Planning requirements in housing development

Abstract

Malaysian government believes in the concept of human settlement that is equipped with basic utilities, social facilities and proper landscape. Thus the private developers, who remain to be the sole producer of housing, are not merely constructing a house but they are developing a living environment that gives a proper and pleasant place to stay. In ensuring this, there are certain standards, rules and requirements that need to be followed by the private housing developers and one of them come from the planning authority. The local planning authority that governs the planning and development of an area imposed planning requirements that need to be complied with before any approval for planning permission could be granted. The private developers, therefore, have to understand the requirements set by each local planning authority. This is because the planning requirements vary according to state and local planning authority. This paper, therefore, concentrates on the planning requirements in general, without any particular case study as it could provide a basic knowledge as well as the rationale for such a requirement. Besides that, the paper attempts to look into the impact of planning requirements or planning controls on to the development. 1.1 Introduction As the title of the paper suggests it is the writer intention to highlight the topics on development controls exercised by the Local Planning Authority (LPA) in Malaysia. Besides planning the area based on the concept of development plan, the LPA are given the task or responsibility to control the development. Development control is necessary to ensure the actual development that takes place is in accordance with the planning. Thus, the development control could be said as a follow-up mechanism after LPA plans the area. This is vital as the LPA is only the planning agency and not the implementation agency.