Urban Sustainability and Growth Management in South-East Asian City Regions: The Case of Kualalumpur and Hongkong

Abstract

Major South-East Asian city-regions have experienced considerable physical, econotnic and social transfonnations during the past three decades. The rapid pace of globalisation and econon1ic restructuring has resulted in these city-regions receiving the full in1pact of urbanisation pressures. In an attetnpt to ease these pressures, city-regions such as Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur have advocate growth 111anagen1ent approaches giving particular interest to urban sustainability. These approaches pro1note efforts to achieve the triple botton1 line sustainability by balancing econon1ic and social develop1nent, and environtnental protection, and putting 1nore etnphasis on con1pact and optitnun1 develop1nent of urban fon11s. This paper evaluates the case of two South-East Asian city-regions, Kuala Lu1npur and Hong Kong, and assesses their experiences in tnanaging their urban fonns whilst pro1noting sustainable patte1ns of urban developn1ent. The findings show that sustainable urban develop1nent initiatives e1nploying a top down approach has yielded encouraging results in these case study city-regions. However the need for a 1nore concerted effo1t towards the overall sustainability agenda still re1nains vital.

Investigating the interplay between transport, land use and the environment: a review of the literature

“…In the age of globalization, rapid urbanization and climate change, sustainable urban development has become to the forefront of the scholarly discussion to search for remedies to protect environmental degradation (Redclift 2005;Teriman et al 2009;Rydin 2010;Runhaar et al 2009;Yigitcanlar and Teriman 2014). With the development of advance technologies mew methods, tools and approaches have been developed to shape up the urban space and generate new environmentally friendly place for us to live in harmony with the natural environment-such as ubiquitous-eco-cities of Korea (Yigitcanlar and Lee 2014).…”

Rethinking sustainable urban development: towards an integrated planning and development process

“…The need to protect the environment from the excessive ecological destruction of unregulated economic growth and conspicuous consumption is unquestionable, and with a common consensus, SUD is seen as the main vehicle for such protection (Burton et al 2004: Teriman et al 2009). However, to date, unfortunately, implementation of SUD in a large city scale and the construction of sustainable cities could not be realised (Doughty and Hammond 2004;Kenworthy 2006;Moore 2007).…”

Developing a Sustainability Assessment Model: The Sustainable Infrastructure, Land-Use, Environment and Transport Model

“…Therefore, it is important that key indicators need to be supplemented by qualitative and quantitative information on impact and performance levels. In this regard, a good sustainability assessment practice example is The Bellagio Principles developed by the International Institute of Sustainable Development [2]. These principles serve as guidelines for the assessment process, including the selection and design of indicators, their interpretation, and the communication of results, to provide a link between theory and practice.…”

“…As the literature indicate, these four broad categories represent all of the major human activity areas that play a critical role in effecting sustainability levels of urban environments [2,15]. These categories are considered as generic global categories so as the indicator sets.…”

“…In recent years climate change and other rising environmental concerns and problems have put sustainable urban development on the top of the agenda in almost every city across the world [1,2]. The increased and urgent environmental agenda has engendered the need for employing sustainability OPEN ACCESS assessment frameworks as key mechanisms for measuring the impacts of development on the environment, and as key policy instruments for supporting the transition to a sustainable urban development path [3,4].…”