tunglang writes about a recent drive around the western half of Penang Island and finds out how things have changed… Continue reading »
Nov 242011
Our gut feeling may tell us that some parts of Penang appear more landslide prone than others, but are there any scientific or geological grounds for such concern?
Landslide hazard map – Maps from paper by Lee and Pradhan
Here are a couple of maps reproduced from a paper on ‘Probabilistic landslide hazards and risk mapping on Penang Island’ by Saro Lee (Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources) and Biswajeet Pradhan.
This paper looks at landslide hazards and comes up with a landslide risk analysis of Penang Island using Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing data. From this a hazard map (above) was produced with a high degree of accurarcy, the authors say.
So how can low-income workers afford to buy homes?
There is real shortfall of affordable housing in Penang, especially on the island.
On the other hand, developers have been falling over themselves to build high-end condos and houses for the upper-middle class, the rich and wealthy foreigners, who are also grabbing choice real estate on the island. For example, at Hillside in Tanjung Bunga, wealthy foreigners are snapping up prime property.
House prices are expected to rise further with the rise in the cost of building materials. But when these new houses and condos are completed, who can afford to buy them? Will we end up with a glut in high-end housing?
What happens to all those factory workers, security guards, and small business owners who cannot afford houses on the island? In the past, they would go for cheaper houses on the mainland, even as far as Kulim and Sungai Petani in Kedah. But with higher oil prices and shrinking real incomes, it doesn’t make economic sense to commute such long distances to work. To make matters worse, if workers were to drive to work via the proposed second Penang bridge, their expenditure on toll and petrol charges – for the bridge segment of the commute alone – could come up to RM500-800/month.
