Malaysia, Modernity and the Multimedia Super Corridor

Based on fieldwork in Kuala Lumpur, this book provides a critical examination of the socio-spatial transformation of urban Malaysia. In the late twentieth century Kuala Lumpur experienced a spectacular redevelopment of urban space and the emergence of an extended metropolitan area. Particular attention is paid here to the development of the Multimedia Super Corridor, a high-tech zone which extends fifty kilometres from the capital, and includes two new 'intelligent' cities, Putrajaya and Cyberjaya. This study first provides a theoretical reworking of geographies of modernity and details the emergence of a globally-orientated, 'high-tech' stage of national development. The Multimedia Super Corridor is framed in terms of a fully developed, modern Malaysia before the author traces an imagined trajectory through surrounding landscapes in the late 1990s. Beginning at the site of the world's tallest building, the Petronas Twin Towers, the reader is then taken southward to examine Putrajaya and Cyberjaya as spaces of government for 'intelligent' modern citizens. The journey ends at the new international airport where the necessity of 'global' connectivity legitimized the destruction of indigenous territory. As the first book length academic analysis of the development of Kuala Lumpur and the construction of the Multimedia Super Corridor, this work offers a situated, contextual account which will appeal to all those with research interests in Asian Urban Studies and Asian Sociology.