No more open car parks in KL in 20 years

KUALA LUMPUR: There will no more open car park in the federal capital in 20 years as the city will be transformed into a green area with micro housing and pocket parks or urban jungles.
Director of Knowledge Management and Advisory of Urban Wellbeing Centre of Excellence (Urbanice) Malaysia, Dr Azmizam Abdul Rashid said with the green innovation plan, 30% of the city would be green areas.
"In an effort to realise it, we will impose high parking charges in a move to encourage city folks to use public transportation, and to avoid the open parking areas be left idle, they will be developed with micro-housing, which is apt, because the population in Kuala Lumpur is expected to increase by about 70%, and we do not want these parking lots to be used for the development of multi-storey buildings," he said.
Azmizam was speaking to Bernama after attending a discourse, with the title "Green Infrastructure Transformation in Kuala Lumpur through Urban and Innovative Solutions" in conjunction with the 9th World Urban Forum (WUF9) here today.
Azmizam said development of micro-housing was an alternative solution to the problem of urban housing and expressed hope that the model houses that were displayed at Medan Pasar during WUF9 would give the public an idea of the micro-houses so that that they would be more open to the idea.
"However, we are still in the planning stage to build micro houses in parking lots and the developer is still identifying the locations which will probably be in large parking areas.
"We are also working with DBKL (Kuala Lumpur City Hall) on the pocket parks which will include a network of pedestrian walkways in the city," he said.
Apart from infrastructure development, he said, the relevant authorities should also give priority to developing green and blue areas such as rivers and ponds in order to make Kuala Lumpur a more sustainable city. — Bernama