My City is Yours
My City is Yours Produced for M. Arch course University of Strathclyde
Other books in M.Arch submission: Life is Work A Town and Two Cities 09 September 2013 Tan Yun Ru tanyunru.strath@gmail.com
All text and illustrations, unless stated otherwise, are the original work of the author
My City is Yours stories from Kuala Lumpur
“An old axiom in urban sociology considers space as a reflection of society. [‌] The social matrix expresses itself into the spatial pattern through a dialectical interaction that opposes social contradictions and conflicts as trends fighting each other in an endless supersession. The result is not the coherent spatial form of an overwhelming social logic be it the capitalist city, the preindustrial city or the ashitorical utopia but the tortured and disorderly, yet beautiful patchwork of human creation and suffering.â€? Castells, 1993
contents
i
introduction
2
narratives of crime
5
the bubble on highways
8
shopping malls, crime and publicity
ii
timeline of the city
3
narratives of crime
6
humans and highways
1
crime and the city
4
car = bubble
7
shopping malls and accessibility
9 10
shopping malls and fake public space
don’t you know how to listen?
11 12 13
preventive measures
cctv’s and planning
no customers from public transportation
14 15 16
closed campuses
photoshopping security in
gated neighbourhoods
17 18 19
reactions to gated neighbourhoods
taking control: occupy dataran merdeka
forms of resistance: parking
an observation
people and place identification
20 21 22
forms of resistance: informal space
i introduction stories of privatisation of space in Kuala Lumpur
My City is Yours sounds genial enough. The natural implicit continuation of this phrase is then, what is your city should be mine. But how willing are we to share what we perceive to be ‘our’ space? And how far would we be willing to go, what measures would we be willing to put in place, to ensure what is mine remains mine? For that matter, who is ‘you’? The underprivileged citizens of the city, or the state with its near-omniscent power over the space of the city?
This book is a collection of anecdotes from the author and her peers, all of whom have witnessed their home city, Kuala Lumpur. grow more hostile and more exclusionary to the wrong type of person. The stories offer a peek into everyday life in a city in which space, initially public or otherwise, has been strictly delegated and enforced as private.
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ii timeline of the city
1857
Rich sources of tin found around the area
1869
Yap Ah Lor becomes Chinese Kapitan of Kuala Lumpur and establishes law and order
1862
1881 1896 1946 1957 1963
Kuala Lumpur grows rapidly with influx of new miners from abroad. with many conflicts and gang wars as a result
A serious flood destroys Kuala Lumpur’s predominantly wood and thatched structures. British Resident Frank Swettenham develops first city plan Kuala Lumpur becomes the capital of the state of Selangor
Kuala Lumpur becomes capital in the Federation of Malaya
31st August: Malaysia gains independence from British rule. Kuala Lumpur becomes capital of the Independent Federation of Malaya
Federation of Malaya is dissolved with the expulsion of Singapore, and incorporation of east Malaysian states Sabah and Sarawak. Kuala Lumpur becomes capital of Malaysia My city is yours 3
1968 1974 1991 1998 1999 2007
13th May: Riots erupt after long period of racial tensions between ethnic Malays and Chinese Kuala Lumpur becomes a Federal Territory with its own administration
Vision 2020 is introduced by Prime Minister of Malaysia, calling for the achievement of a self-sufficient industrialised economy by the year 2020, with “economically prosperous� citizens
Completion of the Petronas Twin Towers, at that point in time the tallest tower The federal administrative capital of Malaysia moves out to Putrajaya Kuala Lumpur celebrates its 50th year as capital of Malaysia
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1 crime and the city For as long as I can remember, the stories in the newspaper read roughly the same: the bane of the city is its lowest classes. The idea of the people dwelling lowest on the social and economic ladder being a threat to normal citizens going about their day is a commentary so commonly accepted that it is unremarkable. While the school down the street was raising a new building, we were told to beware the construction workers (foreign) who may moonlight as thieves.
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2 narratives of crime Family members frequently tell me stories of crime in my neighbourhood. A house down the street was broken into and valuables stolen while they were at work—“in broad daylight! 11 am!” Did I hear what happened to the elderly woman who was returning home after walking her grandson to his after-school class? She was attacked by two men who went after her jewellery. They cut off her earlobes with a pair of scissors for her gold earrings.
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3 narratives of crime It’s not just family and neighbours close to me either. Although my mother tells me to be careful every morning, when I drive to work in the office three separate concerned colleagues ask me where I’ve parked my car and warn me to be careful when walking back to it. They remind me to hold my bag tight, and on the side facing away from the street. When I drive to the nearby shops to put some credit in my phone, the chatty man behind the counter tells me how another old lady was slashed and robbed just a few shops down. He points at my necklace and admonishes me.
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4 car = bubble The car is your bubble of refuge. Rules for using your bubble: 1. Do not leave it too far from the entrance of the building you go to. 2. Walk fast when you get back, and get security to escort you if you can. 3. Remember to check for anyone hiding in your back seat, or any suspicious vans parked next to your car. 3. Once you get in, close and lock the doors immediately and drive off.
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5 the bubble on highways This bubble travels to and from places connected and divided by a series of highways. When I was eleven, they built a highway between my house and my piano teacher’s, and my parents would always complain that it took twice as long to send me over and pop back again.
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6 humans and highways All the time spent on highways makes it particularly jarring to see it being used by something other than vehicles. During the construction of a shopping mall (one of four that have opened in the last three years within a kilometre from my home), basic provisions for food or anything else were unavailable on the same side of the highway, and every morning during my drive to work I would see construction workers perched on the side, ready for the next brief gap in traffic to run to the divider in the middle, straddle it, and wait to cross to the other side—while cars zoomed by at 80 kmph.
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7 shopping mall and accessibility This same mall—barely in operation for a year— sits directly beside the highway. Someone pointed out that you couldn’t access it by walking. There are three separate vehicle entrances, though, not including the service entrance, but the grand pedestrian entrance stands conspicuously unused. Therefore the lowest price of admittance is the cost of the cheapest second-hand car.
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8 shopping malls, crime and publicity A shopping mall, amidst all this chaos of people being robbed in car parks, trumpeted their succesful capture of a car full of men intending to carry out a robbery. After a brief chase around the parking lot that ended up with the car in question stranded over a divider on a ramp, the mall authorities had its full security team (including the dogs) pose in front and around the damaged car and posted it onto various social media sites, to be shared and applauded.
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9 shopping malls and fake public space Shopping malls have caught on to the outdoor street experience. One has a weekend street market on an outdoor street between two buildings. In another the shops are carefully arranged to imitate separate shops on the street. Overhead canopies are popular, but so are security staff with their discreet presence.
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10 don’t you know how to listen? My friend recounts the first time he realised how un-public public space was: while sitting on the steps in front of an upscale shopping mall in the city centre, he was told by the guard that he couldn’t wait there. After explaining to the guard that he had in fact just exited the shopping mall, and was waiting for a friend, he was left alone for barely a few minutes before another man, in a suit this time, turned up to shout abuse him. Angered, my friend shouted back.
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11 preventive measures Some attempts are more preventive but no less clumsy. Central market, a place known for its arts, has a restaurant nearby which found it necessary to embed stones into the concrete of their windowsills to stop people from lingering there while waiting for the bus. It was an effective strategy: no one, no matter how tired their legs are, is particularly keen on a painfully sharp and lumpy seat.
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12 cctv’s and planning An architect friend informed me, with not much surprise, how when applying for planning permission for an office and commercial complex, the planners set a minimum number of CCTV’s for the area, all fully functional, with a central area for monitoring the video feeds.
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13 no customers from public transportation Occasionally urban legends would reach one’s ears, some more credible and some less so: allegedly the developers of an upscale shopping mall in the city’s prime real estate area, refused to allow a escalator to be built from the monorail station to the sidewalk on which the shopping mall’s entrance sat when the monorail was first built. It was obvious to them that the demographic relying on public transportation did not include their clientele, and did not deserve to be on the sidewalk. A while after, the realisation came about that for a younger, still affluent city-dweller, using public transportation had become a trendy thing to do, and today a pedestrian bridge linking the two is under construction.
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14 closed campuses A friend of mine recounts his experience in two different college campuses: one is a true city centre campus, and he talks of how his day-to-day experiences would vary according to whichever shops were open at the time he was about. In the new college campus, next to a highway, the single-point entrance and exit became a nightmare. It would take half an hour to an hour for cars to queue up and exit onto the motorway. Moreover, the new campus experience replaced the chaos of diversity available to the students with a regimented commercial routine.
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15 photoshopping security in While working on a new housing development during my brief stint in an architecture office, I realised that “gated and guarded� had become a matter of course. I was asked to design a guard house together with the housing development. Some developers do not bother getting planning permission for a guard house and simply put one up after the building warrant is handed over, and most photoshop a guard in uniform into their promotional images as a necessary prop.
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16 gated neighbourhoods When I was young, I remember my father bringing me through housing estates as a shortcut or simply to have a look. You can’t do that anymore. Our gated neighbourhoods happened very suddenly, and recently enough that I was conscious of the difference it made. It started, as it always does, with more and more news articles cropping up bemoaning the rising crime rate, and stories spread like wildfire. The neighbourhoods around the area started putting up oil drums filled with sand to block most entries into their area and got together to hire staff to operate boom gates at a designated entry point.
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17 reaction to gated neighbourhoods My friend tells me, with relief and approval, how the cases of snatch thefts have dropped dramatically since they gated the neighbourhood. Everybody spoke of enforcing the entry points as a neccessity, with the Department of Town and Country Planning going so far as to formulate planning guidelines for “gated communities” and “guarded neighbourhoods”.
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18 people taking control: occupying dataran merdeka The Occupy Dataran Merdeka movement ran into a maze of rules that beautifully illustrated the state ownership of politically, and historically charged places—it was not allowed to eat in the square. It is not allowed to sleep in the square. You are not allowed on the grass. These rules are not enforced during regular times, until it becomes in the favour of the states to use aggressive force against the population and the thousands of rules were then used against the protesters.
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19 forms of resistance: parking When a parking space is a prerequisite for any place of activity and residence, ownership of parking lot becomes a contentious issue. Creative forms of claiming a parking space ensue: it is common to see restaurants and businesses placing a large rubbish bin, a stool, or even an upturned bucket in the middle of the parking lot directly in front of their business—for customers only. Houseowners, in the vanishingly rare ungated housing neighbourhoods, place potted plants in the small space between two gates to stop people from parking there.
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20 forms of resistance: informal uses of space
Despite the chokehold privatised space has on the city, it is encouraging to see other informal elements flourishing, more often than not right next to these tightly controlled areas. Sunway Pyramid, one of the four shopping malls larger than the Mall of America in Malaysia, sits right across a 6-lane highway from a complex of low-cost flats. Common sights in this area include small, family-run food stalls occupying the stairwells of the apartment blocks, almost every restaurant spilling out onto the streets by setting up foldable stools and tables onto the parking lots in front, and people using the corridors and common parking area for events such as a wedding party.
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21 an observation In my experience, the most impressive view of Kuala Lumpur, the one of the city glittering at night (found on all the post cards and desktop wallpapers), is found when driving on the Elevated KL-Ampang expressway late at night after a long day at work.
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22 people and place identification Strangely enough, people have begun to identify themselves in relation to places that cater specifcally to their consumption: the public space of the city does not welcome me, so I shall go to a place which welcomes me (and my economic value). Someone recounts a recent workshop, in which participants were asked to draw a landmark of the area they lived in, and a participant said he couldn’t think of anything significant except the Light Rail Transit station. In the end he drew the station and the motorway next to it—both routes of connection to these islands of consumption.
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