Legal and administrative issue for underground land development in Malaysia

Abstract

Land developments nowadays are not anymore limited to horizontal development (landed property) and vertical development (strata) but also underground land development. Looking to the necessity of urban land development in this era, underground land seems to look as an option for development especially in infrastructure and utilities. Other developing countries such as Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and China have started to maximize the utilization of underground land development with several of development type. Malaysia also has no exception from this because past experience has proven that we are also capable to develop underground land through the development of SMART Tunnel, Light Rail Transit and Merdeka Square. Positively on that example, Mass Rapid Transit was proposed to link the Klang Valley area with an efficient public transport. When the box station develops underground under the alienated land, issues in policy and legislation for underground land begin to rise from one to another. It started from property rights issues, ownership issues and jump to the application of the legislation that related to underground land development. Therefore, this paper attempt to discuss the issues critically together with the Malaysian case study of underground land development. The investigation also attempts to touch on how far the legislation provided help in assisting the underground land development and the gap that need to be filled in. To conclude, it is expected that the discussion can assist in finding solutions for underground land development in Malaysia.