Real order

This is Chefchaouen. It's a little town nestled in the Rif mountains off the Straits of Gibraltar in Morocco. It's a traveller's haven - its meandering, pulsating spaces are lessons in texture and light. There is fine grain and an incredible organic order.

Under the great visionary laws of Selangor and KL, this would be bad. This would have to be demolished.

Chaouen started off as a refugee camp back in the 15th century. Muslims retreating from the Christian reconquest of Andalusia in Spain sought shelter in these hills. They brought with them their memory of Islamic Spain and imaged it in stone, the most readily available material there. Jews also joined the settlement, as did fleeing Andalusians giving rise to different quarters within the medina.

Today, this is one helluva slum. This is heritage.

This is Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York.

If you're old enough, you would remember extensive scenes of it in the movie When Harry Met Sally. To say the least, Greenwich Village is the bohemian soul of Manhattan. Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, the Beat poets... they were here.

If the Napoleons of Selangor and KL today were administering New York in the 1800s, we wouldn't know of this today.

Greenwich Village was borne out of marshland. Early Dutch settlers farmed there till, in 1664, when the English annexed New Amsterdam and made it part of the larger New York. Even so, it remained a hamlet largely neglected by the other larger and faster growing burroughs. It was, in our own colloquial tongue, a kampung.

Greenwich Village is an oddity on the island. See, in 1811, Manhattan went through radical restructuring – a formal grid pattern was superimposed over the island under the Commissioner's Plan complete with a huge central park. But they left Greenwich Village alone. Even if on the drawing board, it didn't look pretty to the eye, they let it be. They allowed its narrow streets (some curved) and buildings to mature and take its course. They had faith in its people.

Suffice to say, the same wisdom that realised the creation of Central Park also foresaw the eventual charm that Greenwich Village and its mews today would hold.

Even as the pressures of real estate clamour lasciviously for demolition and subsequent erection of higher-rise buildings in space-hungry New York, Greenwich Village snubs them all.

Would our educated city planners have that wisdom? that heart? that steely resolve?

The wonderful Jane Jacobs once said:

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.

Jacobs, who died in April this year, authored The Life and Death of Great American Cities. Her book ought to be required reading for all architects, planners and developers – why, anyone who cares a damn about the cities we live in.

For the city is our mirror. And what do we see in us?

Almost a month ago, MPAJ demolished the entire village of Kampung Berembang. At least 50 families lost their homes and their societal bearings.

Earlier this month, DBKL demolished Kampung Chubadak in Sentul.

The official reason was tagged stubbornly to the Klang Valley's Zero Squatter policy. If only they swore such allegiance to the Rukunegara.

On Saturday night, I returned from a trip to Singapore to learn that the uber-mansion Bok House was being demolished. This despite relentless efforts by Badan Warisan Malaysia to get it registered as a heritage building.

The official reason: It's under private ownership, and the Ministry of Kitsch and Pop can't do squat about it. Said its Minister Rais Yatim: “The Government cannot take over all buildings considered by many as having heritage value due to the high cost of rehabilitation and conservation.”

You know, idiocy cannot be masked. Neither can greed. You can smell it from the breath that passes by their fat tonsils, you can peel it from between the lines of the mainstream media.

What differentiates a squatter from a genuine settlement? Land titles that were promised but never delivered? Could Kampung Berembang have become an urban oasis in the years to come? If inclusive rules were formed and upheld, why hell yes. Can Kampung Baru, Kampung Semarak and Kampung Loke Yew? Yes, yes, and yes.

Could the Bok House have been saved? You bet a datuk's ass it could.

But, but, but... in the media, the govt seems to imply that it has to acquire the property. Nope. That's what those idiots want you to believe. Scrutinise the following.

The freshly-minted National Heritage Act states:

Care of Heritage Site - Section 38.

(1)Where a heritage site is situated on an alienated land, the Commissioner may after consultation with the State Authority —

(a) make arrangements with the owner or occupier for the inspection, maintenance, conservation and preservation of the heritage site;

(b) purchase or lease the heritage site;

(c) acquire the heritage site in accordance with the provisions of any written law relating to the acquisition of land for a public purpose; or

(d) remove the whole or any part of a building or monument on the heritage site.

The govt only has to register – not own – any particular heritage site. The site can easily remain in private ownership with a viable business. Take the Heeran St Museum in Melaka. Or the Station Hotel in KL Railway Station. They're not on the heritage register, but they could easily be listed. It's about teamwork; it's about faith.

And especially so in the emerging cities of metropolitan Kuala Lumpur, Johor Baru, Melaka, and Penang, where the dangling ringgit constantly twists the meanings of squatter, heritage and desirability, it is about taking out the hoodlums in govt and taking back the 'hood.

It's time we restored some sense of real order.

Photo credits:

Chaouen: stuBCN75

Greenwich Village: Amazing Jane

Kampung Berembang: obwique , www.jelas.info

Bok House ruins: Badan Warisan Malaysia