KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 20 – Foreign urban planning experts have urged local authorities and developers to protect KL’s greenery which can ultimately be used to enhance the city’s competitiveness. Sebastian Moffat, CEO of the Consensus Institute and who has been involved in helping propel Vancouver to the top of the world’s most livable cities rankings said that in Vancouver, businesses say that they have been helped by the city’s reputation as a livable and ecologically progressive city. “If Kuala Lumpur can put a good face forward and gain a good reputation including that of ecological protection, all that will help in global competitiveness,” said Moffat at the International Conference on World Class Sustainable Cities here. Lu Wei Ping, director general of the Urban Development Bureau in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which has been branded an “eco-city” said that the first impression he had of KL was that it was “full of trees.” “There is a saying in Chinese – when your skin is fair, it covers your ugliness,” he quipped at the conference. “Kuala Lumpur’s trees create a positive image of the city. I urge developers not to cut down your trees.” Alex Leong, vice president of business development, Asia at AECOM, the US company which won the River of Life project to rehabilitate KL’s rivers, said that KL needed to avoid going down the path of some Chinese cities. “I just got back from Beijng where blue skies are a luxury,” he said. “We should feel fortunate.” Moffat said that KL needed to green its fiscal policies and ensure its taxes and fee structures encouraged mixed use walkable communities and transit oriented development and push localisation where energy and water was sourced locally as far as possible. “You need to get KL’s bones right,” he said. Kuala Lumpur in the 1970’s was regarded as among the greenest and most pleasant capital cities in Asia. Its population however expanded dramatically since the 1980’s without corresponding investments in proper city planning leading to a loss of much of the greenery that use to shroud surrounding hills and line its roads while rival land scarce Singapore surged ahead with far sighted policies that has positioned it firmly as the most ecologically progressive city in Asia. There have been some attempts by the Najib administration to reverse some of the damage and among the initiatives that have been announced include plans by the KL City Hall to plant 30,000 trees annually until 2020 and to create a 100 year old rainforest along the city’s river under the River of Life project. – Malaysian Insider