By Elizabeth John, New Straits Times



It’s the plan that will shape the face of Kuala Lumpur over the next 12 years and it’s also the most debated document that ever came out of City
Hall that is getting city folk mad.

FEW things scream anger like a demand for your money back.

And that's exactly what a Sri Petaling man did last week, silencing a crammed room of a hundred residents as he shouted:

"This document is rubbish, I want to claim back my money. You can take back this plan. Give me my RM150."

The plan was the Draft Kuala Lumpur City Plan 2020 and the noisy meeting brought to a sudden halt was debating its likely impact on residents in the Seputeh constituency.

From its launch, the draft plan has been a nothing short of a dartboard for criticism.

And in a city where people hardly know their neighbours it's even spawned a grouping of residents association out to save the city from the draft plan.

Chief among the public objections is towards the move to raise density from 6,840 people per sq km to 9,577 in just a dozen years.

Planners and residents are asking if the city has the infrastructure to support this; if it has enough roads, schools or even water for hundreds of thousands more.

Some, like the vocal planning lawyer Derek Fernandez, argues that it also snubs the directives in the country's paramount planning document, the National Physical Plan.

The NPP seeks to, as far as possible, keep density at 25 pph in the Kuala Lumpur conurbation - an area that stretches from the city to Seremban - although in many places, that figure has been surpassed.

But plan proponents argue that its intent is noble and that compact development puts people near amenities and is the only real option in a city with little space left to grow.

It maximises the use of existing land and infrastructure instead of having the city sprawl endlessly, explained Khairiah Talha, a consultant on the draft plan and a Malaysian Institute of Planners council member.

Filling-in and filling-up the spaces in the city helps free land for open spaces and agriculture, explained Khairiah one of the few brave to turn up at such public briefings and face tough questions.

"But that's no excuse for overcrowding," counters Fernandez, a recently appointed Petaling Jaya municipal councilor.

And residents are seeing scary glimpses of the "overcrowding" he talks about in details of the draft plan for many areas they call home.

Bukit Indah lies in the Bukit Jalil-Seputeh area that will see KL's highest population jump.

Long established housing areas here, like United Garden, have been re-zoned under the draft plan to become district commercial centres.

This opens quiet clusters of bungalows and terrace houses to entertainment outlets, theme parks, hotels and high-density apartments, says veteran planner Chandran Gopinath.

"How could they do this? Now someone can buy the neighbour's house and turn it into a funeral parlour.

"And the roads here are already clogged and the houses narrow, what more do they expect to put in?"

But there's even worse, says Chandran. Like Bamboo Garden, off Ipoh Road, where the density will increase to 400 people per acre.

There are other such examples in Segambut, Jinjang and Kepong, Chandran says.

"It's like they've given a kid a brush and asked him to paint the draft plan any colour he likes."

Residents are also finding things missing from the draft's maps like land previously allocated for schools, markets and kindergartens.

Some religious groups attending the numerous briefings are also worried that some of their places of worship have not been marked as such in the plan.

Representatives of one Buddhist organisation asked at the Sri Petaling meeting last week why there was no information in the plan about the allocation of space for religious buildings according to the ethnic or religious breakdown of the population in the area.

The environmental planning and allocation of open spaces under the draft plan has also been a flack magnet.

While the Lake Gardens will expand in size, what's taking centre stage is the fact that KLites will enjoy a measly 11.1 sq metres of open space per person in 2020.

"In a world class city like London, its 40 sq metres of open space per person," Fernandez says, making a jibe at the draft plan's world-class city aspirations for KL.

He's particularly annoyed that while open space has shrunk, gross commercial space has increased under the plan and the few green areas left in KL are being carved out for development.

Fernandez points to the chunk of 49 per cent of the city council's land on Bukit Gasing that's been earmarked for development as one example.

"It's not for public infrastructure but luxury houses on slopes with retention ponds and near a river bed.

"This violates the council's own policies, its earlier structure plan, and the National Physical Plan."

To make matters worse, the draft plan is quite confusing about what's allowed on the small part of Bukit Gasing that will be preserved as an open space.

The "permitted use" table in volume two says permitted uses of the land include for technology, research and development, sports and recreation facilities and secure residential institutions.

But under the "Zoning Schedule (General)" for public open spaces, the only permitted use is for sports and recreation facilities.

Another small, easy to miss point that many residents are waking up to is that the zoning allows with conditions, general retail and office and golf facilities in this kind of a public open space.

The plan also says that over 5,000 people were consulted before the draft was drawn up. Khairiah confirmed this, describing the focus groups her team talked to before they went to the drawing board.

But residents don't consider this consultation -- the angry Sri Petaling man who demanded his money back also wanted the draft plan frozen till the city council sought residents' views.

Residents associations are now considering getting the draft plan nullified on the basis that it has not fulfilled the legal requirement for public consultation.

City council, its planners and consultants have through dialogue and the media appealed to KL folk to keep an open mind while reading the plan and understand the difficulties of planning in a fast developing city.

But residents say that's difficult because they don't like what they see and the information they need just isn't there.

Residents who asked questions at a briefing at the Chinese Assembly Hall last week, for instance, were told that planners had not taken disaster risk management into account and they could not find specific reference to squatter issues in the plan.

The biggest problem of all perhaps, complained residents, was that the draft plan was very difficult to read.

It had a complicated format and maps often had no legends.

It wasn't just proposals that posed problems but also strange abbreviations like the "ppdph" which means passengers per direction per hour but would have left most just a that bit more frustrated.

Because Googling it would have given them this: Postural post-dural puncture headache.