Malaysian Urban and Regional Planning... get real...

Urban and Regional Planning... hhmmmm... what a sad subject to cover, especially in Malaysia. I hate it... at the same time love it. Hate it because its not taken seriously here, planners are powerless... toothless. Love it because many great and beautiful cities are built by smart planners. Every major city in the world have planners with amazing vision and style. I tend to wonder what these planners must be in person... their character. Great creativity for sure... far sighted too... grand taste a must. The ultimate power is in the drafting pen.. with a few strokes, once a peaceful and quite suburban ... now it ends under a highway... or worse... another lame housing project. In a blink too ... abandoned land can turn into wonderfully landscaped parks... with birds and tall trees.

Planners from old and great cities those days did not have aerial photos, satellite images, demographic databases or GIS ... no computers... yet they could design and build city spaces with such detail and creativity. Today's planners are spoon-fed with so much data and technology... life is so easy. Its sad to see Malaysian planners struggling to overcome political barriers, red-tape and just poor research. The actual power of urban and regional planning is in research... the core of this profession is the quality of its R&D.

Its not the QUANTITY of data or expensive software packages that counts... its the QUALITY and SKILL of planners that matters the most. GIS and data can only help you so far... all the analysis, models and data findings must still be done by qualified and experienced planners.....