new Federal Government Administrative Centre; PUTRAJAYA

   

Figure 1.0. Putrajaya scenery.
Source: http://www.kl-photos.com/putrajaya.htm

Putrajaya is a planned city as the Malaysia new federal administrative centre, was shifted from Kuala Lumpur due to its overcrowding and congestion situation. This idea was actually the inspiration of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, and its final cost estimated is US dollar 8.1 billion. Putrajaya city design was to embrace two major themes, which are an intelligent city and “A city in a garden”. Putrajaya or called as a sustainable human development due to its design that able to meet the needs to the growing nation for a place 300 years.

   According to California Institute for Smart Communities on 2001, intelligent city is an urban city with agglomeration of high technology features in its development and management. In Putrajaya case, along with the initiative of being a Government’s e-Government, Putrajaya is implementing high technologies to ensure interaction and communication between public, business community, government agencies, and the government servants could be progressed and done in high efficiency way. Besides that, Putrajaya is located within Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC); constituting both local and foreign companies with high multimedia technology and innovative producers that cooperated with government sector.  In my opinion, Putrajaya is a ‘creative city’ that gathered all the ‘creative classes’. Richard Florida 2002, stated creative class is made by knowledgeable, talented, artists, entrepreneurs and creative people who have greater influence on the workplace; companies as well as the cities prosper.

Figure 2.0: Putrajaya Master Plan
Source: Putrajaya Structure Plan- Report of Survey 2009.

   On the other hands, “City in a Garden” means the integration of natural elements and environment into the urban city towards sustainable development. This concept is clear in the designation of almost 39% of the total city area is reserved for greenery and open spaces. As you can see in Figure 1.0 above, it’s described as a balance development where the public park, lake, wetland and the rainforest take out one third of the attire place. Putrajaya is being developed as a City in a Garden where it’s comprised a larger botanical garden in the country and a 600 hectare man-made lake that warmer surrounding area and decrease micro temperature. The greener city in a town could be functions as a climate moderator while create a ‘sense of place’ to the city. However, the city with well enough percentage of green able to provide a liveable city for its residents in term of live, work and play?    

   Besides that, the neighbourhood concept in Putrajaya is great where each distinct neighbourhood within a larger residential precinct will be well-serviced and has at least one neighbourhood park. It will have a critical mass of residents to make it liveable, regardless of housing density. Putrajaya is subjected to the sustainable planning design as the constructed buildings are incorporated with the renewable energy technology features as an effort of encouraging the use of renewable energy and thus minimise the negative environmental impacts. Then, the residential precincts at the peripheral are planned on a neighbourhood planning concept, as to promote a low carbon society scenario that favours the use of provided extensive pedestrian walkways & cycleway to reduce the needs of motorised transportation. Along with this aim, the use of land along main transportation routes is intensified and diversified with sufficient provision of basic infrastructures and facilities too.

   However, Putrajaya is still an automobile dependent city with the issue of traffic congestion problem during peak hours and also the insufficient car park. It has missed an important opportunity to advance the micro-climatic design response in landscape architecture. You can observe that the extensive walkways are exposed to the sun whereas there are mostly not covered nor they are shaded by trees. So, tell me, will you walk under the strong direct sunlight? Furthermore, bicycles are used only as recreation rather than as a mode of transportation as the lack of contiguous bicycles trails on key routes throughout the city. Public transportation does not reflected as an advantage in this city. Not to mention about the Putrajaya Monorail construction which was intended to be the city's metro system, was suspended due to costs. Also, the bus services in Putrajaya are considered as ineffective because the information, like routes and schedules, is not communicated to people before they get into their cars and start driving into Putrajaya.

   As we know, Putrajaya is a new high end living city and thus the living cost over there is not cheap at all. The residential houses price there is unaffordable to major group of Malaysia society, not even low-medium income group. For example in iproperty website, a single storey terrace house averagely cost RM400, 000. Normally, Putrajaya residence is only preferable for the government servants who work over there due to the nearer workplace.

   In addition, Putrajaya is often perceived as a boring spot, too far away and just an administrative city with the city's only shopping mall, the Alamanda. Of course, there are few other choices since Putrajaya has only a few numbers of small retails and eateries, such as the water sport complex and rock climbing facility. But by night, the area is virtually a ghost town as very minimal of night scene without many food beverage or casual dining areas for resident or visitors to enjoy. Comparing to Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya is still less liveable in terms of amenities and entertainment.

   Another miss score of Putrajaya is the low vibrancy of the activities held over there. Basically the city is planned in form of many fragmented single use zone (residential, offices, shopping centre, cafes) that are all set apart from one another, meaning that the travels over long distance are indirectly encouraged. The wide streets that planned without following human scale and current policies causing little street level activities and low flexibility of activities anywhere, therefore the people stay away from street level activities and only having most activities confined to predetermined places.    

Figure 3.0: Large scale of pedestrian walkways within Putrajaya.
Source:http://luckyvirgo.wordpress.com/category/malaysia/

   In the conclusion, I personally do not think that Putrajaya is a well planned city enough. There are a lot of spaces to be improved in the planning design. The strong potential of this intelligent as well as the garden city needs to be presented through higher connectivity and activities stimulation in order to achieve another greater success of sustainable capital city. 

References:

1. California Institute for Smart Communities, (2001) Ten Steps to Becoming a Smart Community.

2. Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class and How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, New York.

3. www.iproperty.com.my

4. Putrajaya Official Website;  http://www.putrajaya.gov.my
5. Putrajaya Structure Plan- Report of Survey 2009.
6. http://luckyvirgo.wordpress.com/category/malaysia/
7. http://www.kl-photos.com/putrajaya.htm