How bad urban design set Cyberjaya up for failure
Cyberjaya is a city in Selangor state, about halfway between Kuala Lumpur and Kuala Lumpur International Airport. This is a great place to build a new city. A real estate agent would put “strategic location” in their sales blurb, and on paper it is.
Unfortunately Malaysia is bad at building new cities, and Cyberjaya is a fumbled opportunity to make a great city. There have been plenty of articles written about how Cyberjaya is Malaysia’s ‘failed Silicon Valley’. What they don’t talk about is how the bad urban design of Cyberjaya set it up for failure.
I visited Cyberjaya in July 2023, and this my trip report.
Why Cyber?
As the name would suggest, Cyberjaya is a new city that was built with the intention of being a technology and multimedia hub. The vision was to become the Silicon Valley of Malaysia.
Cyberjaya was officially opened on 17 May 1997 by Prime Minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, and it was built alongside Malaysia’s new government seat of Putrajaya.
The “cyber” name hints at its 1990s origin, when anything that was technologically futuristic had cyber in its name. From the early internet cafes that were called cybercafes, to the cybernetic organism in Terminator 2.
As a fan of the cyberpunk genre, I was also intrigued by the name of Cyberjaya. I have spent enough time in Malaysia though to know to not expect a Blade Runner-esque city.
The Putrajaya Line
I had never visited Cyberjaya because it was difficult to get to by public transport from KL. That changed in 2023 with the opening of the extension of the Putrajaya Line to Putrajaya Sentral.
The Putrajaya Line includes two stops in Cyberjaya. I figured that I would get off at the first stop, walk around, and then get on at the second stop.
I looked on Google Maps to plan my trip, and it was immediately apparent that one does not simply walk into Cyberjaya.
Looking at Google Maps made me realise that Cyberjaya is an urban planning disaster that is not built for walking.
[The satellite view reveals what a pedestrian hellscape Cyberjaya is.]
MRT station Cyberjaya Utara (Cyberjaya North) is next to highways and undeveloped land. There was no way I could walk anywhere from this station, but at least they have been honest with the name as it’s literally in the north of Cyberjaya.
Honesty in naming can’t be said for the second station. MRT Cyberjaya City Centre is in the Northeast of Cyberjaya, and nowhere near the city centre (map).
[Does this look like an MRT station in the city centre?]
This Google Map shows Cyberjaya outlined in red. MRT stations Cyberjaya Utara and Cyberjaya City Centre are the blue markers in the top right of Cyberjaya. To the east of Cyberjaya is Putrajaya.
Walking from Cyberjaya City Centre MRT to the city centre of Cyberjaya
My plan was to walk from the “city centre” metro station to the city centre, but after studying the map I knew it was going to be difficult. There is a bus stop at the station, and I could always use a Grab taxi, but I wanted to see what it was like to walk.
I was on the MRT when it started raining, and it didn’t look like letting up when I got to Cyberjaya City Centre. After an hour of loitering at the station waiting for the rain to pass I gave up for the day. I had to visit some other stations for another report I was working on, so I got back on the train.
I came back the next day and it was cloudy but it didn’t look like it was going to rain. It turned out to be perfect walking weather for what would otherwise be a foolishly sweaty walk.
I left the Cyberjaya City Centre MRT station via the road. There is no grand pedestrian plaza in front of the station here, and it is clearly built for cars to drop passengers off.
[The exit from Cyberjaya City Centre MRT.]
There is no footpath once you leave the station. At this point I was having doubts about the walk, especially with the dark skies, but I kept walking for you, dear reader.
The only option for pedestrians is to walk on the side of the highway. There is not much to see between the station and the city centre. I went by this apartment block called The Place @ Cyberjaya, and I wondered if people walk anywhere outside this building.
[The Place @ Cyberjaya]
The walk from the MRT to the city centre is 2.4 km / 33 minutes (according to Google Maps). If it started raining my only place of refuge would be this highway overpass. Luckily it didn’t rain.
[Walking along Persiaran APEC.]
I was wondering if I was mad for walking into the actual city centre when there was a bus service at the MRT. Every time I passed a bus stop I felt vindicated in my decision, because I had not seen a bus pass me yet. I thought about waiting for a bus every time I passed a bus stop, but would you wait at a bus stop that looked like this?
[No footpath, no shelter, just a big middle finger to the suckers that don’t own a car.]
I arrived at what passes as the city centre where there are clusters of apartment towers. The city is clearly divided into postal zones using the “Cyber X” format. Here is Cyber 6.
Here I am in Cyber 4, not really sure about what to do with myself in Cyberjaya.
[🚨 Warning! Unauthorised pedestrian in Sector Cyber 4! 🚨]
Malls as public space
There is no town square or obvious landmark to walk to, so without knowing where else to go, I kept walking to some malls I had marked on my map. I came across the first good section of footpath lined with mature trees.
My first port of call was the DPULZE Shopping Centre. I didn’t see any shops along the way. All the shops are in the mall.
This is a typical Malaysian mall where cars are given priority over pedestrians. and entering the mall is uninviting for a pedestrian.
I was here on a Sunday, and the mall was busy with shoppers. I saw more people in here than anywhere else on the streets.
Behind DPULZE is is another mall that I had read about and bookmarked to visit. The Malakat Mall gained notoriety after being dubbed as the TikTok ‘ghost mall’.
The mall has been described as an “abandoned ghost mall.” since this TikTok went viral. As with the Forest City project, it is technically not a ghost town as there are people living and shopping there, but the closed stores and very few shoppers gives it a sad vibe.
The most lively section of the mall was this little outdoor market area.
[Outdoor market at Malakat Mall.]
Moving on from the Malakat Mall, I continued my expedition by foot across Cyberjaya. I walked along the road that borders the Multimedia University – MMU Cyberjaya. This 1 km section has a long footpath, and the tree-lined street was starting to soften my feelings about Cyberjaya (cities with trees and footpaths have a way to my heart).
I would have been in trouble if it rained, and I couldn’t help but think that if this was in Singapore there would be a covered walkway along here.
[A covered walkway in Singapore.]
My next stop was the Tamarind Square mall and residential complex.
After walking half the length of Cyberjaya, it was refreshing to find some street-level shops that were at the base of the mall. I discovered that most of the shops on the ground level where pedestrians should be were closed.
I walked along the ground-level shops looking for the entrance to the mall but I couldn’t find any entrance. At the back of the mall is the carpark entrance for the residential area. There is no obvious pedestrian area here, and even if you lived here it is an uninviting place to walk through. This building is built for cars.
I walk back to the front of the complex, and there is a ramp for cars to drive to the parking level. Again, there is no obvious entrance point for pedestrians. I saw a doorway to some stairs so I took that.
I went though some dingy hallways and found a lift, still unsure of what I was looking for at this point.
I arrived on the rooftop, which looked like a street-level shopping centre with parking in front of the shops.
The shopping area itself is a pleasant space. There is a garden area in the middle, and it felt like a great place to hang out. I even found an Australian-style cafe. It occurred to me then that the only cafes I had seen were in malls.
Apparently this is an award-winning shopping mall. The judges must have been driven here because there is no way a pedestrian would think it is award-winning.
[Cars arriving at Tamarind Square on the roof level.]
Leaving proved to be just as difficult (either that or the pedestrian exit isn’t placed anywhere obvious). The most obvious exit from the rooftop shopping area is this portal to the car park.
This brought me down to the car park, and from there I looked for an exit.
This was the exit on the street level. Does this look like an inviting entrance for pedestrians to a shopping mall?
By now I was done with walking great distances, and I had no fuel in the tank to walk back to the metro station. I booked a Grab Taxi back to the Cyberjaya City Centre MRT.
How not to design a new city
After visiting Cyberjaya I was so annoyed with what a missed opportunity this was. The maddening thing about Cyberjaya is that it’s a new city that was built among palm oil plantations. It was a blank slate upon which urban planners could have built a city with aspects borrowed from the best cities in the world.
Instead, we got boring office parks, malls as public spaces, big roads, and no rail transit.
Here is another snapshot of a satellite view of Cyberjaya. Have a look at the this pedestrian-hostile street layout.
[Did a car draw this street layout?]
Office parks can be found in outer suburban areas around the world (especially in the USA), and I have worked in such places in Australia, the UK, and Ireland. They are boring and miserable places to spend a day at a boring and miserable job. You have to drive there, and there is nowhere in the vicinity that is interesting to hang out at lunch time.
My original plan was to spend half a day in Cyberjaya and then walk to Putrajaya. It is technically possible to walk between the two cities, but it is even more dangerous for pedestrians than the walk I did at the start of the day. The two cities are split in half by a motorway with a cloverleaf interchange .I will save my review of Putrajaya for another article.
Before the MRT was built there was a plan to build a monorail that would connect Putrajaya and Cyberjaya. There has also been a tram or light rail proposal to connect Putrajaya. I have made a list of all of the transit proposals for Cyberjaya and Putrajaya.
[Abandoned Putrajaya-Cyberjaya Monorail construction at Putrajaya Sentral.]
The problem for Cyberjaya is that the city is so spread out that it’s going to be hard to make public transport work without dense urban clusters.
A monument to Mahatir’s motor-obsessed madness
The bad urban design of Cyberjaya can be traced back to is inception in the 1990s during Mahathir’s first reign as PM.
Cyberjaya is built for cars, which makes sense as its foundations were laid by the car-obsessed Mahatir, who dreamed that every family in Malaysia would own a car (preferably a Proton).
Building a walkable city with good public transport wasn’t a consideration in most places in the 1990s, let alone Malaysia.
To be fair, I can see what the urban developers at the time were trying to go for. Cyberjaya and Putrajaya were built to be modern, green, and spacious cities outside of the cramped and decaying inner city of old Kuala Lumpur. The gentrification of Southeast Asia’s old towns (like in KL and Ipoh) hadn’t happened at this point, so these historic areas with walkable streets were still run-down and not considered as a symbol of a modern city.
Instead of a solarpunk future we got a boring dystopia
While the name Cyberjaya conjures up images of a futuristic Southeast Asia cyberpunk city, you don’t want live in a cyberpunk city. In Cyberpunk fiction, a cyberpunk city features “futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay.”
What I would like to see in new urban developments is something that looks more like a solarpunk city. In the literary world, Solarpunk is a “movement that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community.”
I was most impressed with how green Cyberjaya is, though you don’t need to be a greenthumb in the tropics for your garden to florish. Cyberjaya is not a sustainable city (despite its claims that it is) because it’s a city built for cars.
Some media outlets have latched onto the “ghost city” title, but that is unfair and a bit sensationist. It is a functioning city with people living there
[Apartments for sale in Cyberjaya.]
Instead of an exciting futuristic pedestrian-friendly cyber solarpunk city, Cyberjaya is a boring dystopia.
Cyberjaya is a functioning monument to bad urban design in Malaysia.
How to fix Cyberjaya
One of the problems of Cyberjaya is that it’s a boring city. If you want to attract the best tech talent in the world, then you need a great city to go with it. This should have been part of the project as well. Build an amazing city that people will beat the door down to move to.
Malaysia already has a built-in disadvantage with their morality police, sin taxes, and internet censorship. Malaysia just can’t expect to build office parks with cheap rent and tax breaks and expect people to be excited to live there.
Urban planners of Cyberjaya would do well to read this tech markets series by Rest of World.
These tech hubs happen where there are people living and interacting in vibrant cities. For example, read about Taipei’s Guanghua Digital Plaza. Here is Guanghua Digital Plaza on the map.
[Map of area around Guanghua Digital Plaza (view map).]
If you were building a new city you could do worse than just copying a slice of Taipei. The city is gridded so it is easy to explore, and it’s mixed-use, so shops and apartments are side-by-side. And have a look at all the metro lines. This is how you build a city.
I have written about building better new cities, and how the simplest thing to do is to just stick to the grid and let businesses take their own course. Building office park enclaves that you can’t walk from is a terrible way to build a city.
I am wary of government officials going on too many international junkets, but perhaps urban planners should have a condition of being well-travelled in addition to any degree. What cities have they been to? Did they travel by public transport or were they chauffeured around?
It’s one thing to build buildings suitable for tech companies, but what about the rest of the city. You need to remember that cities are competing with each other, and workrs want an enjoyable life.
If you had a choice between Taipei or Hong Kong, or Cyberjaya, I know where most people will choose.
Further reading
When I tell people that I visited Cyberjaya, most people outside of Malaysia say they haven’t heard of it. What I have written isn’t new news in Malaysia, where there has been coverage about the failure of Cyberjaya. Here are some other articles:
How Cyberjaya became Malaysia’s ‘failed Silicon Valley’: Tech in Asia (2023)
Cyberjaya a failure, think tank study finds: Free Malaysia Today (2018)
Learn from Cyberjaya’s failure, think tank tells Putrajaya: Malay Mail (2018)
Inside Cyberjaya, Malaysia’s failed Silicon Valley: Wired (2016)
Bad Urban Design series
This is the first in a series of Bad Urban Design in Southeast Asia. Subscribe to the newsletter to get weekly updates and more articles like this.
I never been anywhere in Malaysia that has good urban design. It’s hard to argue that things are even well designed for people who drive cars. Design of roads throughout cities is quite lacking as well.
desa park city?
This article is absurd and full of biasness
If you are right, then PJ and KL will be failures too. But they are not. Failures are putrajaya and shah alam
The difference between failure and success is not car.centric cities. Walking in hot sweaty tropical weather is not popular.
I hv the answer… but you hv to figure it out yourself becos it is sensitive 3r subject.
Everything he said is true ..his point is that since it was a fully planned city , therefore why wasn’t it planned better and with the pedestrian in mind.
If you are right, then PJ and KL will be failures too. But they are not. Failures are putrajaya and shah alam
The difference between failure and success is not car.centric cities. Walking in hot sweaty tropical weather is not popular.
I hv the answer… but you hv to figure it out yourself becos it is sensitive 3r subject.
There’s nothing positive in the write up which gives a very wrong impression about CJ. U may criticise but at the same time give some suggestions of improvements. U have to stay more than a day to like a place. U r like going to CJ to find faults. Be fair n professional.
Tun Razak Exchange is an attempt at good urban design.
Yes I have made a couple of visits during construction and it seems more walkable, and I was impressed that they built a proper metro interchange for the two lines. Will be checking it out when more places open.
You are so good at complaining everything.
Complaining? Those are legitimate concerns. Stop being in denial.
agree..stupid Englishman complaining everything
You could simply say ‘agree’ but you then attack.
Why not explain how the writer is wrong?
@Azlan the article is constructed logically. Maybe you could explain how the MRT services the whole area? Yes there are feeder buses, but they do not match the MRT timetable (a 30 minute wait).
Thank you for writing this article. You addressed much needed concerns and even outline stuff that I haven’t noticed before. I actually wrote an email to Cyberview a while ago. I literally lambasted them for their decision to put the MRT station in the middle of nowhere and how none of them make any sense. To my surprise they replied to me. This is their reply
“The two MRT stations which are in the northern part of Cyberjaya is the result of extensive study by the relevant authorities which took into account the future planning of Cyberjaya. The Cyberjaya City Centre MRT Station will be catering for the next city centre for Cyberjaya in the future. The Cyberjaya City Centre was planned as a mixed development of various scales which include world-class convention centre, hotel, serviced residences and hybrid-concept shopping mall housing businesses of different sizes with mid-rise residences and offices. Therefore, there is a need to serve this area.
In the future, MRT is preparing feeder buses serving five routes from the two MRT stations to serve major areas in the city including the high-density residential areas. Cyberview is working closely with the local authority, the Sepang Municipal Council and MRT Corp to further improve the connectivity in Cyberjaya. You may contact MRT Corp at feedback@mymrt.com.my should you have further questions on their planning.”
It’s funny reading it because when he said “the northern part of Cyberjaya is the result of extensive study by the relevant authorities which took into account the future planning of Cyberjaya” this is again terrible city planning to me. Rather than improving the current city center, make it more walkable, make it more lively, make it have direct access to public transportation, making the area more densely populated, etc. They decided to build a new city center 🤣🤣🤣. I mean we already have a dead city center currently, now we want to build a new city center? If you want to use the taxpayers money you should use it wisely, don’t give us lousy services. And this is the result of their extensive research 🤣🤣🤣. I am so angry because when I found out there will be a city center MRT in Cyberjaya I bought a house there thinking that the city might come alive finally and it would be a smart investments but I was a fool to believe that this city that has been terribly planned for decades would actually make things right this time around. We don’t need a new city center especially since Cyberjaya is a ghost town (And I disagree with u, it really is a ghost town) but now suddenly I am supposed to believe that this new city center will work out like magic and have more people living there.
Then they talked about this “In the future, MRT is preparing feeder buses serving five routes from the two MRT stations to serve major areas in the city including the high-density residential areas. ” Why in the world would you want to do that when you could have put the MRT stations in the actual city center and people can just walk or bike to their desired destination. Considering MRT is funded by the Ministry of Finance and how it is has not been profitable for years. Why in the world would you want to waste money providing bus services? They are wasting taxpayers money as if it is nothing. Why not just built the station in the current city center, make the place more lively & denser and people can just walk from the MRT station to their desired destination? I bet you the proposed bus services will have very low riderships and it will cost more losses to the taxpayers money.
Plus for such a dead city why would we need a lot of new malls, office spaces, apartments & so on ? There is no demand for Cyberjaya & quite frankly the buildings are oversupply. This is why Malaysia has so many property overhang. You built too many apartments in the middle of nowhere & turns out nobody wants to buy it. Running a city is simple actually. You need to understand the basics of economy which is demand & supply and you need to build a city that is practical to live in. People shouldn’t think about the future & building new city centers if they can’t even solved the current problems they have. Fixed the current issue first before you go planning for future things that has not ecist yet.
Lastly I would like to just add. This is not the first time we wasted taxpayers money on rail services by building MRT/LRT stations in the middle of nowhere, resulting in extremely low riderships. Malaysia is notorious for that. We spent billions for public transport to reduce traffic but we failed to achieve this. It is shameful and I hope for the future MRT circle line they will actually use their brains to decide where the stations will be located. For the life of me, I can never understand the logic behind this Cyberjaya station. Surely they cant be that dumb. Maybe they were lobbied or something, I dont know.
You sounds like a very knowledgeable person and seems like having a conversation with you would be insightful. I’d like to connect with you and perhaps get more information on general stuff.
Thanks for your detailed comment, I appreciate your perspective as a property owner in Cyberjaya. You mention many things that are seemingly common-sense observations, but apparently not but apparently not for the city planners. Even if they were planning to build around the City Centre MRT, it is still going to be spread out and hard to access by pedestrians.
I get that. It is still pretty spread out but we still have time to redesign Cyberjaya in my opinion considering that the city is still small. It is not too late to make things right. I have seen documentaries about large cities which have turned highways into parks & pedestrian streets. So I dont think it is game over at this point in time. But it doesn’t seem like the city is trying to turn things around, in fact they are making things worse.
Sorry..pj and KL are car.centric but they are vibrant. Putrajaya..shahalam.. cyberjaya have lovely wide tree.lined pedestrian links but you hv to drive out an average 5 km to find a mechanic. Malls will not last long becos aircom seekers hv low buying power plus foreign students.
You go figure out.
It is not urban design but a wholelistic sociological political approach
Wow how much did you get paid for this article??
Heya James,
Can see lots of of bots and language-challenged, brainwashed haters in here who as the Malay proverb goes, “frog below a coconut shell” – equivalent to keeping their hands in the sand. Hope you ignore them.
I do appreciate very much this article. The insights are very valid, and you did do quite some legwork and research. And you specifically declared that you approached this from the POV of a pedestrian (which a lot of the dissenters ignored).
Cheers
Nonsense. Get an electric bicycle and try again. City Center has not been developed yet, that part is the only one that will be designed for pedestrians. For the rest there are ample roads with lots of trees and its very easy to move around. You didn’t even mention all the parks and public areas for recreation.
You planned poorly, went there uninformed and reported inaccurately. Do they pay you for this?
The city center has already been developed for decades. HSBC, Shell, RBC, etc are all located within the current city center. Do you honestly think this company will want to move their office to a new city center? Who would wanna waste millions building new office when you already have an office just a few KM away. Is there a guarantee we can create jobs in these area? Plus Cyberjaya already has an oversupply of housing. Now you are telling me they want to create a new city cenrer, with new houses, shoplots, shopping malls, etc. Their solution is to create more housing even after decades of oversupply. Cyberjaya has been a dead city for decades, what makes u think this new city center will suddenly be so full of people? We are creating a bubble and that is not good. What Cyberview should have done is increased density in the current city center and built an MRT station right at the middle of the city center. You dont get to waste billions of taxpayers money building new roads, highways, MRT station that nobody wants to use. Use the taxpayers money wisely and do not be satisfied with these incompetent services.
Agree totally
bookmarked!!, I like your site!
Be kind to your visiting country. Please enjoy your stay.
He is not being mean he is being objective. This really is a lousy city planning. Malaysia is notorious for having terrible city planning and if we can’t take criticism we will never be able to reach our full potential.
To describe Cyberjaya as a “failed silicon valley” is a false equivalence at least, if not misinformation, that needs to be fact checked. It was never meant to be a silicon valley in the likeness of Silicon Valley of the USA, as far as I know, despite some publications and writers like to portray it to be. It requires many other conditions to happen besides Government’s initiatives and good urban space planning. Still, kudos to the writer for taking the trouble to walk around Cyberjaya and share his experience. I have lived in Cyberjaya for 12 years and I have never taken a walk as the points of interest are not as “walkable” as I would like them to be. Driving and parking in Cyberjaya – and Putrajaya, which many people confuse with – is just too convenient compared to other nearby populated areas. Both are by far the most “cyclist friendly” towns in the country, as evidenced by the many cycling events there throughout the year.
When Putrajaya & Cyberjaya were created, it were created with special purposes.. Putrajaya is the administrative city, Cyberjaya is the commercial & high tech centre. Both are well planned cities. Cyberjaya is supposed to attract high tech & start up Co, but when Tun Mahathir retired, the next Prime Ministers, did not follow the roadmap…so Cyberjaya was neglected. We shud be proud, even Jack Ma was surprised that Msia has started its own “Silicon Valley very early. Msia should hv been attracting many MNCs by now if properly executed & follow the roadmap laid by Tun Mahathir. What a sordid episode…it’s all about lack of leadership
When Putrajaya & Cyberjaya were created, it were created with special purposes.. Putrajaya is the administrative city, Cyberjaya is the commercial & high tech centre. Both are well planned cities. Cyberjaya is supposed to attract high tech & start up Co, but when Tun Mahathir retired, the next Prime Ministers, did not follow the roadmap…so Cyberjaya was neglected. We shud be proud, even Jack Ma was surprised that Msia has started its own “Silicon Valley very early. Msia should hv been attracting many MNCs by now if properly executed & follow the roadmap laid by Tun Mahathir. What a sordid episode…it’s all about lack of leadership
I moved from KL to new residential area south of cyberjaya called cybersouth last 2 years,
and i agree with u, cyberjaya look like a ghost town, many shop and restaurant compete for really low customer to survive, and hardly can survive for more than 2 years..
The residential price at cybersouth consider low , half price than the equal unit at cyberjaya hopefully can rise citizen to the ghost city hopefully in the future..
Anyway, i still love this ghost town because there are many activities happening here for my kids (tech event, kids weekedn class and etc. and citizen here kind of different vibes with unique and supportive event..
Hopefully cyberjaya will survive for future tech generation..
I agree with everything except the comparison to the “sin cities” or “sin-based industries” of Asia. Come on now, how pathetic would it be to sacrifice your own values just to copy the big players. Malaysia and other muslim countries should be able to make innovations & move forward by their own design. It just happens to be bad design this time. But being narrow minded is not the answer. Yes narrow mindedness apply to both concervatives & liberals.
Years ago during the old man’s administration. He was in Cyberjaya touring the facilities.
My friend said his remark was
WHO THE HELL. BUILD THIS PLACE THAT THE BUILDING IS SO FAR APART!
Eventually my friends company moved in. Initial setup of the internal infrastructure was hell. There was no wiring diagram to the electrical, lan cable and other immenities.
The tech had to shout from one end of the building to another to confirm if that the line that was for their work station.
And there is biasness to you review.
Because Cyberjaya building management screw up the clients. Until today, there growth and development but utterly dismal.
Malaysia or a fact malaysian should have done better during that time.
The trouble with certain quarter sure will support the govt of the day no know he is greedy and stupid person.
And yet he squeeze everything out of all the public funds for his dream and non sensical ideas
Ah, not forgetting forest city in johor.
Cater for the china rich
Um, before pandemic
The official up there just care about how money go into their pocket and playing religion card to get vote. What planning? Just sub-con the job to low cost contractors from India. There is no such thing as creativity when comes to work.
This basically sums up why Malaysians and foreigners are forced to drive anywhere.
Thanks to bad urban design with eccentric car town planners, everyone is working their arse off to own a car because most places are only accessible by cars.
Yet those high-rank officials still dare to ask people “Jom Naik Pengangkutan Awam” when most also commute using their own chauffeur.
Who are the victims of bad urban design? Basically everyone.
People now have to choose which places which have parking space available.
People now have to waste time looking for parking.
Kids nowadays also commute using family-owned Alphard/Vellfire.
I agreed with this articl he said what i want to say. I live in 16 Sierra just MRT one stop away to Cybejaya, I’ve been Cyberjaya recently I think there is quiet place. For residence is nice place to stay but still far away to develope as dream silicon valley. for me i wont take MRT to Cyberjaya because no feeder bus no pedestrian reach to major high street, and also Cyberjaya still lack of commercial area as well as like shoplot along to road, and cover walk way pedestrian from MRT walk way to high street and mall.
Secondly my point of view Tesla big player hq is recently set up on Cyberjaya that I think is not enough to attract other corparate company to move in there, if Cyberjaya want to be silicon valley city, job opportunities is also considered one of the big factor , how many jobs will be created in the future that is the question mark! not only how many residence property you want to build there, it is actually how well you want to build commercial area as well to equal the residence property.
Thanks James, for writing this piece, which is long overdue 😀
Ignore those ignorance feedbacks; they don’t know what is left or right, most likely they want to drive from their bedroom to the loo, too..
“Malaysia already has a built-in disadvantage with their morality police, sin taxes, and internet censorship.”?
degeneracy, porn addiction, onlyfans, adultery, abbortion, depression rate, domestic violence, divorce rate, broken family, fatherless child, disorientation, drugs & alcohol addiction, gun violence, crime rate, racism, cancel culture, media manipulation etc.
wanna talk bout moral compasses? irony of the west
Just go back to ur country and live happily rather complaining about Malaysia. I am an expat here for 17 years and lived in 6 other countries including Germany and the USA. All other countries and cities never match life here in Malaysia for family living. Every country or city has its weakness and before going to the city try to understand it and go rather blindly assuming things.
I ve been to Cyberjaya as my children studied there. I agree with many of his observations and feedback. There’s much to do to improve the township. My main concern as many of us mentioned is Government officials spending money without clear understanding of the Rakyat needs in the township. Design more to impress than anything else.
But as we all know, this doesn’t only happen in Cyberjaya.
It is an article with good findings. Cyberjaya although being new and modern does not take into account of being net zero or carbon friendly. Unfortunately none of these terms will mean anything to administrators of Malaysia. Quick to shout taboo once exposed to the public all the shit that have been swept under the carpet.
But Cyberjaya is not unique, most new cities in Malaysia are also badly design, and this is simply down to corrupted mentality and corruption.
Like Tabung Haji, Felcra, Mara, Felcra, Cyberjaya suffered from corruption too. The MRT stops for instance, is a deal gone bad when MRCB took the land surrounding the stations with promise to develop the area, but never did. The land bank however is still theirs, kept to wait until perhaps the value is higher to be sold to other developers.
Corruption of the mind is what the whole entire country suffers from. Having plenty of agencies to spearhead the economy of tech industry, but none are actually sincere in their effort, just salary burners.
There was a good documentary on this a few years back but unfortunately not in mainstream media – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0MVBnOdfXM
What author wrote is painful to read for many Malaysians, but we have to be more subjective to constructive criticism, and not to lash back with black magic and bomoh etc.
You made it sound like it was Mahathir that made it all wrong. The decision to stationed MRT at the north is from Najib Razak who wanted to build a vibrant city centre at the north which failed due to the .. you know what.
Anyway, the origin of cyberjaya was at cyberview and century square and it was and still is open for more infrastructure investement to facilitate pedestrians if we look at the glass half full instead of otherwise.
No, Taiwan isnt conducive as cyberjaya. Cyberjaya caters for software developers from India, Middle East and China (though chinese are getting less). It still is a place where software developers start their careers before going to Europe. It is not meant for all professionals in Malaysia hence, the reason it is not known to tourists but more so for certain professionals in respective vertical sectors.
Sorry for your long walks but my beef with cyberjaya or rather msc or malaysia digital as they call it now is the inability for us to produce a local world class company. That should be the focus.
This reminds me of my own tourist visit to Kuala Lumpur in 2019.
After visiting Merdeka Square in the centre of the city I decided to walk north to the KTM Bank Negara station. It looked easy. The sidewalk gradually narrowed and disappeared until I ended up walking along the very edge of a busy highway. When I arrived at the station the only way to access the overhead walkway was to scramble up a slippery grassy slope.
I took photos, scratched my head and regretted my folly in trying to access an inner-city Metro station on foot.
You are correct sir. Tell everyone not to come to Cyberjaya!
Let Cyberjaya free from jammed.
Oversupply, bad design, and no pedestrian walkaway.
Yeah2. Don’t move to Cyberjaya guys.
We don’t want more hectic here. It’s so peaceful on weekend except when there is a running events..
Fun fact: the term ‘cyber’ is much older than your article suggests.
The Cybermen were scary creatures who were first seen in 1966 in episodes of Dr Who.