PJ CUS Presents Another Prestigious Activity: The 1st International Urban Talk Series 2020

27 October 2020

Pembangunan Jaya Center for Urban Studies (PJ-CUS), Universitas Pembangunan Jaya presents an international seminar titled the 1st International Urban Talk Series with the theme "Decoding Private Cities in Asean" under the auspices of Collaboration for Sustainable Urbanisation (CfSU). This activity is an international collaboration between UPJ and Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, supported by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

The International Urban talk invited three distinguished speakers in the field of urban design and planning from three different countries. The first speaker was Prof. Dr. Deden Rukmana from Department of Community and Regional Planning, Alabama A&M University. The second speaker hailed from Department of Urban and Regoional Planning, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Prof Dr Zaly Shah. The third speaker, Delik Hudalah, ST, MT, MSc, PhD, is a renowned academician from Institut Teknologi Bandung.

This event was attended by more than 60 participants from several countries including Germany, USA, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. The International Urban Talk Series is one of the implementations of UPJ's foreign cooperation activities with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which is the 1st of a series of 4 events planned to be conducted in 2020-2021.

   

  

In this talk, Dr Rukmana outlined that as a part of megacity, private cities should be managed and regulated in order to cater the needs of society, including the aspects of sustainability and social justice. A city should accommodate all inhabitants and reduce Urban dualism, which is a distinct characteristic of the megacities in the Global South.

Meanwhile, Dr Zaly emphasized that private cities in Malaysia started as private-led initiatives, although in the process it changed into a GLC-led operations. Taking example from the case of Cyberjaya and Putrajaya, Dr Zaly outlined how politics play a strong role in creating private cities.

On a different example, Dr Hudalah focused on urban deconcentration and post-suburbanization in the JMA presented by the development of private cities in industrial parks. These new cities have poor infrastructure connectivity and intense internal and inter- regional competition.