Conservation of urban environmental corridor in Kuala Lumpur as a method to safeguard the environment

Abstract

Today, natural resources in Malaysia has been exploited, networks of roads and railways are laid out, former tin mines are turned into elite housing, river corridors are getting thinner or turned into monsoon drains and natural swamps are no where to be seen within the city and remnant green corridors are decreasing at an alarming rate. The implication of this trend development is the decrease of balance to our cities: the greens provide the habitat for wildlife which plays an important role in supporting the sustainability of man civilization. As more areas are built there is now an imbalance of hard and impermeable surface in the cities, giving rise to hotter urban microclimate – a phenomenon called “heat island”. We are now exposed to global warming, flash floods, water and air pollutions, haze, greenhouse effect as well as water shortage. Therefore, it is the need for us, as “kalifatullah fi ‘Ard”(vicegerent of Allah on Earth) to study the implication of the present trend development so that we may able to intervene in a more rational way. A network of well-connected green-corridors is suggested to be a way of reclaiming the environmental balance in the urban areas. These corridors which are termed as urban environmental corridors serve many purposes; most important of which is to provide urban areas with its ‘soft elements’. This research is aimed at finding the effectiveness of this approach and how we can adapt it to improve our urban area so that a sustainable approach in development can be achieve. This research undertakes four stages of approaches which are; 1) research framework and background study, 2) conceptual framework 3) content analysis results and 4) recommendations and conclusion. Methodologies applied in this study are based on historical study, previous studies on environmental corridors, documentary analysis and case study. Content analysis technique and ground truth survey analysis are been used to analyse the research findings. It is hope that this study can contribute towards highlighting the importance of safeguarding the environmental corridors and benefit both the community and the environment for a better future.