GKL/KV's rapid growth will create opportunities to reinvigorate Putrajaya. Today, Putrajaya already has many positive facets, including world-class infrastructure, extensive green spaces and waterfront and a daytime working population. However, the city lacks vitality and does not attract activity beyond its role as the administrative capital of the nation.
As a starting point, four initiatives are proposed to reinvigorate Putrajaya:
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As the central spine of the city, both sides of the 4.2-kilometre boulevard need to be enhanced with vibrant activities. Retail shops, upscale street vendors, and food and beverage premises will be developed along the boulevard to generate foot traffic, which will bring life to the city centre. In addition, public areas will be designated for and actively attract outdoors events (e.g. art performances, sports and martial arts).
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The natural lake waterfront will be developed to host waterfront retail and large-scale leisure developments (e.g. a water theme park). With close proximity to the boulevard, these locations will be packaged to draw visitors and residents alike.
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To provide effective connections with Cyberjaya, Bangi, Kajang and Serdang, a detailed assessment will be conducted regarding the feasibility of reviving the monorail service. In the immediate future, the number of park-and-ride stations will be increased from one to at least four to cover major entry and exit points to Putrajaya.
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Putrajaya will need to broaden its role beyond Government administration centre to attract other economic activities. One way will be to develop a world-class political science university or higher learning institution for students from the third world and developing countries.
A special economic zone will be established by ring-fencing neighbouring areas (e.g. IOI, Cyberjaya) to attract commercial entities with attractive fiscal incentives and other market-friendly policies. Partnerships will also be explored with established private developers such as IOI to develop selected land plots within Putrajaya.
Greater KL/KV will need to house one million new residents by 2020, and the current projected housing supply is expected to be sufficient to meet demand.
The challenge lies in providing the right mix of housing, moving from 81% of upper middle cost housing in 2009 to 85% in 2020 in line with supporting increasing income levels of the GKL/KV population. To parallel the expected increase in economic activity, there will be a commensurate increase in commercial space required.
However, caution is needed to avoid either a price bubble or an over-supply situation. Relevant local authorities are aware of this supply-side imbalance and are factoring this into their approval processes.
In addition, greater visibility into the current and projected housing supply and demand will be provided, as NAPIC or National Property Information Centre will provide annually updated data, including information on occupancies and the number of empty units in the market as part of its Property Market Report.
Growing urban economies naturally create more demand for services. To become a top-20 liveable city in the world in parallel with its dynamic growth, GKL/KV will need to improve its water and sewerage systems to ensure adequate provision of services and amenities.
In the area of water supply, this will be achieved by accelerating the development of water treatment facilities for Langat 2 Phases 1 and 2, which will be critical to meet demand beyond 2014. The Langat 2 project will increase capacity from the current level of 4,600 million litres per day to 6,700 million litres per day.
In addition, to build on the enabler for sewerage services, efforts will be focused on increasing the percentage of population connected to efficient regional networks from 71% in Kuala Lumpur and 18% in Selangor to 86% and 50% respectively, moving away from a system of fragmented and small sewerage treatment plants (STPs) that frequently do not adhere to environmental requirements.
Further capital investments will be required to support the refurbishment and upgrades of 32 regional STPs and 1,495 multipoint STPs that do not currently meet the new DOE quality standards. The target will be to have 91% of all STPs upgraded to a Category 1 status by 2020. A sewerage rehabilitation programme will also be carried out to upgrade 346 km of existing sewer network.