From A Capital City to A World City Vision 2020, Multimedia Super Corridor and Kuala Lumpur

From a Capital City to a World City: Vision 2020, Multimedia Super Corridor and Kuala Lumpur A thesis presented to the faculty of the Center for International Studies of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Jen Yih Yap August 2004 This thesis entitled From A Capital City to A World City: Vision 2020, Multimedia Super Corridor and Kuala Lumpur BY JEN YIH YAP has been approved for the Program of Southeast Asian Studies and the Center for International Studies by __________________________________________________ Yeong-Hyun Kim Assistant Professor of Geography __________________________________________________ Josep Rota Associate Provost, Center for International Studies YAP, JEN YIH. M. A. August 2004. Southeast Asian Studies From A Capital City to A World City: Vision 2020, Multimedia Super Corridor and Kuala Lumpur (121pp.) Advisor of Thesis: Yeong-Hyun Kim In 1991, the former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad introduced an initiative called Vision 2020, designed to bring Malaysia to a developed country status, and this initiative will eventually support Kuala Lumpur’s position to become a world city. This thesis examines the recent urban restructuring of Kuala Lumpur in terms of the Malaysian government’s current aspiration for world city status. Many capital cities in the developing world have been undergoing various world city projects that aim at, among other things, improving their international visibility, advancing urban infrastructures and promoting economic competitiveness in a global world economy. This thesis focuses on four large-scale constructions in the Multimedia Super Corridor, namely, the Kuala Lumpur City Center, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Putrajaya and Cyberjaya. In addition, this thesis will provide a comparison of Kuala Lumpur’s status in Southeast Asia. Approved: ___________________________________________________ Yeong-Hyun Kim Assistant Professor of Geography Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Yeong-Hyun Kim, for her continued encouragement, patience and excellent guidance through the completion of my thesis. I am also deeply indebted to my thesis committee, Dr. Kadir Din and Dr. Christopher Boone, for their insightful advice and comments. I am grateful that I received a travel grant from the Southeast Asian Program, which allowed me travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and collect data for this thesis. I also would like to thank all my friends in Ohio University for their informative discussions and sharing of their knowledge. I thank Marianne and the tutors in the Academic Advancement Center (especially Rachel and Micah) for proofreading my thesis. I am also thankful to the Southeast Asian Collection, Ohio University library for its resourceful academic collections on Malaysia. I sincerely thank my parents, Yap Yew Tack and Law Seang Foong, my brother, Kim Bee, and my sisters, Siew Pheng, Shiow Wen, and Siew Ruenn for their love and support over all these years. Last but not least, I would like to thank my close friends, Sean Hsieh, Yang Pei, and Vichea Tieng for their encouragement 5 Table of Contents Page Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 List of Tables 6 List of Figures 7 List of Abbreviations 9 Chapter 1 1.1 Introduction 10 1.2 Study Area 14 1.3 Research Methods 16 1.4 Literature Review 18 Chapter 2 – The Malaysia Economy and Vision 2020 2.1 The Growth of the Malaysian Economy 24 2.2 The Malaysian Government’s Economic Plans 33 2.3 Vision 2020 37 Chapter 3 – Kuala Lumpur as the Center of the Malaysian Economy 3.1 The Old Kuala Lumpur 41 3.2 The Modern Kuala Lumpur 45 3.3 Kuala Lumpur and Vision 2020 50 3.3.1 Regional Information and Communication Technology and Multimedia hub 51 3.3.2 Regional Hub (Air Transportation Connections) 54 3.3.3 Regional Islamic Financial Center 56 3.3.4 Regional Education Center 59 3.4 Kuala Lumpur as a World Class City 60 Chapter 4 – Grounding Works for World City Status 4.1 The Kuala Lumpur City Center 62 4.2 Kuala Lumpur International Airport 68 4.3 Putrajaya 76 4.4 Cyberjaya 81 Chapter 5 – Kuala Lumpur as a Regional Center of Southeast Asia 5.1 Urban Restructuring in World Cities in Southeast Asia 93 5.2 Kuala Lumpur and Southeast Asian Cities 97 Chapter 6 6.1 Conclusions 111 References 114 6 List of Tables Table Page 3.1 Malaysia Plans’ Budget Allocation for Kuala Lumpur 47 3.2 Kuala Lumpur as the Regional Center 51 3.3 Southeast Asian Stock Markets: Composite Index 57 4.1 Proportion of Land use in the Putrajaya 77 4.2 Number of Students Graduated from Multimedia University at Cyberjaya, 1999-2003 86 4.3 Malaysian Companies in the Deloitte Tohmatsu Technology Fast 500 in 2002 89 5.1 The Ranking of World’s Tallest Building and Planned Constructions of the Next World Tallest Building 98 5.2 World Airport Ranking for the Number of Passengers in 2002 100 5.3 World Airport Ranking for the Total of Cargo in 2002 101 5.4 New Airport Projects in Asia Pacific 102 5.5 Top Five Digital Access Countries in the Developing Asia-Pacific 104 5.6 Asian Urban Hierarchy in Selected World Cities Studies 109 7 List of Figures Figure Page 1.1 Vision 2020, Multimedia Super Corridor and Kuala Lumpur 13 1.2 Map of Malaysia 14 1.3 Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area and the Multimedia Super Corridor 15 2.1 Gross National Income (Atlas Method) of Malaysia, 1962-2002 25 2.2 Gross Domestic Product Per Capita of Malaysia, 1960-2002 26 2.3 Changes in the Economic Structure of Malaysia, 1960-2002 27 2.4 Malaysian Export and Import of Goods and Services, 1960-2002 28 2.5 Malaysian Foreign Direct Investment, 1974-2001 30 2.6 Gross Domestic Product Growth of Malaysia, 1961-2001 31 3.1 Urban Growth in the Klang Valley for Selected Years, 1990-2005 44 3.2 General View of Kuala Lumpur in the 1980s 45 3.3 Population of Kuala Lumpur 46 3.4 Distribution of Employment by Organizational Groups in Five Major States, 1999 48 3.5 Functions of Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Region 49 3.6 General View of Kuala Lumpur in the 1990s 50 3.7 The Developmental Phases of Multimedia Super Corridor 53 4.1 The Master Plan of Kuala Lumpur City Center 64 4.2 The Development Phases of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, 1998-2012 69 8 4.3 Total Passengers Handled by Kuala Lumpur International Airport (1998 to 2002) 71 4.4 Total Domestic and International Passengers Handled by Kuala Lumpur International Airport and All Other Airport in Malaysia, 2002 72 4.5 Total Cargo Handled by Kuala Lumpur International Airport, and All Other Airports in Malaysia, 2002 73 4.6 Total Cargo Handled by Sultan Abdul Samad International Airport (1992-2002), and Kuala Lumpur International Airport (1998-2002) 74 4.7 Total Commercial Aircraft Movement Handled by Kuala Lumpur International Airport and All Other Airports in Malaysia, 2002 75 4.8 Map of Putrajaya 76 4.9 A Three-Year Physical Developmental Plan of Cyberjaya 82 4.10 MSC-status and Non MSC-status Companies in Cyberjaya 83 4.11 Employment in Multimedia Super Corridor, 1997-2003 (October) 87 4.12 Multimedia Super Corridor Companies by Sectors, 2003 88 5.1 A poster used for a joint tourism promotion for Malaysia and Singapore 99 5.2 A book cover on urbanization in Southeast Asia 99 5.3 World Competitiveness of Infrastructure, 2002 105 5.4 Estimates and Rankings of e-Government Maturity by Country 106 5.5 Cities Bidding for the Summer Olympics, 2008 107 9 List of Abbreviations AFTA ASEAN Free Trade Area ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations CIC Capital Issues Committee FIC Foreign Investment Committee GDP Gross Domestic Product GNI Gross National Income IAP International Advisory Panel IMF International Monetary Fund KLCC Kuala Lumpur City Center KLIA Kuala Lumpur International Airport KLMR Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Region KLSE Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange MDC Multimedia Development Corporation MSC Multimedia Super Corridor MITI Ministry of International Trade and Development WTO World Trade Organization SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome 10 CHAPTER 1 1.1 Introduction This thesis examines the Malaysian government’s efforts to promote its capital city, Kuala Lumpur, as a world city. “World cities” are defined as primary centers of the globalizing world economy (Short & Kim, 1999). According to this definition, New York, London and Tokyo are three major world cities that have been recognized for their disproportionate share of multinational corporation headquarters, stock markets, international organizations, and global air networks. Thus, these cities are often called first-tier world cities and global cities (Sassen, 1991). After these three primary cities, however, there have been some disagreements on what cities should be considered second-tier world cities. Friedmann (1995) argues for Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Miami and Singapore as regional centers following the three major global centers in the hierarchy, while some argue that Paris and Chicago should be included in the list of second-tier world cities (Beaverstock et al., 1999). Understandably, more disagreements are observed further down in the global urban hierarchy, since different indicators value different assets and characteristics that individual cities have developed over the last decade. There is a group of world cities commonly called “emerging world cities” (Lo & Yeung, 1996), “wannabe cities” (Short & Kim, 1999) or gateway cities (Short et al., 2000). These are large cities, mostly capital cities, in developing countries which have served as connecting points between their respective countries and the wider world. A lot [...]... Cyberjaya Kuala Lumpur Government Kuala Lumpur Structural Plan 2020 Regional Hub Air Transportation Connections Regional Education Center Kuala Lumpur Government Kuala Lumpur Structural Plan 2020 Kuala Lumpur as a World Class City Figure 1.1: Vision 2020, Multimedia Super Corridor and Kuala Lumpur 14 1.2 Study Area This thesis examines the recent urban restructuring of Kuala Lumpur, which has been a capital. .. (Cheng and Sayed Hossain, 2001) The new package to recover from the internal financial problem was the establishment of Pengurusan Danaharta Nasional Berhad to acquire non-performing loans from local banks and to manage their assets, Danamodal Nasional Berhad to assist bank restructuring and recapitalizing through the help from Bank Negara (Central Bank) and bonds from other financial institutions, and. .. government administration city of Putrajaya, part of the Multimedia Super Corridor project I collected statistical data on the economic and social development of Malaysia, as well as statistics for air transportation As for the information on Kuala Lumpur, I visited the Kuala Lumpur city government to get a copy of Kuala Lumpur s Structural Plan and to gather information on Kuala Lumpur s role and plan for... corporate planning and development of Kuala Lumpur city government, an officer in the Domestic and International Affairs Department in the Kuala Lumpur city government, a Public Relations manager of Kuala Lumpur City Center Bhd., a media relation executive of the Multimedia Development Corporation, and an executive in the Corporate Services Department of Bank Negara Malaysia (Central Bank of Malaysia)... to examine the ways in which Kuala Lumpur has been restructured along with the Vision 2020 concept in pursuit of becoming a world city within the next 20 years 13 Malaysia Vision 2020 Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area Multimedia Super Corridor Regional Information and Communication Technology Hub Regional Islamic Financial Center Kuala Lumpur International Airport Kuala Lumpur City Center Putrajaya Cyberjaya... also visited the economic department and tourism department of the Kuala Lumpur city government In addition to collecting statistical data in Malaysia, I gathered statistical data from several international organizations including the World Development Indicators database of the World Bank and the ITU World Telecommunication Indicator database in order to illustrate the economic development of Malaysia... These four large-scale projects are all located in the Multimedia Super Corridor which is in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur including the urban area of Klang Valley and part of the states of Negeri Sembilan and Selangor (Figure 1.2 and 1.3) Figure 1.2: Map of Malaysia Source: Primedia Company http://geography.about.com 15 Figure 1.3: Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area and the Multimedia Super Corridor. .. restructuring of Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital city In an effort to materialize the vision, the Malaysian government launched the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) to promote its knowledge-based industries The Multimedia Super Corridor consists of four major large-scale projects, the Kuala Lumpur City Center, the Cyberjaya, the Putrajaya and the Kuala Lumpur International Airport Along with these... government and Kuala Lumpur city government The economic statistical data are important to illustrate the economic development of Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia beginning from Malaysia’s national independence in 1957 It is also useful to compare Kuala Lumpur s position with other Southeast Asian cities in the regional urban hierarchy I analyzed the content of Vision 2020 that is related to recent urban restructuring... projects, the Kuala Lumpur government has also drafted the Kuala Lumpur Draft Structural Plan 2020 in early 2003 to promote Kuala Lumpur for world- class status (Figure 1.1) The thesis pays particular attention to the Multimedia Super Corridor projects that have significantly upgraded Kuala Lumpur s infrastructure in the past decade, regardless of the occurrence of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 to 1998 . 4.5 Total Cargo Handled by Kuala Lumpur International Airport, and All Other Airports in Malaysia, 2002 73 4.6 Total Cargo Handled by Sultan Abdul Samad International Airport (1992-2002), and. City Center Kuala Lumpur International Airport Kuala Lumpur as a World Class City Kuala Lumpur Government. Kuala Lumpur Structural Plan 2020 Multimedia Su p er Corridor Kuala Lumpur Government the Kuala Lumpur City Center, the Cyberjaya, the Putrajaya and the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Along with these projects, the Kuala Lumpur government has also drafted the Kuala Lumpur