User:Sshukor

Introduction
Southeast Asian continent experienced various form of colonialism from Western powers starting from the sixteenth century. British colonialism began early nineteenth century in Southeast Asia (Heidhues, 2001). By 1910, the British Empire in Southeast Asia had reached its maximum expansion and whilst its original impetus for colonisation was predominantly for economic purposes (Rose, 1970), British colonisation left significant impact on the urban structure and development of these Southeast Asian countries. These impacts were materialized in various forms of policies, road structures, and governance of land use that were segregated into ethnic functional districts.

Pre-colonial cities in Southeast Asia
The pre-colonial cities in Southeast Asia were built around the palace of the ruler, surrounded by compounds of the aristocracy, their dependents, and commercial quarters. The townships were typically without walls and were usually concealed by grove trees (Rimmer & Dick, 2009). These types of townships can be seen in the nineteenth century Bangkok and on a smaller context, Phnom Penh.

British Colonial Town Planning in Southeast Asia
In a particular study carried out to investigate Urban Planning in Southeast Asia, (Yuen, 2011) highlights that in 1927 an administrative body called the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), was established to formalize and implement development schemes to improve the city area and address housing homelessness issue in Singapore during those times. This introduced various forms of town planning based governance, which included:

•	Written planning permission by requiring that those wishing to undertake any form of land development pay for and obtain authorisation before embarking on such a process;

•	Zoning as an instrument for controlling land use activities. It was introduced to colonial Malay Peninsula in 1801 and Singapore in 1822 to regulate segregated settlements;

•	Map-based master development plan following the 1947 development plan system;

•	A system for cataloguing and storing data on land, land uses and users. With the basic intention of providing the colonial rulers with information necessary for surveillance and tax/revenue collection, the system continues to provide useful data such as census statistics, cadastral maps and housing conditions necessary as input into the urban planning and development process.

The above systems that were in placed was considered unknown to the region during pre-colonial times. Notwithstanding, the imposed town planning practices and its jurisdiction help materialize and realize the postcolonial towns that we see today in Southeast Asia, specifically in this context, for Malaysia and Singapore.

Gridiron Urban Form
Due to the rapid development of the trade sector within the Southeast Asian region, much emphasis was placed on the structure of ports cities. In this regard Singapore, Penang and Malacca are pertinent examples (Yuen, 2011). It was considered that these port cities played an important role not only as its function to facilitate trade in and out of the region but it had also attracted traders from many countries to participate in the trade. To allow the ease of navigation for these immigrants to traverse from the port cities to inner land areas, the British applied the gridiron township layout (Hassan, 2009). The implementation of a gridiron concept within British colonized township was heavily influenced streets/ roads that forms straight lines, which enabled rectangular land areas to be carved out of these port cities.

Perhaps the intent of such structure was to ensure that the street settings of the cities are organized that permitted sense of ‘control’, and to bring about the condition of ‘order’ in urban planning as reference to Le Corbusier writing in The City of To-morrow and its Planning (Corbusier, 1982). It is considered that regular shaped blocks eased land zoning (Hassan, 2009).

Divide and Rule
The implementation of a of a gridiron concept in within British colonies not only eased transport access but it allowed a functional method to facilitate the distribution of land holdings. Whilst the latter is the case for many of the British primary colonies in the United States, Canada and Australia, in the case of Malaysia and Singapore, this gridiron urban form concept also facilitated a land distribution method that was unique. This method was implemented to strategically govern the various ethnicities that existed in Malaysia and Singapore. Due the influx of immigration within the Southeast Asian region from the mid nineteenth to twentieth century, the British applied the ‘divide and rule’ concept in planning for the settlements based on ethnic backgrounds and beliefs (Hassan, 2009). The boulevards, streets and roads were used as the boundary for these divisions. As (Yuen, 2011) further adds to the latter notion:

“British East India Company, through the Jackson Plan of 1822 not only laid out the urban centre in a grid pattern but also divided the city into ethnic functional districts that effectively went beyond the ‘whites’ versus ‘others’ nomenclature that was a standard feature in British colonial town planning elsewhere.”

Specifically in Singapore and Malaysia, migration of labour was brought into the region from China and India for tin mining and rubber plantation purposes. With the existence of local indigenous Malays, the British colonial town planning method to strategically locate different ethnicity into various areas based on their skills, meant that ethnic segregation were exacerbated.

Effects of British Colonial town planning
Much of the British influences can be seen within its colonised countries, especially in the urban form and building structures that were left behind during their governance. Till today we see examples of British colonized gridiron street patterns that were implemented back then in Singapore and cities in Malaysia such as Georgetown and Malacca. These colonial town planning influences has provided a functional template for these towns continue its accessibility post the colonial era. Perhaps it is for this very reason that Malaysia and Singapore cities acquire the functional city layout that see today compared to its neighbouring countries, albeit discretionary to the opinion of each individual.

Notwithstanding the above, racial segregation in these regions is still an issue of sensitivity. (Omar, 2006) argues that ‘in the course of history, colonialism had denied unity through the divide and rule policy’. Whilst this may be a pertinent issue, the crux of the matter lies beyond the realm of town planning.