20.0 Iskander Malaysia development approach, will it work?

Johor Bahru is a compact border city across the causeway from Singapore.  When I first went there 20 years ago, I walked across the causeway and once passing immigration on the other side, you were right there in the city.  This reminded me of walking across the border from San Diego into Tiajuana and for me it possessed a certain border town charm. 

A number of years ago, Johore State along with the Federal Government launched the Iskander Malaysia development which would transform this border city of Singapore into a major city on its own.  It promised to have the perfect environment to live, work and play. 

Iskandar Malaysia Development Plan (source: Iskandar Malaysia Web Site)

The government has put their money where their mouth is and invested heavily over the last few year in world class infrastructure.  Highways transverse the entire Iskander region and a new Johor State government offices are already in place. 

quality infrastructure connecting Iskandar Malaysia

The new grand Johor State Government facilities

In seeing the master plan presented in part or its entirety at various property exhibitions over the last 5 years as well as visiting the ongoing developments over the last 2 years, it looks to be a long road ahead!

When I first started to visit property exhibits and hear developers talk of their development, I was in awe of the scale both in physical dimension and density proposed and each major developer claiming they would be the “new heart of Johor”.  I thought how could that be, that’s when I went on the ground to have a look myself. 

Flagship A (source: Iskandar Malaysia Web Site)

Flagship B (source: Iskandar Malaysia Web Site)

Flagship C (source: Iskandar Malaysia Web Site)

First looking at all the physical planning as shown in models and drawings, they all look like optimistic products. If we can skip to 50 years later, increase the population by say 3 million and bring in all the economic activity they have targeted, wow, it would be a great place to be, but question is how to get there and can it even be done? 

Let me look at what are the current positives of the development strategy.

1.   Good infrastructure connecting the whole of Iskander developments and into Singapore.

2.  Lots of large developers bought in and fully committed to their projects.

3.  Central coordinating government body, Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA), coordinating among all stake holders.

Let me go back to my list of what could be flaws in the development strategy.

1.  Why in the world would you want to spread the development out so much over such a large area in order to get it started?

2.  Why would you want to have so many “centers” of development.  Can critical mass be established at all the centers so early?

3.  Why would you not focus to grow from Johor Bahru City in all directions?

4.  What is really going to attract a large population base to sustain the new developments?

5.  If there is no existing manpower there why will business be attracted?  Importing manpower is not economical. 

6.  Shenzhen could be something they looked at as a model of a border development, that grew from a village to the thriving city it is today, but the massive human resource of people willing to be economic migrants exists and this is not the case in Malaysia.

7.  Can the low density and spread of development yield enough population to financially support maintenance of the massive infrastructure investment.

8.  Development are all automobile focused will always give most developments a lack of community.

9.  A mass transit system is supposed to be implemented, but no time frame.  With the spread and small population base, it will be a long time before any system is likely to be implemented.

10.             Talking with most Singaporeans and looking at some clips on Youtube,   security is a key issue and the spread and sprawl of the development makes it even more difficult.

11.             Can it ever be a location Singaporean or others will be happy to live in and commute every day to Singapore for work?  Will both governments really be happy with this approach? 

New housing development with large resonable quality homes, but does Iskandar have enough to entice home buyers?

Older housing developments extremely quiet,  lack maintenance and many for sale

New housing developments also quiet, lack the feel of being occupied and make ideal targets for burglers.

In summary my opinion is due to the spread of development, small population base and free market phasing of development left to individual developers, it looks like a long road to getting the development to resemble the original vision.  It is probably politics of land ownership and large developers wanting to control tracks of land independently that creates this situation and unfortunately not to the benefit of the overall development.  

A much more logical approach would have been to put all the land into a central master developer which could be the government or a private company and then to plan the whole and sell smaller development lots at strategic locations where growth is desired and with products and economic activities that would act as catalysts for growth.

It appears with the IRDA they used an integrated master planning approach, but strangely enough the result is not an integrated development approach! I firmly believe and integrated development would expedite the growth integrating physical planning, economic, social, population and financial planning all into one! Both financial and human resources would be better utilized and better create critical mass and economy of scale, but the large individual developers would lose much individual autonomy and identity of large tracts of land. 

In any case if the approach became more successful, the overall Iskander Malaysia development would be the winner which will then benefit the individual developers.  

Jiwa Studio
Singapore, January 2012
http://jiwastudioweb.blogspot.com/