“What makes a place, a place?”
Whether it would be visiting a place you have never visited before or visiting somewhere that would be considered a norm for you, how would you differentiate these places apart from looking at their infrastructures and facilities?
It would be the people. Whether it would be their lifestyle, culture, attitude, activities, or history. The people reflect and affect a certain place as a whole or partially.
One of the first impressions I had about Bandar Sri Permaisuri is regarding the parking situation. The town is packed with vehicles’ side parking alongside roads nearby residential and commercial areas. I was shocked to see this because I did notice parking dedicated structures for the residentials but it was as if it was not enough and people had no choice but to park on the roads. And that was exactly the situation. Most residential there in Bandar Sri Permaisuri were built by DBKL to accommodate the B40 class. There is a limit set for each household to only own 1 parking space. This becomes a problem when let’s say a household has more than 1 car, where are the other cars supposed to park? This situation is not to be blamed on the people but on the planning of Malaysian cities and transportation. Car-oriented is the problem hence people are forced to own cars for easier and cheaper transport.
Apart from the parking situation, I noticed that Bandar Sri Permaisuri is packed with an abundance of food. Whether it would be franchise food chains, local restaurants, local hawkers, and street stalls. It is also known that this town is frequently visited by outsiders just for the food it serves. Talking about outsiders visiting, this goes the same for the Hero Market located at the shop lots nearby the proposed site. People are willing to travel from far just to shop at this market for its cheap prices. The location also helps since it is nearby the Salak Selatan LRT Station which eases users.
Looking above in the sky of this town, there is always a high-rise residential in sight. Whether it would be a regular flat apartment or serviced apartment. Many live in these dense vertical housing but a problem I noticed is that there is no proper place for the locals to gather and socialize apart from the food nodes in town. Imagine if one lives in one of the highrises and is surrounded by tons of neighbours but does not know any of them. In my opinion, this city deserves and needs a new node (other than an eating place) for the locals and visitors to gather and do activities that would be beneficial and spark conversations between each other.