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| Home > City Guide - Kuala Lumpur - City Overview | ||
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City Overview When a huddle of poor tin miners first crowded around the mosquito-ridden banks of the slimy Gombak and Klang rivers in 1857, they could little have imagined that within a century and a half, Kuala Lumpur would have metamorphosed into one of Asia’s most vibrant and compelling cities. The city is now a thriving metropolis, where the world’s tallest buildings thrust confidently into the heavens. Kuala Lumpur, meaning ‘muddy confluence’ owing to its riverside foundation, has grown with bewildering speed since the tin mining days; a growth that took on epic proportions after independence and particularly in the late 1980s and 1990s, as the ‘Asian Tiger’ economy propelled an ever-changing skyline. The speed of change has left old Chinese houses and faded colonial mansions resting beside huge gleaming glass and steel towers, while food hawkers and traditional fortune tellers share the same streets as bustling businessmen and confused tourists. The city is not so much a melting pot or contrast between old and new as it is an ever evolving jungle of buildings, which seem to have sprouted organically from the sweaty vegetation and murky rivers that still snake through the heart of town. One of the most admirable aspects of the city is the level of tolerance displayed by its cosmopolitan residents, with ethnic Malays, Chinese, Indians and Europeans all living and working together with few racial problems – certainly far less than those experienced in Western Europe or North America. Kuala Lumpur, to many Malaysians, is quite simply Ibukota (the ‘Mother City’) and is treated with great reverence, abbreviated fondly to KL by most locals. Reminders of the old Kuala Lumpur are on display in the form of colonial buildings dotted around the city centre. The most poignant symbols of British rule and Malaysia’s subsequent independence are found in the area around Dartan Merdeka (Independence Square), where the Malaysian Flag continually commemorates the country’s gaining self-rule on 31 August 1957. One of the city’s best examples of colonial architecture, the Royal Selangor Club, still remains here. The last half decade was one of the most traumatic periods since independence, as the Asian economic crisis of 1997 tripped through the economy, halting a number of major projects and leaving a lasting legacy of unfinished skyscrapers, which hang on the horizon, like ghostly reminders of the darkest days. Today there are signs that things are getting back on an even keel, economically, with more realistic growth targets and new developments, such as the Multimedia Super Corridor, which aim to place Kuala Lumpur at the forefront of the global technology industry by 2020. Quite how the Bali bombings of October 2002 and the ‘War on Terror’ will affect Malaysia and its capital remains to be seen, with tourism in particular threatened by regional insecurity and the role of the country as a leading Muslim state never more in the spotlight. Nevertheless, one constant in Kuala Lumpur is the climate, with its consistently warm daytime temperatures, balmy evenings and afternoons that are often punctuated by thunderstorms, usually passing quickly to leave the evenings cool and rain free. |
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