And so Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi launches the masterplan for Patrick Lim’s RM25 billion Penang Global City Centre project on 12 Sept. They say a picture paints a thousand words. Have a look at these graphics visualising the PGCC, which I am reproducing here from architect firm Asymptote’s website in the public interest I don’t know about you, but it looks like a soulless alien colony to me – as if a mothership from a distant galaxy has docked at the Turf Club land!
The developers of the RM25 billion Penang Global City Centre (PGCC) project have been telling us how green and carbon-free their project is going to be. But what they didn’t tell us is they actually wanted to cram in as much as they could into the Turf Club land to maximise profits. In fact, they wanted a density that would have made it twice the density of Hong Kong! Somehow, the PGCC’s Teheran-born architect, Nasrine Seraji, managed to convince the developers that no one would want to live there if they went ahead with their original plan. Even so, it looks like the PGCC could end up with 33 tower blocks of over 40 storeys each. That is still massive. And isn’t there going to be any social housing – low and low-medium cost housing – in the Turf Club site itself?
It’s a RM25 billion whopper: about 33 tower blocks, each over 40 storeys high on the land being used by the Penang Turf Club. Imagine that! And it looks like two different meetings on the Penang Global City Centre (PGCC) project are going to be held at two posh venues on Monday, 10 September – one at The Mansion and the other at the Penang Sports Club. I now gather that the meeting at the Penang Sports Club was requested by the Jesselton Residents Association, which is concerned about this mega project on the doorstep of their peaceful and tranquil neighbourhood. Apparently, the developers requested that only three reps attend the meeting but the Jesselton Residents Association asked for 10. The meeting at the Mansion will be a briefing on the PGCC on behalf of the developer (Abad Naluri) by Equine Capital executive chairman Patrick Lim (who is said by [Read more]
The oil is running out. Yes, in Malaysia too. By 2010, we will become a net importer of oil. If our domestic demand for petroleum products continues to increase by 4 per cent annually, we will have nothing left over to export as demand will exceed domestic crude oil production. Many countries around the world are beginning to feel the energy squeeze. As Peak Oil – the slowdown in oil production, which is incapable of meeting rising demand – sets in, the price of oil will soar. The resulting energy squeeze has already hit dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Jeroen van der Veer, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, has just laid out the “Three hard truths about the world’s energy crisis” and it is sobering food for thought: The first hard truth is that demand is accelerating. The second hard truth is that the growth [Read more]
I was shocked when I saw aerial images of logging access roads criss-crossing the Bakun catchment area and photographs of forests being cleared for conversion to plantations. Mind you, the aerial images are a few years old, so things could only have got worse. How could logging and conversion to plantations be allowed in and near the Bakun catchment area especially when billions of ringgit have already been pumped into the construction of the dam – not to mention the impact of deforestation on climate change. The degradation of the catchment area for the Bakun Dam in Sarawak will only worsen sedimentation in rivers flowing into the dam, cutting into its useful life span. That, in turn, brings into question the viability of a multibillion-dollar submarine cable to bring Bakun power to the peninsula – for which Malaysia is reportedly set to borrow RM9 billion from Japan. Do the investors [Read more]