A Study on the Trend of New Town Planning of Malaysia

The post-war period has witnessed the emergence of new towns in a number of countries in Southeast Asia. The new town development in Malaysia started with Petaling Jaya (PJ) as a satellite town in 1953 to accommodate the rapid growing population of Kuala Lumpur (KL). Shah Alam (SA), Subang Jaya (SJ) are all located in the Klang Valley and act as an important social and economic development hub in the nation. New towns have been designed in accordance with the British town planning principles, which were based on the model of a modern ideal city. They constituted a new regional character because they were developed taking into consideration factors such as local technologies as well as site and, climatic conditions. The initial goal of the new town construction and planning, which focused basically on resettling squatters, was later changed to focus on the improvement of the quality of living. This phenomenon was related to the emergence of the middle class, which had grown rapidly ever since. With the public agencies, the private sectors have played an important role in providing viable and sustainable human units of settlement that address the new design issues of new town planning. The goal of this study is to identify the identity of the recent new town planning principles of Malaysia, how they were developed over time and how they were regionalized and transformed in a cultural and regional context. For the analysis, we chose 3 new towns which are located in Klang Valley and which are representative recent projects of two major housing development companies in Malaysia. To identify the planning principles, we analyzed these projects in the viewpoint of the urban space, street system, and housing blocks and units.