Expecting The Unexpected: Climate Resilience In Malaysian Local Government Land Use Planning

Abstract

A resilient city will strive from stress driven by climate change and play pivotal role in climate adaptation initiatives. Thus, it is imperative that the Local Government of cities as the urban managers and city planners to effectively mainstream climate resilience adaptation in the planning processes of the local government. The aim of this research is to understand and explore the challenges faced by the Malaysian Local Government, particularly Land Use Planning (LUP) in Penang adapting to climate change. Secondly, it is to identify key defining changes needed in LUP to facilitate climate resilience adaptation. A multi method approach was used to gather data: four sessions of focus group discussion were carried out encompassing officers from the planning department of the local government, state and federal government officers, representatives from the property developers’ association, civil societies and representatives from a local university. Two sessions of interviews were also conducted with policy makers. Results implore four imperative challenges that post bigger opportunities for change including leadership on sustainable development, reliability and collation of spatial and non-spatial data, the need for transdisciplinary planning team and a climate proof land use planning approach. The findings are a steppingstone in determining the priority of LUP for the next few decades but also the physical parameter of growth of Penang.