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This paper discusses the urban management challenges in the Greater Kuala Lumpur area. Before examining Greater Kuala Lumpur's economic and social environment, we will look at the factors that make it a competitive and fiscally sound entity. When considering urban development and redevelopment, we consider how proposed and ongoing projects, as well as plans, hierarchical links, and road networks, contributed to the increase. Because there is no urban growth boundary, land use change and rural encroachment, as well as environmental degradation and the impact of national economic projects on urban expansion, are both rapid and linear in the analysis. This paper also considers how to manage linear development that results in the creation of new suburbs. Finally, we propose strategies for achieving sustainable urban expansion and management by balancing the financial and governance capacities of Greater Kuala Lumpur local governments.

Malaysia and Singapore had parted more than five decades ago. Much of the existing literature concerned about the bilateral ties between two economies focusing on the political economy perspective. This paper aims to provide insights on the economic development and prospects of Malaysia and Singapore at the national level. In addition, this paper also makes a pioneering attempt at conducting a comprehensive comparative analysis between Malaysia and Singapore at the city level.

This paper offers a case study of Malaysia and Singapore by assessing their national economic competitiveness, urban standards of living and quality of life. The paper leverages on a series of indices such as the competitiveness index for ASEAN-10, the cost of living, wages and purchasing power of ordinary residents, as well as the liveable cities index to perform the analysis.

In terms of national competitiveness, the analysis shows that Singapore and Malaysia have been leading the ASEAN region from 2000 onwards, being the top- and second-ranked, respectively. Malaysia still lags Singapore in several aspects such as attractiveness to foreign investors and standard of living, education and social stability despite insignificant differences in the ranking. City-level analysis shows that the cost of living in Singapore is almost double of that in Kuala Lumpur, although living in Singapore is more affordable owing to the higher wage rate received by the ordinary citizens.

This paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this paper assesses economic development in Singapore and Malaysia instead of focusing on cross-straits relations. Second, the study reflects the view that the improvement of standards of living and quality of life for ordinary residents is paramount to economic development. The competitiveness index and city-level benchmarks used in the paper reflect the standards of living and the quality-of-life dimensions. Third, the focus on city-level analysis in addition to conventional national-level analysis helps to provide policymakers with practical policy implications against the backdrop of rapid urbanisation.

This chapter considers the ways in which city images “travel” and are consumed at a distance. A significant body of existing research has examined UMPs in terms of attempts to produce particular images of cities for global circulation. Much less attention has been paid to assessing the “success” of imaging strategies – the means by (and extent to) which city images actually circulate and are consumed. Focusing on the travel of UMPs constructed in and around the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur (KL) in the 1990s, the chapter seeks to provide a corrective to the production-centeredness of existing scholarship. Extending fieldwork-based research carried out in Malaysia in the 1990s, the chapter focuses on a series of accidental “encounters” with KL's UMPs outside Malaysia. Part of the aim of the chapter is precisely to begin to think about how the “consumption” side of UMPs, and associated effects, could be examined in more systematic ways in the future. Extra-Malaysian encounters with KL-sited UMPs such as the Kuala Lumpur City Center (KLCC) project are examined in terms of a range of means through which city images circulate: in film and TV performances, as tourist souvenirs and planning models, in building height charts and commercial advertising, and even through academic practices. Most instances in which UMPs are “consumed” at a distance might be banal and seemingly unworthy of study but, collectively, they can serve to forge new imaginings which, in turn, can have profound material implications for the cities concerned.

The purpose of this paper is to present how the state government can successfully intervene in providing better quality of urban living standard in Malaysia.

The paper approaches the issue of state intervention by using a case study of a former squatters’ colony area in Bandar Baru Sentul in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur.

The paper establishes that for many decades the governance of Kuala Lumpur has played an active role in designing and implementing a wide range of housing policies to eradicate squatters’ settlement in the city, consequently fulfilling the aspirations of low‐income people to become part of the home owning democracy.

This paper attempts to encourage public policy makers and local authorities to undertake a more active role in providing better quality of urban living standard through the establishment of strong institutional capacity.

The paper provides information on how the state government provides a range of mixed policies to rehabilitate squatters’ colonies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

This paper aims to capture real-time images of tourists during their visitation. This effort is to clarify a debate among scholars that there is a lack of current effort to genuinely represent an accurate image of the tourist experience during their visit. Previous studies on destination image focused on measuring and successfully capturing the tourists' perceived image using the perspective of “before and after” visitation.

The paper applies volunteer-employed photography and questionnaire methods to capture real-time tourist images. The paper was conducted in Kuala Lumpur, involving 384 international tourists. The data are analysed by supplemental photo analysis, was categorised into manifest and latent content.

The paper provides empirical insights into the changes in tourists' image when visiting an urban destination. The insights suggest that a city's image during visitation continuously changes based on the tourists' movement and preferences.

The findings of this paper are critical in assisting tourism agencies and authorities in portraying an accurate image to achieve greater tourism satisfaction.

This paper contributes to the interpretation and portrayal of the real-time image of Kuala Lumpur based on the manifest and latent content of the photos taken.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the important property specific criteria for office occupation decision making by tenants of purpose built office buildings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It attempts to provide more definitive information on office space occupation to prospective property marketers, managers, owners and investors.

A questionnaire survey was conducted to identify the important criteria which were earlier selected by expert panels. The outcome was then analysed through the principal component analysis and importance factor index adopted from an earlier study. The findings from the survey can then be used to examine the relative importance of the identified criteria through the use of a multi criteria decision making (MCDM) technique.

Four main criteria could be identified under the property specific criteria. Six of the “building features, services and management” attributes have higher rankings than the attributes under the “financial” considerations, mainly rent. the high rank attributes under the main criteria of “location” relate to the prestige and accessibility of the building while the high rank criteria under the main “lease” criteria relate to the monetary considerations of the lease arrangement. The high rank criteria under the main criteria of “building features, services and management” relate to the management and building services rather than the design/space provision.

The study area is confined to Kuala Lumpur city centre commercial area and covers prime office buildings.

Office occupation studies have been established in developed countries but are very limited in Malaysia. This study attempts to relate to the current office market developments and to seek the preferences of the various categories of tenants at a later stage.

Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, is exposed to several natural hazards, among which flash floods are most common and frequent. Expanding development and higher intensity of rainfall are the primary causes of flash floods. As the urbanisation is growing, the number of exposed properties, people and business premises are also increasing. This may have a detrimental impact on the socio-economic state of the city. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to investigate the frequency and intensity of flash flood occurrences between 2011 and 2016 and to delineate how it is impacting the urban livelihood. For this study, several news reports of flash flood events, previously published and reports were reviewed to elicit information so that the frequency and intensity of flash floods can be analysed for identifying flash flood risk areas. Along with the information from newspapers, Google map was used to identify the spatial locations of flash flood events, thus identifying the risk zones. This study found the City Centre as the most risk prone to flash floods. It was noted that 39% of flash floods occurred in this place. The Damansara-Penchala area comes in the second position with 20% of flash floods occurring in this place. Most of the people of these zones are exposed to flash flood and the affected people suffer from road blocking and heavy traffic jam. This study will help researchers and policymakers to understand the impact of flash floods in the city. This will also help to identify the most flood-prone areas of the city.

Kuala Lumpur (KL) emerged as the capital of the newly independent Federation of Malayan States in 1957 with a population of 316,000. Over the next 60 years, the city expanded into a major urban regional conurbation. It now covers an area of 2,790 km² and has a population of around 7.7 million. In the last two decades, market-driven, fast-track development, underpinned by road infrastructure has accelerated the city's urban transformation. Especially over the last two decades, a spate of urban redevelopments, including commercial and retail complexes, specialised centres, industrial parks, educational complexes and residential estates have transformed the Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Region (KLMR) beyond recognition. KL is only one example among many of intensive Southeast Asian property-led urban development, fuelled by demographic pressures and global capital inflows that transformed the regional natural and built environments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of globalisation, neoliberalism and property-led development, on the built form and socio-cultural legacies of the KLMR.

The major aim of this study is to determine how neoliberalism and property-led development have impacted the urban form and structure of the KLMR. The methodology applied in this study concentrates mainly on the use of qualitative research methods. The major qualitative research methods include qualitative analysis, field surveys and observations, primary and secondary data collection. The approach in this study is to exemplify the shift from government-sponsored development in the post-independence period to the current globalised-private oriented development.

The major findings of this research suggest that the global, property-led mode of urban development, whilst superficially successful, undermined traditional and tropical-climate urban landscapes. It also bequeathed many urban or property level problems, including traffic congestion, air pollution, planning governance and building management issues. The paper outlines narratives for a more balanced and sustainable mode of urban development, which is more in tune with local culture and climatic conditions.

This paper provides a deep insight analysis and evaluation of KL's growth from a small town into a global metropolitan region where property-led development dictates the rules and determines the character of the city.

This study aims to identify the sensory inputs that tourists use to shape their nightlife experiences.

The situations in three Southeast Asian cities, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore were examined, using tourist reviews posted on tripadvisor.com. A total of 460 data units concerning Bangkok, 373 data units concerning Kuala Lumpur and 453 data units concerning Singapore were compiled and manually analyzed to reveal the frequency of the primary sensory inputs used by the reviewers. Bivariate correlation analysis was additionally performed to reveal the co-occurrences of the sensory inputs that tourists used to form their impressions of each city.

The findings suggest that gustatory inputs were powerful yet unspecific, while visual inputs were vivid and conspicuous. Audio inputs added certain meaningful contributions to some extent for some tourists. However, the distribution of the sensory inputs differed across the three cities. Moreover, the contributions of the olfactory and tactile inputs are largely missing.

With the management of nightlife businesses (small or micro servicescapes), a thoughtful selection for the drink menu is necessary. When possible, a signature drink should be invented and promoted for each place. With the projection and promotion of tourist destinations as nightlifescapes, a sensory marketing approach should be considered. For example, nightlifescapes could be presented and promoted with unique drinks, good views of the city’s landmarks and interesting local music.

Prior to this study, little research has been carried out to investigate tourists’ nightlife experiences and their impressions of nightlifescapes. In addition, little has been done to identify the sensory inputs that tourists use to explain their experiences and impressions.

Functioning as space connectors, path structures in urban parks may rarely present social interaction opportunities, although centralized activity spaces are available. This paper investigated the interrelationships between the visual and physical accessibility attributes of path structure and their impacts on passive social interaction intensity across urban parks in Kuala Lumpur.

The concept of social interaction has been studied elsewhere in social cohesion, social affiliation and sense of communication. Still, it has not been studied in the context of urban park design. This study employed mixed methods using an adaptive and unique combination of qualitative and quantitative data collections to analyze urban parks with a bit of visual vegetation barrier. The experiential landscape method was applied to determine visual accessibility by interpreting experiential landscape maps. The space syntax method based on quantitative analysis is considered to measure physical accessibilities and vigorous activities along the designated paths by conducting integration analysis and gate observation. The data were crossed-analyzed using a Geographic Information System (GIS) classification technique, correlation analysis and Microsoft combo-charts to generate the relationship between patterns of activities and their accessibilities.

The results suggested that designated paths with higher accessibility attributes, impressively more elevated than other tracks, could influence the intensity of passive social interactions. The findings supported the understanding that activity nodes and active areas adjoining designated routes could make accessibility attribute areas more critical. These findings verify that visually enriching the spaces along the path structure toward activities is a pivotal contributor to urban planners and designers to enhance the paths’ local integration (LI) and visual accessibility to predict more passive eye contact among park visitors.

The proposed interrelationship among variables in this study has limitations because of not considering other qualitative methods and techniques like cognitive maps and interview simultaneously. These techniques could discover why some paths generate more passive eye contact among park users (Mohammadi Tahroodi, 2018).

Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan 2020 emphasizes Kuala Lumpur’s unique image as a tropical garden city via preserving and developing the iconic historical urban parks in the city center (CHKL, 2004, pp. 3–3). The latest Draft Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan 2040 has outlined the strategy to achieve a conducive, good-quality neighborhood that encourages social interaction. The findings could assist urban planners and designers better public parks by considering accessibility and permeability aspects of design. This research endorses the appropriateness of interrelationship between accessibility attributes of path structure and social interaction in urban design research, which local urban designers have not fully considered until now. Evaluating the visual convenience of designated paths and assessing LI of the axial lines constructing each designated route of urban parks during the primary stage could enable urban designers to estimate to what extent the paths are accessible and respond to passive social interaction. Then they could enrich with salient landmarks, views and activity nodes to make them attractive. The considerable number of designated paths connections, specifically while they shape the sides of activity nodes, could increase the connectivity and integration of spaces within the parks. These patterns of positioning the activity nodes make the designated routes more legible and provide ease of movement. As a result, it will give urban park users more information about the activities. Allowing people to use the paths will increase people’s presence and, subsequently, passive social interaction. One way is to locate accessible lands that provide social activities at direct visual access paths within urban parks for legibility.

The socially responsive urban design enhances the quality of life and provides life satisfaction, happiness and society’s overall health. Being in urban social parks in any passive and active situations has psychological benefits. It facilitates relief and rests from a stressful modern lifestyle that significantly impacts their mental health and well-being. The framework applied in this research integrates the social, spatial and physical aspects of parks design. With this regard, principles and indicators facilitate physically and socially attractive urban parks for Kuala Lumpur city center and applicable to similar contexts elsewhere.

The concept of social interaction has been studied elsewhere in social cohesion, social affiliation and sense of communication. Still, it has not been studied in the context of urban park design. This study employed mixed methods using an adaptive and unique combination of qualitative and quantitative data collections to analyze urban parks with a bit of visual vegetation barrier.