City Skyline Conservation: Sustaining the Premier Image of Kuala Lumpur

Abstract

City skyline is a unique fingerprint and inherent abstract reflecting a city's image and identity in terms of its spatial, historical, social, cultural and economic structures over time. Acting as important components, skyscrapers intend to reflect premier image and status which have promotional and competitive benefits to a city. A rising city like Kuala Lumpur has aimed to improve its global standing through tall buildings and skyscrapers such as Petronas Towers and Kuala Lumpur Tower. The towers were designed to re-imaging the whole city and directly placed Kuala Lumpur on the world map as a world-class city. The city's skyline therefore, is instantly recognizable; distinctive assets which are important to be protected. However, due to improving technology and global city competition, many new tall buildings have been proposed with the intention to replace the iconic role of these two towers. The proposal and construction of these new buildings exceed the allowable maximum height and have given rise to the urge to re-image and re-brand the identity of this national capital city, eclipsing the iconic role of Petronas Towers and KL Tower. The study focused on how the potential impacts of new proposed tall buildings influence the existing Kuala Lumpur skylines. The aim was to investigate the quality and image of city skyline and its transformation due to new high-rise buildings. This research made use of the Geographical Information System (GIS) and its 3D modeling function to construct, assess and analyze the city silhouettes. It also showed that the effectiveness of these techniques for assessing and pre-test tall building proposals depends upon the local context of decision making.