Contextual modernization; New town planning in Petaling Jaya, of Malaysia

• Main Authors: Choi, Y.K (Author), Ju, S.R (Author), Zaki, S.A (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor and Francis Ltd. 2011
• Subjects: Contextual modernization; Land use; Malaysia; Modernization; New town planning; New towns; Petaling; Petaling Jaya; Regionalism; Town planning; Urban planning
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher; View in Scopus

 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. PJ was designed in accordance with British town planning principles, which were based on the model of a modern ideal city. PJ also constituted a new regional character because it was developed with consideration for factors such as local technologies as well as social conditions. Kenneth Frampton (1998) and others discussed Asian regionalism and described this type of development in terms of the concept of "contextual modernization". This study is in concurrence with this concept and adopts the viewpoint that the impact of universal civilization can be reduced and modified by means of critical regionalism. The goal of this study is to identify how the new town planning principles of Malaysia which were first applied in the 1950s, were developed over time and how they were regionalized and transformed in a cultural and regional context. For the analysis, the authors chose 5 sections in PJ according to the building period which ranged; from the 1950s to the 2000s. To identify the planning principles, they analyzed the sections in terms of their history, land use, density, street system, distribution of public, religious and commercial facilities, and housing typologies.