. We’re losing heritage buildings .

I was looking through the new and found this interesting write up.Totaly agree with this.

DRIVING past Kuala Lumpur’s old railway station recently, I noticed a high-rise building taking shape right across the street from the famous heritage structure and casting a long shadow over its romantic Moorish turrets.

Later on, I found out that this was just a glimpse of the things to come, as the entire locale of the station and the historic KTM Bhd offices next door is slated for development.

It is also by no means the only national monument becoming crowded out by aggressive construction. It seems that every time I take a trip to Gombak, another portion of the once-stunning vista towards Batu Caves has been obstructed by massive housing complexes and office blocks.

Within a few years, the caves themselves, and the majestically rising chunk of the Titiwangsa Range they are carved into, may become invisible to visitors, hidden behind a jumble of new buildings.

I note this trend with anxiety because it is my understanding that the 2005 National Heritage Act gives DBKL the legal tools to restrict development within a radius of 200m from gazetted national monuments. Furthermore, the National Physical Plan gives preference to low-density development.

Yet our urban centres seem to be turning into little cousins of land-starved Hong Kong or Singapore where every square foot of land has to earn its keep – a preposterous notion, considering the land bank that is available to us in Peninsular Malaysia.

The construction boom of the 1970s and 1980s left us with more than its fair share of brutal, megalomaniac architecture. Our iconic landmarks such as Masjid Jamek and the Sultan Abdul Samad Building have crouched underneath grey banking behemoths ever since.

Today, the Malaysia Tourism Centre in Jalan Ampang is all that remains of Kuala Lumpur’s once glamorous Millionaires’ Row, a marriage of Belle Époque opulence with our tropical living.

As of a few months ago, the Pudu Jail is no more, and further monuments are awaiting “redevelopment”.

With the benefit of hindsight, our generation should know better than to overshadow, or worse, actively erase, what is left of our history and heritage. We like to use the word “world-class” – how about we take a glance at urban planning in places like Paris, Boston or Melbourne?

There must be good reasons that their landmarks are not eclipsed by an onslaught of new projects. High-rise construction has been practically a taboo in downtown Paris – after all, why spoil a good thing? In Moscow’s sprawling Kremlin complex, the addition in the 1960s of a (low-rise) modern theatre building sparked national outrage.

I wonder if the KL authorities keep an architect on their payroll. Someone looking after the coherence of the city’s look and feel; protecting our greenery, open spaces, and that elusive sense of genius loci (spirit, or soul, of a place); and implementing best practices undertaken by other world-class cities.

SHEHZAD MARTIN

Seri Kembangan.