Planners reacting to the Selangor water crisis: don't react to this with IR4.0 teknologi vibes. We are better than this (a thread)

Our water crisis is not caused by not enough technology being used - it is a systematic failure of protecting our water catchments, and the lowering of our water quality over decades, with a sprinkling of underinvestment by then-privatised Syabas.

All this is framed by a lack of cohesion between federal/ state/municipal strategic plans. We aren't doing our jobs of enforcing integrated plans for sustainable cities

Instead, we as planners have become unwilling to hear critiques in Malaysia - we've become occupied with writing meaningless reports & no due diligence in approving developments without considering social/env impacts. This translates into poor planning outcomes for EVERYONE.

Remember the last water cut we had? The land that the factory was sitting on was zoned Industrial next to a river. No planners called it out or batted an eyelid. Even after what happened, nothing has changed. This isn't technology anymore - it's our incompetence as a profession.

The only way we can every fix this water crisis is when we unlearn the stupid things about Malaysian planning (shimmying up to developers, bad strategic plan writing etc) and start working with others to create a people-driven plan not just to protect water, but our rights to it

We need to embrace new ways of working 'in the open', collaboratively with scientists and other experts, and learn to consult with people effectively to create and promote good, accountable planning practices

We also need to start planning for the future now, like climate change. With El Nino becoming more frequent, droughts will be more common. Our 1-2% water security margin is a joke. If droughts hit with hot weather+no water, people will die from the heat. It's no joke anymore.

If you made it to the end of this thread, congrats and sorry for the bad rant. It's annoying that this keeps happening. If you want to see good practice in other countries, here's some stuff from Perth/Melbourne
https://www.melbournewater.com.au/sites/default/files/2017-09/Melbourne-Water-System-Strategy_0.pdf https://www.watercorporation.com.au/Our-water/Sustainability-and-innovation/Securing-supply