**URBAN GOVERNANCE:****'Heartware' is as important as hardware**

**URBAN GOVERNANCE:****'Heartware' is as important as hardware**

For some, lunch hour is best spent working rather than queuing to find a
parking spot. Driving back home is equally challenging.

For those staying outside the city centre, their evening commute after
work is distressingly slow. And it is getting slower by the day.

For most, the longer trip times are an unavoidable fact of life. Such a
sense of crowding is, however, shaped by our experience on the roads.
But is Kuala Lumpur really that crowded, physically?

In 2012, Southeast Asia's megacities of Jakarta and Manila clocked a
whopping population of 26 million and 22 million, respectively. By far,
the world's densest urban areas are on the Indian subcontinent. Dhaka's
density is 44,400 people per square kilometre.

By comparison, the Kuala Lumpur region last year has an estimated
population of 7.58 million with an urban density of 3,400 per square
kilometre.

It seems from these figures Malaysians have very little reason to
complain about crowding; apart from the increasing density of cars on
our roads, that is. The growing sense of crowding may also be
psychological since we are new to the phenomenon.

Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak were only sparsely populated
before the colonial intervention.

In contrast, the flood plains of Thailand and Myanmar, or the fertile
volcanic soils of Java, have gradually developed a substantial
population density since earlier periods.

The population of Malaysia multiplied in the order of 11 times over the
past 110 years. Most nations in Southeast Asia recorded only around
seven times multiplication.

Kuala Lumpur in particular has experienced strong growth since the last
century.

Its residents more than doubled by the 1980s from a mere 900,000
population in 1950.

With more economic opportunities in the following three decades, the
population in Kuala Lumpur's core and suburbs in 2010 had tripled from
its 1980s level.

By 2030, it is estimated that Kuala Lumpur will be home to anywhere from
8.7 to 10 million people.

Do we have the right state of mind to live side-by-side with 10 million
people?

Some signs suggest that the city dwellers have yet to develop sufficient
adaptation capacities to live in a high-density environment.

One example is the public nuisance of double-parking in the city and its
suburbs.

Few things get the blood boiling than being blocked by a car without a
driver in it. It has gotten to the point of people double-parking in
front of empty spaces to avoid getting parked in. While most of us

suffer the scourge of double-parkers in frustrated silence, others have
resorted to aggressive behaviour.

While charting the way forward for realising the investments in the
Greater Kuala Lumpur, we must be mindful of the pathology of
high-density living.

The impact of crowding on social behaviour needs better understanding.

In many dense cities, social life of a population is disintegrated and
replaced by maladies such as increased anxiety, mental disorder, family
break-ups, crime and violence. A balanced approach involves
complementing infrastructure or "hardware" improvements with the
cultivation of collective ethics or "heartware".

High urban density is tolerable only if civility and regulations mediate
social relations in the city. Managing common resources, such as
streets, parks and rivers, requires manners that maximise the gain for
all and not individuals.

The polite ways of Japanese motorists, for instance, circumvent the
problem of on-the-road driving anger. Such self-control lubricates the
frictions of urban space.

The alternative is regulation for formal social control of
anti-collective behaviour in crowded urban ecosystems. Many modern
cities, for example, have introduced measures such as drive-time
restriction for cars.

Kuala Lumpur City Hall on its part must also modernise its regulations
to maintain social order in line with the changing times.

This may involve reforming the penalty system for strict compliance with
the law. If we are serious about ensuring Kuala Lumpur's status as a
livable city, we must not shy away from making unpopular decisions where
necessary.

**Dr Hezri Adnan is Director of Technology, Environment and
Sustainability, ISIS Malaysia**