The impact of Iskandar Malaysia development on urban amenities

Abstract

For major cities in Malaysia, globalized urban images are enthusiastically pursued by ur ban policy and explicitly depicted as a blueprint for a civilized city life. These developments have implications to physical and socio - economic developments as well as cultural aspects of cities in Malaysia. This is especially true for Iskandar Malaysia ( IM), a new corridor development envisioned to be a “sustainable conurbation of international standing‟. The whole initiatives targeted an enormous increase in socio - economic development indicators such as populations (222%), workforce (233%), and per - capit a GDP (210%) during a 20 - year period of 2005 - 2025. Since its establishment in 2006, Iskandar Malaysia has witnessed wide spread urban renewal and new urban/suburban projects which resulted in distinct physical and socio - economic changes. One of the challenges to urban consumption is the provision and allocation of amenities to people within the region. A main concern of this paper is to identify the impact of Iskandar Malaysia development on urban amenities distribution. The 2000 and 2010 census data will b e explored using GIS to explain the spatial distribution of health, education and safety amenities. This information will be matched with the residential distribution to determine amenities’ location, distribution and accessibility.