Dualogue City And Community
03 Speakers Asst. Prof. Teoh Chee Keong Philip Tan Moderators Anithra A/T Ratenom Yap Jian Yong
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This summary is about the knowledge of new village presented by Assistant Professor Teoh Chee Keong. The Malayan Emergency was an anti-communist guerrilla war fought in the Federation of Malaya from 1948 until 1960, created over four hundred resettlement villages, often know as new village. Asst. Prof Teoh Chee Keong Head of school, school of Architecture and Built Environment, UCSI University Teoh obtained his Master in Architecture from CYCU, Taiwan. His teaching and research focuses on the areas of cultural heritage studies, cooperative learning and community engagement design. He conducted several “design and build” community projects, such as Kuala Sepetang, ‘Kaktao46’ Community Library, Sungai Buloh Leprosy Story Gallery and etc. His articles on the urban history of Kuala Lumpur have been published in ‘Kuala Lumpur under British Rule’ (2007) and ‘Disappearing Kuala Lumpur’ (2011) by Mentor Publisher.
New Villages
新村
There were more than half a million of people were physically removed from isolated rural locations into compact settlements. The buildings in new villages were atap and plank houses. Share houses were usually built on higher ground and closed to the main traffic trunk, to reduce the distance between the colonies and the colonies. They were closed to the community, guarded and gated. There should be not more than six houses per acre of land, and each householdwould posses land for self-cultivation agriculture. Water supply and public facilities,including school, clinic and fire station were provided in new village .
Besides that, the settlers were also provided with resident subsistence allowance, land or occupation. The next topic talked about the rejuvenation plan in Salak South. This new village is closed to university and it located in the centre of Kuala Lumpur city. It was surrounded by highway and it looks like an isolated island. New village is a good place to stay where elder people know each other in the village and their houses are built without fence. However, modern houses are surrounded by high and thick wall and the auto-gate will be closed all the time. This led to the breakdown of connection within the neighbourhood. In this rejuvenation plan, 12 students picked up 12 elements from the new village to develop their design. This project is eventually showcased to the locals and became a best model to refer for connective and sustainable living environment. Once these people are connecting with each other, then village can be a very nice space to live in.
The ideas of the rejuvenation come in as a healthy community should consists of different generations of people. The importance of rejuvenation is to bring something back to life. If people can always be concerned about culture, redevelopment in often times will give a big impact to the to the culture and the people. The sense of the community could be built up by organizing different kinds of events where people can always come together to construct something that benefit the entire community instead of just themselves. The community will become livelier and it is definitely good for all people living in the village.
Community
Mr. Philip Tan had discussed about the movement of EPIC Homes movement which aims to build the relationships through the act of forming sustainable homes and reducing the gap between the rural and urban communities, especially for the indigenous people. EPIC Homes is providing shelter for people in the way that respecting various culture and history because different people have different mindset. It is very difficult to convince indigenious people to change their lifestyle, that is to move from their indigenous hut to the concrete houses in rural areas provided by government as part of poverty alleviation support or welfare. Philip Tan Project Manager of Epic Communities
Philip is a project manager in Epic Communities, a social enterprise that seeks to make it accessible for communities to participate in developing thriving & sustainable environments. With a focus on creating and activating communitydriven developments, Epic Communities looks at participatory placemaking and codesign models in both semi-rural and urban environments.
Even though government provides the houses which look modern and suitable to almost all people to live in, however this may be a cultural clash to Orang Asli. They would more likely to move back to the jungle again and rebuild the hut using the natural resources from the jungle. For example, some of Sami people who are the indigenous people living in Scandinavian countries and northern Russia nowadays can still be found living in their traditional hut in nature, indicating that they have the unique lifestyle various from the modern society.
Furthermore, Mr. Philip Tan had explained about how do communities involve in developing thriving environment. From designing a simple way to transport and assemble modular housing to controlling the quality of the outcome properly to avoid the issues of poorly constructed buildings, the volunteers and the locals actively involved to build the houses together.In order to build up the community relationship, EPIC Homes also cooperates with the authority to carry out the voting session and other workshops with the community to overcome their existing including rejuvenation. Recreational amenities such as greenhouse, small-scale self-cultivation farm, café, recycle station, sport complex, library, intentional garden, intentional restaurant and so on are also created to eliminate the dullness of that place for community, so that they will not want to return to their original home in jungle. Strong foundations, commitments from partners and forward innovation are vital when the community is working with different stakeholders. Ther are several ideas of other intentional community settlements and utopian townships in the foreign countries where some are formed with utopian socialism.
Initiate Engage Develop Activate Empower
There are 5 steps to integrate with the local community. The first way is getting to know the community by always greeting to the locals and strangers. Secondlyis about the willingness to build the relationships so that the issue can be solved together. The next step is sharing the vision for community and space, so that the community can be activated and empowered to eventually grow local champions and external partners.
Urban Planning To form a healthy community in this modern era today, the advanced technology and human perspective are being focused equally. Planning is carried out so that there is some sort of order, it will not be messy and able to gain the economic benefits. The differences between urban planning and village planning are based on the policies and the ways of planning. City planning is a massive project to improve all kinds of aspects, including land, road system and others in the highly populated environment.
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“What does the rejuvenation of new religion represent and how does it differ from other types of redevelopment of one place?”
I think this is a good question. We often speak up in old community, I think probably what we hope is to have some physical changes especially in an urban authority. Redevelopment is almost like revamping and changing to another new generation. Which it means that the previous model has failed or maybe there is another new consideration. That is the thing that I understand as I have seen a lot of cities that have gone through redevelopment. If someone really concerned about culture, they will realise that redevelopment often times will give a big impact to the culture and Rejuvenation aims to bring something back to life. In the people. The sense that case that we can take new village as an example. I of the community believe that the young children grew in 1960s to 1970s definitely will be eventually grown up and become young adults with affected. ambitious and energetic. Therefore, we can see that the golden time of the new village is from 1960 to 1970. As far as I remember, when I was a kid, my father used to organize a lot of activities and the village is so lively. There are many associations organising different kinds of events and people always come together to construct something that benefiting the entire community instead of themselves.
Q&A
As it comes to the 2000, most of these people who were young and grew in the new village begin to retire. I leave my hometown when I was 18 years old. I went abroad to pursue my studies. When I returned to Malaysia, I chose to settle down in Kuala Lumpur instead of going back to the new village. That is what you see about the facts of the young generation. The old generation like my father, they used to stay in the village and became old and no longer energetic. That is why you see most of the new village are actually dominated by all elderlies. They do not want to move out from the new village although some of the houses are not in really good condition because they love to live in the village. I think they really feel that the environment and the houses in the village are very liveable which suitable for retirees. When the community is old, it is really hard to continue to organise those activities to bring the people together. That is why in the villages are more reliant on the authority to help them to do such things in nowadays. The ideas of the rejuvenations come in, because I believed that a healthy community should have different generation of people. Then we can organise different kinds of activities so that the place will be lively. It is definitely good for all people living in the village. That is why I call the projects as rejuvenation instead of redevelopment.
Asst. Prof. Teoh Chee Keong
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“What is the outcome of a city that focus on advanced technology?”
I started to think about a city with a focus on advanced technology since lot of people are talking about smart cities right now. The purpose of technology is to connect us to internet and services. Besides that, it can actually connect you with communities as well. That’s why a lot of us feel very connected on Facebook. I cannot talk to my family for so long but I feel connected to them because I see their photos on Facebook. This MCO period has taught us that connecting with your loves through internet is really good but you still need that human touch and human connection. I that it should not only focus on advanced technology but at the same time it needs to have human perspective on it. Whenever technology comes in, it should not to be the priority as we need to consider about the the social aspect. We often solely focus on the technology because we can see the tangible benefits very quickly. However, it takes time to build relationships and empower people for the social aspect. Professor Teoh also mentioned that when he spoke with the aging people in Salak South community, a lot of them don’t want to leave because they like the sense of the community or they’re just familiar with the place. These are parts of the social aspects. Therefore, we need to be focus on both. You can’t just focus on one even though the social aspect may not show tangible benefits straight away. If we focus on both the social and the advanced technology, you will end up with a healthier community and city.
Philip Tan
I think I would like to add something on top of that. I agree with Philip’s opinion that when it is regarding the town planning, there is no different for that. This is because new village is a special typology which the village is planned. If you study about a village, it is began from a small settlement. When people choose to live together, then they establish a village. Perhaps they are concerned about sharing of the spaces and each of them will have their own territory. They will also have subdivision of the land and they will talk about building efficient road systems in the village. Therefore, I think most of the time village plan is actually quite organic as compared to the urban plan. The village will grow naturally according to If I’m not mistaken, the ideas of the ttown planning only came the needs of the people. in 1920s. The first town planner in Malaya, Charles Street, introduced the idea to the city of Malaysia. In fact, history of Kuala Lumpur started in 1857 and Kuala Lumpur used to be a village. It slowly evolves into a town. When it came to 20th century, the population of the town had become 20,000 people then there more issues to concerned about. The authorities start to have this idea of reorganizing of plan to impose some regulations to all kinds of aspects including usage of the land and road systems. In early 20 centuries, they are still regarded as town improvement. Until 1920, that is when we start There is no town planning at that time. seeing the idea of town planning. Before you see the town and the settlement, we have town planner to come in and think about this. The town planner was trained to take care of all settlements. The difference between village and town is village is more organic while urban, is more organized in terms of the intention of planning. It is all about taking care of the benefits of the people. When the scale become larger, you will have more things to concern and efficiency will become more important.
Asst. Prof. Teoh Chee Keong
Professor Teoh, I think you are definitely right because in 20th century town planning came into fruition in Europe. Therefore, we have beautiful city and garden city movements also come into play.
Philip Tan
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“Is there any major setbacks or obstacles on the master planning for the redevelopment process in moving the entire new village community? I think the largest setback is there is no young people in the village. This maybe due to the setting of the village. The new village in facts was temporarily planned at the beginning. They thought that after the condition has eased, these people may be returned back to their original land. The people do not own the land due to the lands are leasehold. Which means that they are building a house on a piece of land that does not belong to them. They are leasing this land from the government. This eventually become the obstacle when we are talking about the redevelopment of the village. Most of the village started in 1950 and now we are in 2020. Those who got 99 years leasehold, it’s almost come to the end and they only This is the biggest obstacle that we are facing. In Kuala Lumpur, left around 20 we have seen that a lot of land have been sold to the developer. years or even The developer will approach the villagers one by one. After lesser than that. they get enough land title then they will convert the land into The people are commercial use and start to build high rise building. When the afraid that if they villagers do not believe that this is a good place to live in or want to involve maybe their children no longer staying in the village, then they in this movement will sell the property to the developer. Hence, we are fighting to upgrade their with time, we try to educate the people that how important and houses, all their how good is it to continue to live in the village. At the same invested work time, we try to convince the authorities that it is very important after 20 years have to preserve the village as part of the history of the city. Each to be returned to city should have a variety of community. We shouldn’t only see the government one type of housing and one type of residential area. I think the good thing of living in a city is you are able to, you know all after 20 years. different kind of setting. I think that would be more fun.
Asst. Prof. Teoh Chee Keong
“How would both of you describe the experience working with the community during the whole process? ”
Working with the community is always like you are going into a new relationship with someone. It is initiated to introduce yourself and get to know them. They will get to know us well about what we are doing. That’s something that we have learned over 10 year. When you see a need or you see a way to help, you need to respond personally and to understand them. We have good involvements with communities and there are also some communities where we’ve worked with them for many years but we don’t see any result at all in terms of the common goals that we set together. It is really working together with people. I think it is also part of psychology because you have to know a bit more about the people. The experiences overall are good. Firstly, it is because you are coming in as an outsider to push a responsed instead of reacting straight away. You will have to go and say, how can we get to know each other better, then we find a solution up together. That’s our experience working with both the rural and also urban and marginalized communities.
Philip Tan 13
I think this is a very good and interesting question to ask especially it’s came from students. This is because I believe when you start your journey as a student in architecture program or even some engineering programs you will get a lot of chance to go to the field and then meet with the people and talk to the community. When I was a student, I worked on the field project that is conducted by the professors
which I got to learn some basic skill to communicate with the community. That project was already engaged with the community and formed, so we did not have any obstacles. But when I work as a research assistant after graduating from the university, I might have to conduct a research project with professors without the help of students. When I starting to approach a new community, oftentimes I will be chased away even sometimes I will be chased by dogs. If you don’t believe me, you can simply go and knock on anyone’s house to speak with random people.You will be treated like a salesman and you always need to face this kind of thing. Then it comes to apply a lot of tactics about how to make the things easier. However,the current situation is much better with the help from the students. This is because it will be good if I work with student with students because people are friendly to students but not to the teacher. I also learnt some tactics. For example, when I visit a new place, usually I will stay there for a longer time. I will be sitting at some place and then start to do some sketches.
Trying to do things quietly and interesting then the people will come to see what you are doing. Then, you get a chance to introduce yourself to the people. Definitely, you will be rejected if you simply go and ask them question. You will eventually learn some tactics after working with the community. I often have very happy experience. We have tried many wrong approaches in the previous experience. We had some successful work with Epic Home as well. After we have some successful projects, then the people will get to know you from different channel. That is why is very important to keep a very good reputation. For example, as an institution with a name of UCSI or Epic Home, it is really important to keep your reputation. As a UCSI student, I think it is still fine for you to go out for interview people now. If the people greet you with good attitude, then you have to thank the senior as they have done some good jobs. Working with communities is working with people who are trying to be sincere. Try to make the people understand what you’re doing when you talk to them. You cannot hide and lie anything to them. Then, these people will introduce you to another group of people.
Asst. Prof. Teoh Chee Keong I just want to add something as well. I think for us, we also have experience when we work with the developers to find out more about communities. These developers are very open-minded because they want to know more about their community as well. However, developers usually have a very bad reputation in the field. I think we also need to be very clear on our role when we go to approach these communities under the sort of circumstances. When you guys are working there, you have to tell people honestly about what is your role is and why you are here. Once you are being honest, people will be able to see that. However, if you are trying to hide it and put different masks on you to get what you want, then the people will know that you are there with the wrong intentions. In the scene of working with a developer, we are very clear that we are a social enterprise. We have community engagement by sharing the resultsin every project that we do, so that they are aware that we had done this review already.
Philip Tan
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