of
the Klang and Gombak rivers in the
1850s, Kuala Lumpur grew rapidly
from the end of the nineteenth century
to become the administrative center of
the Federated Malay States. Nonethe-
less, even prior to independence in
1957,
Kuala Lumpur remained essentially a
provincial town overshadowed by
Singapore
(Gullick, 1983, p 166). Following inde-
pendence, and after the formation of
Malaysia in 1963, however, the city
took center stage in national develop-
ment. By the 1970s, the gazetted area
of the city featured a population of
around 450,000 (Aiken, 1982). Evers
and Korff (2000, p 53) attribute Kuala
Lumpur’s rapid growth to a combi-
nation of industrialization and “bureau-
cratization” owing to the concentration
of government employees in the federal
and Selangor state administrative
center. In 1972, Kuala Lumpur was
conferred city status and two years later
became a separate Federal Territory
(Phang et al, 1996). The 243 sq km
handed over by the Sultan of Selangor
to the federal government on 1 Febru-
ary 1974 represented the culmination of
a progressive enlargement of the terri-
torial boundaries of Kuala Lumpur (see
Fauza, 2001) (see Fig. 3).
Kuala Lumpur has also long formed
part of a larger urban region extending
beyond the bounds of the federal terri-
tory. Despite regional redistribution
goals, particularly following the New
Economic Policy (NEP) from the early
1970s (Malaysia, 1971), urban devel-
opment has been skewed towards
the so-called “Western corridor”

Figure 2 Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area
(Malaysia, 1985) of Peninsula Malaysia
and around Kuala Lumpur in parti-
cular.1 The end of the 1950s saw the
beginning of urban and industrial
1
The other main centres of urban develop-
ment in the western corridor are George-
town (Penang) and Johor Bahru. There is a
certain path dependency here in that indus-
trialisation, and especially export-oriented
City Profile: T Bunnell et al.
development westwards along Old
Klang Road – at that time the main
route to Port Klang – thus marking
what some contemporary scholars
manufacturing, has been concentrated in
those areas of the country with existing
transport infrastructure and facilities for
access to overseas markets (Lee, 1995).
recognized as the forerunner of a
greater urban region (Hamzah, 1965, p
138). This included the planned “new
town” of Petaling Jaya (Lee, 1987)
located beyond the existing western
urban fringe, while the completion of
the Federal Highway linking Kuala
Lumpur and Port Klang a decade later
further integrated and facilitated devel-
opment in the Klang Valley. Another
359
 City Profile: T Bunnell et al.

Figure 3 Kuala Lumpur federal territory

Table 1 Population estimates for Kuala Lumpur and its region, 1900–1990 (million persons)

1900 1950 1960 1970 1980/81 1990/91 2000

Kuala Lumpur Conurbation 0.08 0.35 0.70 0.91 1.46 2.66 –

Klang Valley – – – – 2.02 3.13 4.55
Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area (KLMA) – – – – – – 4.80

Sources: The Klang Valley and KLMA figures are from Malaysian census data and official Department of Statistics estimates (in the case of the
1997 figure). Moriconi–Ebrard (1993), Annexe A, is the source for Kuala Lumpur Conurbation for all years (this term refers to the contiguous
urbanized area consisting mainly of Kuala Lumpur itself, Petaling Jaya, and their contiguous extensions across their administrative boundaries).

360

significant corridor extended about 22
kilometers to the southeast towards
Kajang (see Fig. 2).
By the early 1970s, “Klang Valley”
was recognized as a coherent urban
planning region (Katiman, 1997). In
addition to the Federal Territory of
Kuala Lumpur, the Klang Valley
included the four Selangor state dis-
tricts of Gombak, Klang, Petaling and
Hulu Langat. The combined population
total of this area was around 3 million
by 1991 (Fauza, 2001; and see Table
1). Unusually among large Asian cities,
the urban region has a modest urban
density of less than 60 persons per hec-
tare of urban land-use, which is similar
to western European densities
(Kenworthy and Laube, 2001). The
urban structure has continued to
develop via planned “townships” or
new towns, both government- and pri-
vately initiated, following patterns
found in the earlier developments of
Bangsar and Petaling Jaya that were
themselves influenced by the British
new town planning tradition (Lee,
1987). A long line of such new towns
has included Badar Tun Razak and
Wangsa Maju (within the Federal Ter-
ritory itself), Shah Alam (the 1970s
new capital for Selangor), Bangi New
Town, Subang Jaya (and its extension
USJ) and almost 40 others (Dasimah,
2001). Such large-scale developments
have been facilitated by a hinterland
dominated by large corporately owned
rubber and oil palm plantations which
lend themselves to being converted to
urban land-use in one go, often by the
plantation corporations themselves.2 A
number of pre-existing towns have also
become part of the urban region, the
most important being Rawang to the
north, Kajang to the south and Klang
and Port Klang to the southwest (see
Fig. 2). In addition, more haphazard
expansions of existing urban centers
within the region have continued,
especially along road corridors. This
has been followed by a gradual filling
in of interstices between corridors and
between urban centers, including the
“in-situ urbanization” of formerly rural
2
It is no coincidence, therefore, that former
plantation workers form a significant pro-
portion of the squatter population in Kuala
Lumpur and the state of Selangor.
City Profile: T Bunnell et al.
villages in certain areas (Brookfield et
al, 1991).
Far from diluting the significance of
the Federal Territory, the development
of the Klang Valley urban region reaf-
firmed Kuala Lumpur’s national cen-
trality. By the 1980s, Kuala Lumpur
was recognizable as the commercial
and political core of Malaysia’s pri-
mary metropolitan region. Ziauddin
Sardar recently (2000, p 46) under-
scored the national significance of
Kuala Lumpur in casting Federal Terri-
tory as the space
in which and from which the whole
of Malaysia is made; it was made by
Malaysian history and today makes
the course of Malaysia’s future.
The transformation of Kuala Lumpur’s
urban landscape in the 1980s both rep-
resented and articulated a Malay-cent-
ered conception of national identity as
expressed through monumental
regionalist architectural forms such as
Hijjas Kasturi’s “LUTH” tower and
Menara Maybank. Politically, the
national-scale role of Kuala Lumpur
was augmented by the progressive cen-
tralization of authority over the city
(see also Bunnell, 2002a). In 1978, the
Mayor of the city was made respon-
sible to a newly created Federal Terri-
tory Ministry. Nine years later, the
authority of the Minister of the Federal
Territory was shifted directly to the
Prime Minister’s Department on
account of Dr. Mahathir’s “personal
interest in the development of Kuala
Lumpur” (Phang et al, 1996, p 136).
Similar mechanisms have been
applied to the wider urban region.
Although the Klang Valley has little or
no unified governance structure, coher-
ence in planning is achieved indirectly,
to some extent, through the centraliz-
ation of much power in certain Federal
Government ministries and agencies
(notwithstanding some failures of coor-
dination between these agencies). In
particular, strong influence in key plan-
ning matters is exercised by the Prime
Minister’s Department through its
Economic Planning Unit which, among
other important functions, controls the
privatization of large infrastructure pro-
jects. At least one explicit coordinating
agency has been the apparently tooth-
less Klang Valley Planning Secretariat.
The federal structure of government in
Malaysia means that State governments
control land matters and can, in theory,
exercise independence in many plan-
ning matters. However, in practice, the
increasingly centralized power struc-
ture within the Barisan Nasional (BN)
coalition, especially the United Malays
National Organization (UMNO),
reduces such autonomy in BN-con-
trolled states such as Selangor. As
such, the Federal Government has been
able to push forward a series of devel-
opments that project a grand vision for
the Kuala Lumpur urban region. It is
the increasingly global orientation of
this urban vision to which we now turn.
Globalizing Kuala Lumpur
From the late 1980s, Kuala Lumpur
began what might be understood as a
global reorientation. Of course, the
beginnings of Malaysia’s economic
“global shift” may be traced back much
further to Export Processing Zones
(EPZs) established from the early
1970s (Rasiah, 1995), including one at
Sungai Way in the Klang Valley. What
was new, however, was Federal
Government recognition of a need for
specifically urban-centered strategies
for globalization (Lee, 1996). As Mor-
shidi and Suriati (1999, p 21) put it,
The country’s political leaders were
of the opinion that the city of Kuala
Lumpur would be the key to the
future economic success of Malaysia
within the context of the highly glo-
balized economy.
Across the Asia–Pacific region in the
1990s, “world class” urban investment
was increasingly understood as a
national means of “plugging in” to glo-
bal political, economic, and social net-
works (see, for example, Douglass,
1998; Olds, 2001; Lo and Marcotullio,
2000). We are not suggesting that
Kuala Lumpur has reached – or is
likely to reach – the apex of conven-
tional urban studies city hierarchies
(see Beaverstock et al, 1999). Rather,
Malaysia’s principal metropolitan
center is understood as globalizing and
globally oriented.
The proliferation of expressways and
big-box shopping centers in the Kuala
Lumpur urban region would appear to
lend credence to arguments that it
(along with others city–regions in Sou-
theast Asia) has been shaped by the
very same forces shaping cities in the
361

US and elsewhere (see Dick and
Rimmer, 1998). Certainly, shopping
centers in the Kuala Lumpur region
have undergone a change from being
primarily shop-house based, to depart-
ment stores, to large shopping malls
often located near expressways and
interchanges. However, Kuala Lum-
pur’s new town-based (middle-density)
model is still somewhat distinct from
North American urban structure or
other patterns in the region and is per-
haps more akin to British experiences.
More fundamentally, we are wary of
reducing the transformation of the
Kuala Lumpur region to supposedly
ubiquitous forces from “outside” or
“above” (see also McGee, 2002). The
“globalization of Kuala Lumpur”
implies a range of actors and auth-
orities – including the nation-state (see
Bunnell, 2002b) – seeking to discur-
sively and materially reposition to the
city–region in transnational flows of
capital, people, and products.
Two megaprojects at the beginning
of the 1990s signify city and federal
authorities’ increasingly global outlook
and aspirations. First is the aforemen-
tioned Kuala Lumpur City Centre
(KLCC) project which, at its unveiling
in 1992, was proclaimed as being
“among the largest real estate develop-
ments in the world” (Mahathir, 1992).
In addition to the record-breaking
height of the 452m Petronas Twin
Towers, phase 1 of KLCC included a
concert hall for the newly created
Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra; a
luxury hotel, the Mandarin Oriental;
two further office blocks, Ampang
Tower and Esso Tower; a six-storey
shopping mall and a 50-acre public
park (see Bunnell, 1999). The former
city racecourse along Jalan Ampang
was thus transformed into premium
infrastructure and a symbolic space for
“hooking up” to the global economy
(cf. Olds, 1995). A public proposal to
preserve a “quiet place” for city resi-
dents (Edwin, 1990, p 9) was rejected
in favor of an opportunity to proceed
with a “world class” development
which would put both city and nation
on “the world map” (Mahathir, cited in
KLCC Holdings, 1995, p 1). On the
one hand, the specifically national com-
mercial dominance of Kuala Lumpur
has been extended with the expansion
of the tertiary sector. Merchant banking
362
City Profile: T Bunnell et al.
and other producer services in Malay-
sia, for example, are overwhelmingly
concentrated in the national capital
(Lee, 1996; Morshidi, 1998, 2000).
Yet, on the other hand, the dramatic
transformation of the Kuala Lumpur
skyline over the past decade is a direct
consequence of the city’s growing inte-
gration into regional and global finan-
cial circuits (Morshidi and Suriati,
1999).
The second globalizing megaproject
in the early 1990s was the Kuala Lum-
pur International Airport (KLIA). In
1991, a 10,000 hectare site around
Sepang (some 60 km south of Kuala
Lumpur) consisting mostly of oil palm
plantations, was chosen for the devel-
opment of a new regional and inter-
national “transportation hub” serving
the city and nation (Kuala Lumpur
International Airport Berhad, 1994).
The urban–regional implications of the
estimated RM 9 billion project (Kuala
Lumpur International Airport Berhad,
1998) extended beyond the Sepang site
even before development commenced
in 1994. KLIA and the transportation
links proposed to integrate it with the
existing Kuala Lumpur–Klang Valley
urban region made known a new
growth corridor extending southwards
from the federal territory (Lee, 1995).
It is now a commonplace in the urban
studies literature to speak of an
extended urban region incorporating
the districts of Sepang and Kuala Lan-
gat in addition to the Klang Valley dis-
tricts. Katiman Rostam (1997) termed
this the “Klang–Langat Valley”. In the
latest round of planning for the region,
the area, with a population in 2001 of
4.8 million, has been referred to as
Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area
(KLMA) (Institute Sultan Iskandar and
RMA-Perunding Bersatu Sdn Bhd,
1999). The decision to locate the new
Federal Government Administrative
center, Putrajaya, at Perang Besar mid-
way between KLIA and Kuala Lumpur
provided a further stimulus to the
development of the extended urban
zone (see Fig. 2).3
3
It may, in fact, be argued that Putrajaya and
KLCC represent contradictory urban plan-
ning impulses, with KLCC representing city
centre renewal and a centralising tendency
(supported by radial transport infrastructure)
versus the decentralizing impulse of Putra-
jaya, which has often been justified in part
It has been since the launch of the
so-called Multimedia Super Corridor
(MSC) in 1996, however, that we have
seen the clearest attempts to unite (at
least rhetorically) the new southern cor-
ridor with the established center of
Kuala Lumpur. Conventionally concep-
tualized as extending between KLCC
and KLIA – though without formal
cartographic boundaries (see Fig. 2) –
MSC is officially dedicated to the use
and development of information tech-
nology (Boey, 2002). Massive transport
and communications infrastructure
associated with the MSC facilitate both
the physical integration of KLMA and
its interconnection with other would-be
global urban “nodes”. The remainder of
the paper is concerned with examining
the socio–spatial implications of the
globalization of KLMA focusing, in
particular, on recent developments in
the southern growth corridor. Three
interrelated dimensions – information
and communications technology (ICT),
transport, and housing – are considered
in turn.
Information and
communications technologies
(ICTs)
While national-level economic policy
in Malaysia began to prioritize the
development of high and especially
information technology from the late
1980s (Ong-Giger, 1997), this became
increasingly urban-centered from the
mid-1990s. Given increasing recog-
nition of the role that “networked” cit-
ies and urban regions play as “staging
posts” in the information economy and
society (Graham, 2000, p 114), it is
scarcely surprising that governments –
especially in the Asia–Pacific region
(see Jessop and Sum, 2000) – have
come to take a proactive role in their
promotion. MSC represents the most
significant such project in Malaysia to
date. The length of the corridor is to be
served by a 2.5–10 gigabit fiber-optic
and coaxial network with direct links to
as a way of decongesting the city centre
(and is part of a well-established pattern of
far-flung new town developments).

Figure 4 “Intelligent” residential precinct under construction by the lake in Putrajaya, Tim Bunnell, 2001
Japan, the US, and Europe.4 As we
have suggested in the previous section,
MSC did not signal the beginning of
greater Kuala Lumpur’s global or trans-
national repositioning. Yet the project
may be said to have added a “high-
tech” urgency and emphasis to the
ongoing globalization of the city-
region. Existing urban projects were
thus reimag(in)ed accordingly: KLCC,
for example, was retrospectively
termed MSC’s “northern node” on
account of its putatively “intelligent
features”; and Putrajaya was discur-
sively re-imagined as an “intelligent
garden city” (see Fig. 4)
While the information infrastructure
4
Telekom Malaysia Berhad is the sole pro-
vider of wired information and telecom-
munications infrastructure for the MSC,
linking MSC’s urban centres and the KLIA
with Kuala Lumpur (Federal Department of
Town and Country Planning (2000).
City Profile: T Bunnell et al.
upon which MSC is built is largely
invisible, the corridor also includes the
construction of new high-tech urban
spaces. Chief among these is the new
city of Cyberjaya (see Fig. 2). Malays-
ia’s first “intelligent cybercity” may be
understood in terms of a long line of
“technopoles” (Castells and Hall, 1994;
McGee, 2002) intended to generate the
“creativity” and “innovation” con-
sidered necessary for success in an
information economy. Cyberjaya plan-
ners visited and sought to divine the
secrets of other innovative urban mil-
ieus: Sophia Antipolis in France, Ban-
galore in India, Japan’s “technopolis”
programme and, of course, Silicon Val-
ley. Initial development in a 2,800-hec-
tare Flagship Zone thus includes the
new Multimedia University and cam-
pus-style architecture as well as a range
of “intelligent features” as part of
attempts to foster an urban environment
which is attractive to high-tech invest-
ment and “conducive for creativity”
(Bunnell, forthcoming). Other new
wired urban complexes include Airport
City (a service center to support KLIA)
and the Tele-Suburb (a test-bed for
applications of information technology
for homes) (see Federal Department of
Town and Country Planning, 2000).
Significantly, the new corridor concept
also encompasses Technology Park
Malaysia, a high-tech park initiative
which preceded MSC (see Fig. 3).
Two further points concerning the
high-tech development of KLMA are
worthy of note. The first is an issue of
governance. While forces of globaliz-
ation and the rise of cities as “nodes in
global networks” have frequently been
associated with the demise or erosion
of nation-states (see Ohmae, 2001), we
suggest that MSC developments point
rather to the continued significance, and
363

even extension, of central state power.
In the first place, and most simply, the
Federal Government has played a key
role in the development and control of
ICT development in the expanding
urban region. Prime Minister Mahathir
is Chairman of MSC’s lead agency, the
Multimedia Development Corporation
(MDC), and even the private sector
consortia involved in the construction
of the MSC cities (Cyberjaya and
Putrajaya) are comprised of known
players in the State–big business nexus
which characterizes Malaysia’s polit-
ical economy (Gomez and Jomo,
1997). Perhaps even more significantly,
the central government has extended its
control of developments in the city-–
region beyond the Federal Territory of
Kuala Lumpur both directly (by mak-
ing the 4,581 hectare Putrajaya site into
a new federal territory on 1 February
(2001) and indirectly (for example,
through MDC which oversees planning
and investment in Cyberjaya and other
areas of the MSC beyond Kuala
Lumpur). It is the presumed national
importance of ICT development in
Malaysia’s primary urban region which
has legitimized such governmental
changes.
The second point is one of access.
Aihwa Ong (1999) has depicted MSC
as a super-privileged zone of govern-
mentality for an information age Malay
elite. Certainly, we suggest, the private-
sector-driven development of wired
urban living and working spaces and
their purportedly “world class” exclu-
sivity implies new possibilities for
social and spatial “splintering” (see
Graham and Marvin, 2001). A pervas-
ive discourse of “high-tech” has legi-
timized the eviction of socio–economi-
cally marginal groups for the “wiring”
of their land (Bunnell, 2002c). The
emergence of privatized, intelligent
urban spaces and communities have
thus far been inhibited by delays to
both in situ and interconnecting infra-
structure caused, in part, by the Asian
economic “crisis” which began in
1997. Ironically, therefore, the com-
pletion of transport infrastructure
further integrating the high-tech corri-
dor with the existing Klang Valley
urban region may serve to foment new
forms of urban segregation.
364
City Profile: T Bunnell et al.
Transport
There has, in fact, already been a huge
expansion of transport infrastructure
for internal movement within the
metropolitan area, primarily in the form
of urban expressways and urban rail-
ways. During the mid 1990s, it is esti-
mated that approximately 1.9% of
metropolitan Gross Regional Product
was invested in urban road construction
and 1.1% into urban public transport
capital expenses (Kenworthy and
Laube, 2001). This is equivalent to
over US$800 million (or just over
US$200 per person) per year invested
in transport within the urban region
over several years in the mid 1990s,
which is a rather high (but not
extraordinary) figure for a middle-
income city. With low construction
costs compared with higher-wage and
higher-density cities, however, the
Kuala Lumpur region has been able to
build an enormous amount of transport
infrastructure for its money. The Klang
Valley now stands out among Asian
cities for its high level of expressway
length per person (68 meters per 1000
people); and the spatial density of this
expressway network is already higher
than those found in most North Amer-
ican cities and is comparable with
many Western European cities (Barter
et al, 2002).
The rapid expansion of the urban and
suburban rail network in the Klang Val-
ley has seen an expansion from no rail
service in 1990 to a system of about
209 kilometers of electrified double-
tracked service by 2000 in three major
systems (KTM suburban rail, STAR
LRT, and PUTRA LRT) (BKWPPLK,
1998). In early 2002 another 57 km
rapid electrified rail system (the
Express Rail Link or “ERL”) opened
(see Fig. 5), serving Putrajaya and
KLIA and the 8.6 km monorail system
for central Kuala Lumpur is at an
advanced stage of construction. Putra-
jaya will also eventually boast a light
rail system. This expansion is occurring
despite the declining use of public
transport and it is too soon to assess
whether it will be able to help reverse
that trend. The timing of the mass tran-
sit openings in the mid-to-late 1990s
was unfortunate, coinciding with econ-
omic crisis and a nadir in bus use. A
lack of integration among public trans-
port services has also limited their
potential.
Local transport infrastructure pro-
jects, particularly expressways and
their interchanges, are often spectacular
features and their rapid expansion in
both greenfield and established areas
has transformed the face of KLMA.
However, it is the comprehensive
renewal and upgrading of KLMA’s
international and regional transport
connectivity that is perhaps more
specifically bound up with the globaliz-
ing trajectory of the region over the last
ten years or so.5 Large-scale transport
initiatives have sought to both connect
and compete with the nearby rival
“globalizers”/transport hubs of Singa-
pore and Bangkok. These include, most
prominently, the expansion of Port
Klang, the North–South Highway from
Singapore to the Thai border via the
Kuala Lumpur region and the new
Kuala Lumpur International Airport
(KLIA) along with its associated infra-
structure (including expressways and
the Express Rail Link). It has also
recently been announced that double-
tracking and electrification of the
national rail system will be extended
beyond the Kuala Lumpur region to the
whole line from Singapore to Thailand
(The Star Online, 2002).
The construction of much of this
infrastructure, both internal and exter-
nal, has involved some form of privat-
ization, using mainly the build–oper-
ate–transfer (BOT) and the build–
operate (BO) formulas. This has
included both Malaysian corporate
interests and foreign companies (often
sub-contracted) (Gomez and Jomo,
1997). The strategy had widely been
seen as relatively successful but policy
is very much in a state of flux as we
write. The Government has been forced
to acquire the private loans of both
STAR LRT and PUTRA LRT which
had been unable to meet their debt
repayments (The Straits Times, 2002).
Furthermore, in November 2001, the
heavily indebted, but very important
5
Although it must be noted that both long-
distance/international and internal transport
infrastructure have been prominent in efforts
to position the urban region (and Malaysia
as whole) as an attractive site for foreign
direct investment, which has been a central
economic strategy since 1986 (Gomez and
Jomo, 1997, p 99).

Figure 5 Rail, ERL and LRT infrastructure alongside Jalan Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, Paul Barter, 2002
and politically well-connected infra-
structure player, the Renong group, had
to accept a government-appointed fin-
ancial adviser to oversee a major
restructuring (Horne, 2001). Renong is
parent company of UEM (a subsidiary
of which is operator of numerous toll
roads including the North–South
Expressway), was owner of PUTRA
LRT, and was also to have become
owner of the national rail company
KTM under a now-cancelled deal.
These events may lead to changes to
the model of privatized infrastructure
provision. In particular, this episode
may herald a new, more realistic model
for private involvement in rail projects,
in which there is government owner-
ship of the capital equipment which
may then be leased out to operators.
Nevertheless, further plans for rail
City Profile: T Bunnell et al.
investments do not appear to have been
discouraged, given recent announce-
ments mentioned above. Indeed,
enthusiasm for large-scale infrastruc-
ture investment with private-sector
involvement appears not to be damp-
ened, with numerous expressway pro-
jects forging ahead.
The privatized mode of construction
of most of KLMA’s transport routes
forms an important aspect of their
broader social and spatial impacts.
Expressways have a profound influence
over accessibility patterns and now
play a significant role in shaping
further urban development patterns, as
can be seen in the location near
expressway interchanges of most recent
large shopping centers and a number of
new towns, such as Bukit Bertuntung,
Lembah Beringin, Bandar Baru Nilai,
Bandar Seri Putra, and others.
A number of problems have been
emerging as a result of the capital-
intensive, consumption-promoting and
relatively private-vehicle-oriented
transport policies in the KLMA. These
include increasing impacts of traffic on
the environment, on quality of life and
on streetscapes in older parts of the
region, as well as in the form of con-
gestion and delay. Another impact has
been the need to evict large numbers of
residents (mainly so-called “squatters”)
to make way for the infrastructure
(Barter, 2002). Despite these and other
negative side-effects, there are no signs
of any change in the overall direction
of transport policy and practice in the
Kuala Lumpur region which, as we
have seen, has been focused on large-
scale infrastructure projects.
365
 City Profile: T Bunnell et al.

Figure 6 Mixed housing development at Wangsa Maju, Kuala Lumpur, Morshidi Sirat, 2001

Housing units.6 The proportion of squatters in bound up with squatter-resettlement

The provision of housing for low-
income groups remains perhaps the sin-
gle most significant problem facing
planners in KLMA and Kuala Lumpur
in particular. Despite the vigor of the
economy of Kuala Lumpur (see Morsh-
idi, 1998 and 2000) and KLMA in gen-
eral (Institute Sultan Iskandar and
RMA-Perunding Bersatu Sdn Bhd,
1999), the absolute number of low-
income households in need of decent,
safe, and affordable housing has yet to
retreat meaningfully. According to
Kuala Lumpur City Hall, while there is
a small overall surplus of houses, there
remains a squatter population indicat-
ing the presence of a sizeable group
(8.2% of estimated households) whose
access to regular housing is inadequate.
As of the year 2000, a total of 28,529
squatter dwelling units were recorded
in the city, the largest single concen-
tration being in the planning unit of Jin-
jang (see Fig. 3) with 14.13% dwelling
the total population of Klang Valley
has been gradually reduced (21% in
1980; 16.8% in 1985; 9.2% in 1997).
Nonetheless, this housing situation dif-
ferentiates the Kuala Lumpur region
from many globalizing cities of the
post-industrial economy where housing
supply has responded to labor market
trends associated with the rise of new
middle class professional and mana-
gerial workers who contribute to the
global networks of the downtown econ-
omy (see Marcuse and van Kempen,
2000). While the transformation of the
occupational structure of the Kuala
Lumpur city-region has, to a certain
extent, influenced housing demand pat-
terns, therefore, this has largely been
6
These dwelling units cover an area equival-
ent to 23.4 per cent of the total land area
of 2021.0 acres occupied by squatters. The
Jinjang area is inhabited by 14.0 per cent of
the total squatter population of 156,898 in
the city.
objectives rather than with gentr-
ification.
The backlog of squatter-resettlement
programmes and housing for low-
income groups compete for attention
and resources with other infrastructural
projects aimed at integrating KLMA
with the global economy and society.
Building additional housing that low-
income households can afford requires
deep subsidies from both the public and
private sectors (see Morshidi et al,
1997).7 With a growing urban popu-
lation, the majority of which comprises
ordinary workers, the demand for
cheaper accommodation is on the rise
against a trend of higher purchase and
7
In its effort to overcome the low-cost hous-
ing shortage, Kuala Lumpur City Hall has
allocated RM88.5 million under its 1996
budget to build housing projects under the
Housing for the Hardcore Poor Scheme
(Shaik Osman Majid, 1996, cf. Mohd Razali
Agus, 1997, p 58).

366

Figure 7 Kuala Lumpur: committed low-cost and high-cost housing
rental costs (Ahmad Zakki Yahya,
1997, p 245). Due to the shortage of
serviced land within Kuala Lumpur,
most units for the hardcore poor are of
the high-rise type (15 or 16 storeys).
Single- and two-storey units are no
longer being built, but four- or five-sto-
rey walk-up flats may be good compro-
mises as they are compatible in density
terms. In Kuala Lumpur at present, all
units are given on monthly rent, as
most families do not have the necessary
resources for purchase, even in
installments. The ceiling for monthly
rental is RM120 per month subject to
a tenancy of five years (Ahmad Zakki
City Profile: T Bunnell et al.
Yahya, 1997, p 246). In addition, city
authorities’ role in Kuala Lumpur’s
globalization means that low-cost
schemes compete for increasingly
scarce space in the central area with
more profitable and internationally
“projectable” urban projects (see also
Bunnell, 2002d).
Lack of land for low-cost housing in
the central area is fomenting new
socio–spatial patterns and problems. As
of 2000, there was no suitable land
available for additional housing devel-
opment in the urban core and, because
of this, the ever-increasing pressures
for low-cost and medium-cost housing
have to be deflected and located away
from the core at emerging transport
nodes at the urban fringe (see Fig. 6),
the southern segment being the excep-
tion. In fact, in the urban core, there
was a noticeable decline in the pro-
portion of land for housing: from about
a third in 1980, to just under an eighth
in 1998. Fig. 7 demonstrates the pattern
of committed housing as of June 2000
and, from this figure, it is clear that
low-cost housing construction dis-
played a bias towards areas to the south
and south-west of the CBD, probably
in anticipation of demands generated
by MSC-related development. While
367

local authorities such as the Kuala
Lumpur City Hall are committed to
providing housing for all, the fact has
to be underlined that squatters provide
the bulk of informal sector activities.
For these groups, workspaces and liv-
ing spaces overlap. This section of the
city’s population, therefore, cannot be
relocated in high-rise flats outside the
center of the city as easily as the ser-
vice sector of the population.
Developments in the southern corri-
dor both impact upon and are affected
by housing conditions in other parts of
the urban region. On the one hand, the
higher skilled and the more educated
constitute the largest single component
of migrants leaving the city to live in
other parts of the KLMA; and the new
round of planning for the southern seg-
ment calls for the “creation of attractive
living environment for the middle and
upper class community to live in”
(RMA-Perunding Bersatu Sdn. Bhd,
1999:8.11). As alluded to earlier, the
privatized intelligent cities of MSC
suggest possibilities for new exclusions
in the form of segregated urban com-
munities. On the other hand, we have
seen how low-cost developments have
been pushed to the southern and south-
western fringes of the Federal Terri-
tory. It is interesting to note that the
segment of the southern corridor
towards the MSC contains areas such
as Chan Sow Lin, Salak South, Sg. Besi
and the old airport, which are regarded
as “some of the most disorganized,
unstructured and run-down areas in the
entire city” (RMA-Perunding Bersatu
Sdn. Bhd, 1999: 8.7). Thus, while
within the KLMA, in particular the seg-
ment between the KLCC and the
KLIA, vastly expanded settlements
have emerged along with organized
service industries and modern transport
and communication infrastructures,
there are also segmented pockets of
poverty, deprivation, and socio-spati-
ally marginal groups such as squatters
and illegal immigrants.
Conclusion
By way of conclusion, we revisit the
three broad themes outlined in the
introduction to this profile. In the first
place, and most fundamentally, we
have shown how the development of
the Kuala Lumpur urban region over
368
City Profile: T Bunnell et al.
the past decade or more has been
increasingly oriented beyond the
national scale. Transport connections –
particularly with other (would-be)
urban nodes in the region and else-
where – have been comprehensively
renewed and extended. More recently,
the development of information infra-
structure and communications
capacities has emerged as a priority
area. Transport and ICT developments,
in turn, imply new housing patterns and
possibilities, not least for emerging
urban spaces in the southern corridor
characterized at once by privatized
exclusivity and global electronic con-
nectivity.
Second, the spectacular spaces and
landscapes of the globalizing urban
region should not be read as sympto-
matic of an undifferentiated and homo-
genizing urban modernity. While the
megaprojects, malls, and expressways
of Kuala Lumpur of course suggest
commonalities with cities elsewhere,
we would not wish to reduce develop-
ment to an underlying, unified global
logic. The politics of housing signifi-
cant numbers of urban poor in Kuala
Lumpur emerges as a key dis-
tinguishing feature from processes of
gentrification often associated with the
urbanization–globalization nexus in the
“West”. In addition, private sector
involvement in the financing and con-
struction of “world class” infrastructure
implies differences (as well as
commonalities) with other national
contexts. While space has precluded
comprehensive treatment of Malaysia’s
political economy, its complexity and
uniqueness underlies many of the fea-
tures profiled here.
Third, and finally, we have high-
lighted the interrelation between glo-
balizing imperatives and the emergence
of an extended urban region. The
extension of transport and ICT
capacities have been important for the
development of a southern corridor
towards the Kuala Lumpur Inter-
national Airport (KLIA), particularly
following the launch of the Multimedia
Super Corridor (MSC). The social and
spatial development of this Kuala Lum-
pur Metropolitan Area (KLMA) –
rather than merely Klang Valley –
appears to us to be an important subject
for further research. We have noted
how this extended zone appears to be
emerging as one characterized by
marked socio–spatial segmentation by
income and employment. Further
research might also question the appro-
priateness of conceptualizing this zone
as a “corridor”. To what extent, for
example, is the MSC zone – which sig-
nifies and facilitates the globalization
of the Kuala Lumpur region – being
connected up to the existing urban cor-
ridor towards Port Klang as part of a
south-western “wedge” or “segment”?
Acknowledgements
The research from which this profile
emerges was funded by NUS research
grant, R-109-000-035-112. The authors
also gratefully acknowledge the carto-
graphic work of Lee Li Kheng.
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