PENANGITES ARE a lucky lot. Besides luxuriant hills, a city centre worthy of being classed a Unesco World Heritage Site and endless tasty street foods, they get to enjoy long stretches of sandy beaches.

 

Yet, it is fair to believe that most people spend more time walking in shopping malls than at the seaside and foreshores. The conventional excuse is to blame the heat and high humidity. But despite the climate, there is no doubt that many Penangites, like most people in the world, enjoy sea breezes and coastal panoramas.

 

Many Penangites do enjoy a good exercise. This can be observed at the Botanic Gardens, the Metropolitan Park, and walking trails at Bukit Jambul and other hills. Gurney Drive still attracts crowds despite unsightly litter and muddy waters.

 

Besides, temperatures in the morning and evening are suitable for outdoor activities.

 

The real reasons why not many go to coastal areas for relaxation and exercise are the lack of access and the absence of basic facilities such as walkways and broad pavements, bicycle paths and parks along the coasts. Apart from Gurney Drive and Jalan Tun Syed Sheikh Barakbah which were built during colonial times, very few new “gurney drives” have been built. In areas where there are new stretches of coastal roads, almost all do not have facilities for walking or cycling, or children’s playgrounds or places to sit and relax. Worse, some development projects block access to the sea.

 

The need to reserve land for public access to the sea and beaches had always been recognised. As a general rule, all development projects in coastal areas must set aside at least 50 feet of land from the high-water marks. As such, even if nothing is done to build footpaths or pavements, there would at least be 50 foot-wide accesses to the beaches or foreshores. Unfortunately, there are projects that have been given waivers from having to comply with this rule.

 

 

The reason for the waiver will be given later. Meanwhile, it is useful to point out an important weakness in town planning in Penang. The authorities responsible for town planning and development control lag behind the fast rate of development. They are left having to react to proposals by land developers.

 

Despite the millions spent on town planning, long stretches of coastal areas are without layout plans. As a result, private land developers, through their professional consultants, are generally given a free hand to design the layout of their projects. Invariably, scenic areas are reserved for building properties for sale. Public access to open coasts is given low priority or end up being located in obscure corners, and is sometimes non-existent.

 

This is bad enough. Making things worse was the decision to allow private companies to undertake massive reclamation projects and propose land use layouts and intensity of use, especially in situating increasingly popular gated communities.

 

If the present situation is allowed to continue, many of the scenic coastal areas that are within short travelling time from populated areas will soon become inacce-ssible to the public.

 

Unfortunately, even the minimal requirement to provide access to the beaches and sea has been waived in the case of development in reclaimed areas. On September 7, 1994, the Penang State Executive Council made a planning “policy directive” to enable the state to direct the Penang Island Municipal Council to approve a development project on a piece of land to be reclaimed without having to set aside land for public access to the foreshore and the sea. More specifically, it was to faci-litate the building of a yacht clubhouse and 40 “marina homes” on reclaimed land on the eastern coast of Penang Island. (This part of the project is still not built.)

 

As a general rule, it is wrong for the State Executive Council to pass a planning policy decision to enable a particular project to circumvent existing land laws, planning by-laws or established planning guidelines. Once a policy decision is made, it can be used by other developers to also ask for a similar waiver. It is believed that the decision on “no-need-to-provide-access” in reclaimed land is still in existence. This policy should be rescinded immediately.

 

(Complicating matters even further, after the September 7, 1994 policy directive decision, the state government had also decided that newly reclaimed lands in Penang do not automatically come under the jurisdiction of the local councils. As such, the authority to approve develop-ment projects on reclaimed land has been the State Planning Authority. A discussion of the pros and cons of this form of development control will have to wait for another occasion).

 

The state government should also stop the practice of allowing private companies  to reclaim land. All reclamation projects should be by the state government, even if it can appoint contractors to carry out the projects. Apart from better development control, the state government also benefits from any progressive increase of land price.

 

Stringent control needed

 

But irrespective of who has the right to reclaim land, the state government, through the State Planning Committee, should pass a policy to make it mandatory that all private development projects on reclaimed land have to set aside a strip of land of at least 100m from the foreshores for public use, in the form of open space, roads, walkways and bicycle paths. This require-ment should not preclude the need to set aside reasonably sized open spaces at other parts of the reclaimed land project.

 

Furthermore, the people responsible for town planning and development control must realise that gated commu-nities are not good for the goal of creating liveable cities. Such projects inhibit access and make travelling from one part of the city to another more difficult. Penang development control authorities must be very stringent in giving approvals for gated communities, especially in scenic areas, such as coastal areas and hill slopes.

 

As of today, there are already develop-ment projects that inhibit access to the foreshores and sea. No land has been set aside for building linear parks or walkways and bicycle paths. As a remedy, the state government and the local councils must take steps to construct boardwalks on stilts and even bicycle paths to facilitate public access to scenic areas. Such a luxury should not be the exclusive reserve of only a few people.

 

It is hoped that in the long run, Penang will have a series of open spaces, play-grounds and food courts along the coasts, all connected by footpaths and bicycle lanes. In other words, one should be able to walk or cycle around the island and the whole coast on the mainland safely. This is an essential part of building liveable cities.   

** Republished with permission. This article first appeared in the October 2010 issue of the Penang Economic Monthly. Goh Ban Lee is a senior research fellow at the Socio-Economic and Environemental Research Institute (SERI).

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