Suburban Issues in Malaysia

Long travel distance to urban center which are employment and commercial center

 Location of suburban which is far from urban centers create difficulties  for suburb’s residents as they need to travel for a certain distances to work or get the goods or services that are available in urban area.  This directly cause dependency on motor vehicles among residents. This also create difficulties for those who are not capable to own private vehicles.

Difficulties to get higher hierarchy facilities, goods and services

 Goods and services provided in suburban are in lower hierarchy and mostly are to fulfill basic local needs. In order to get higher order quality goods and services, villagers need to travel to higher hierarchy town that offer more choices of these items. Besides that the hierarchy of the urban area also affects the difficulties of the people to get better goods. If the suburban village is located near to the big city like Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru, the goods and services offered are higher class and quality and of variety choices compared to suburbs of small towns which only offer lower quality and limited variety of goods and services. 

Lower economic standards compared to urban area

 Although  suburban which are located at the fringe  of urban areas received development impact through  urban sprawl, their residents still have lower economic standard and quality of life. This maybe due to the economic activities in the suburban which are mostly agriculture based and traditional industry. Besides that, the income of the suburban villagers maybe lower due to their education level as many cannot afford and don’t have chances to receive higher tertiary education.

Migration

In suburban village, most of the industry or job market is focused on agriculture sector or light traditional industry. Nowadays the average education level of the people are  higher and people expect to  get better and  mind-oriented jobs such as executive, manager etc rather than work in agriculture field that require man power. Therefore , there is a claim that the youngster of the village choose to move to urban areas which have more job opportunities.  However, there are some people choose to live in suburban areas although working in urban area, probably due to lower land value, better natural environment or other factors.

Illegal Industry

Illegal Industry are factories that are operating without permit or permission. This issue is commonly occured in suburban villages of  Klang Valley where rapid development and industrial activities are , as it is harder to be detected y the authorities in these places. Besides that, these factories are usually built without any Certificate of Completion and Compliance. The unplanned location of industry area near to residential area in suburban may cause hazards to the health of the residents. Besides that, it also contributes to traffic problem due to the industrial transportation and environmental problems.

Slum and  squatter

Most suburbs of the 3rd world countries, include Malaysia faced slum and squatter problems. This is due to the over congested population density and high land values in urban areas.  Therefore, workers especially foreigners without permit choose to build their settlements in suburban areas whether in permanent or temporary form.

Besides that, slums are usually built near to each other without setbacks, which may cause hazards especially during fire. Besides that, slums usually are not supplied with utilities and have bad sanitary systems.

Pollutions of Different Aspect

Many factories prefer to set up their factories in the suburban especially near to water body that helps in their operation such as coolant and cleaning process. However some of the factories do not have proper waste management or filtration system. For example, the factories doesn’t install catalytic converter that change the toxical gases emitted to intoxical gases, which directly cause air pollution . They also do not equip filters that treat the waste water produced after their operation, which cause water pollution and harm the water body that maybe important in villager’s daily life. The operation and transport  of the factories may cause noise pollution. All of these threat the health and harmony lifestyle of the villagers.