MAY 23 — The fundamental issue with housing today can be summed up in what perhaps is the most famous sociological question throughout history: "Who is my neighbour?”

Those of you who are familiar will know that it is from the Bible, specifically the story of the Good Samaritan. 

The great thinker, Friedrich Engels, the other half of Karl Marx, wrote, and I paraphrase:

Imagine a big modern city. In the centre of the city and its proximate periphery, land price inevitably increases substantially. All the old buildings - and I am not talking about your heritage antique toys, think more along the lines of the slums in Kuala Lumpur; if you climb up the Petronas Twin Tower you will notice that part of the surrounding areas are still dotted with wooden houses - these old buildings, which are mostly homes, actually depress the value of the land instead of increasing it because while they belong to the land, they do not belong to the new circumstances of the city life. So what happened to them?

"They are pulled down and in their stead shops, warehouses and public buildings are erected…”, this last sentence is a direct citation from Engels who wrote in 1872. 

It is clear to us today that that dynamics changed very little since 145 years ago.  

The same story can be told of the suburbs:

If you have yet to noticed, suburbs are meant to put people of similar social and economic class together. Whether we admit it or not, we generally do not appreciate people who are substantially different from our social and economic class in our neighbourhood. The proliferation of gentrified neighbourhoods accentuate this even further; now not only the "undesirable” people are not allowed to stay in our neighbourhood, they are also not allowed to move within it. 

Only three years ago I was dealing with a case where residents from an established housing estate were protesting the plan to build a low cost flat in their neighbourhood. The Penang state government of course is still dealing with protests from locals who objected to the construction of a migrant workers housing in their neighbourhood. 

In fact, similar patterns can be seen from our attitude towards town and country planning in general:

I remember someone, an academic no less, who told me that we should limit traffic to the island. How? Well, increase the Penang Bridge toll, impose entry fee into the city, like the ERP in Singapore. 

As a Member of Parliament serving a constituency on the mainland and as someone who actually live on the mainland, I was astonished to say the least. Yes traffic congestion diminishes our quality of life, but alienating half of Penang’s population is definitely not the solution. 

In all these examples and scenarios; the fundamental issue revolves around the question: what or who we want and do not want in our backyards.

The politics of "Who is our neighbour?”

Think about it; how many of us zealously guard our neighbourhood against undesirable people. We often see advertisements for tenants, but "only a certain race need to apply”? Basically we do not want people who don’t look like us next door. 

Geographer David Harvey argued that such attitude is caused by how we have come to view housing as an asset, not merely a shelter. We thus need to protect the value of our savings in a house, and hence that generates all sorts of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) politics. 

Consequently, the simple, "who is my neighbour?” question has major implications in shaping politics and therefore, governance. 

The truth is, where there is diversity, especially in a robust neighbourhood or public life, self-insulation is harder to create. It is harder to breed anti-social ideas within a pluralistic neighbourhoods. You get that in the Trump election: mixed neighbourhood are less likely to support extreme nationalism or communalism. In a truly diverse society, it is more difficult to gang up to bully minorities. 

The problem is, we are seeing more segregation than ever even as we have more opportunity to socialise. Behavioural science scholar, Cass Sunstein who advised Barack Obama’s presidency, wrote how our homophilic tendency is becoming more prevalent, and harder to manage, in an Internet world. This then led to an echo chamber effect where we only hear views similar to ours, thus reinforcing those views even further, creating extreme beliefs, even if the views are false. 

Diversity is a strength even if some of our political leaders wanted us to believe otherwise. 

Penang housing solution creates and promotes "diverse neighbourhoods”

Which is why I fully support the vision of the Penang state government to put up 2000 units of affordable housing right in the middle of George Town in Jalan SP Chelliah. This is not new, even for Penang. After all, we were the first state to have a public-funded social housing scheme, the People’s Court, again, smacked right in the heart of George Town at Cintra Street by the George Town City Council in the 60s.

It is definitely a costly decision to build social housing on prime land in the middle of the city. But such decision not only allows lower income groups to have greater access to the city and all its resources, it also creates diversity in the demography. 

Which is why I am glad that the up-and-coming township of Bandar Cassia in Batu Kawan has a good mix of high-end lifestyle activities centres such as IKEA, premium outlets, golf course, private schools as well as over 10,000 units of social housing. 

In the past, social housing were built in some cheap land at the far fringe of the city, creating both ghettoisation and gentrification: the poor and the rich each have their separate neighbourhoods. Ultimately we want to ensure that we have the "right” people as our neighbours. The idea was to safeguard our investment in the form of our house. 

The city then becomes an investment scheme rather than a social settlement. Little wonder then, in a 2011 paper published by Penang Institute, it was found that the 10 years between 1991 to 2000, there was a glut in luxury housing in Penang. Because in the old regime, building houses was no longer to provide shelter, but rather to provide investment opportunities. 

Which is why I am extremely happy that, unlike other states in a Malaysia, the Penang state government recognises that new development can and should find ways to accommodate "peneroka” or city pioneers - often called squatters. The classic cases of Kampung Buah Pala and Kampung Tok Subuh in Penang ran counter against Engels own thesis I cited above: the state government actually ensured that the villagers are accommodated in the same area with proper and affordable housing once the original slums were cleared to make ways for new developments. 

All these do not happen by accident or in a vacuum. They involved policy decisions on the part of the state government, and at times, these are not very popular decisions because, for better or worse, we are zealous guardians of our personal and social space against our neighbours. 

But the visionary influencer of New York City planning, Jane Jacobs herself wrote about how tolerance and ultimately cooperation is only possible "when streets of great cities have built-in equipment allowing strangers to dwell in peace together.” 

In other words, development policy, must consciously include making us accommodate our neighbours.

Yet, really, "who is my neighbour?” In the story of the Great Samaritan, the answer was obvious, the one who is a stranger, from a different race, a different religion, a different culture and a different lifestyle, the toxic Other whom we often find difficult to love much less to live with.

* Steven Sim is the MP for Bukit Mertajam and a director of the Penang Institute

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.