GEORGE TOWN, Feb 23 ― The gradual gentrification of George Town over the past 10 years has left an impact on the Unesco world heritage site, that of dwindling local residents.
A walk around the inner city clearly shows how the city has changed; mushrooming restaurants, cafes and boutique hotels taking over what were once homes and small businesses.
Tourists crowd popular sites, especially where Ernest Zacharevic's murals are located, while residents, who used to live in this former trading port city, have gradually moved out due to a variety of reasons from rental increases to work on the southern side of the island, outside of the city.
This slow exodus is a cause for concern as a city ceases to be a living one if it is only made up of tourists and visitors, so the Penang state government together with Penang Island City Council (MBPP) came up with the “Repopulating George Town” programme.
Acknowledging the near impossibility of attracting young families to move back from the suburbs, MBPP Mayor Datuk Yew Tung Seang said one way to bring people back to the city is to attract students.
“It is the very first mini step we can take to start bringing people back to George Town, it may not be much but we have to start somewhere,” he told Malay Mail when talking about the Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) project.
This is what the MBPP has planned for a row of five and a half shophouses along Kimberley Street that have been fully restored.
“We plan to turn it into a PBSA and also a co-working space in the commercial portion of the lots,” he said.
The row of heritage shophouses will function just like how it was originally used; the ground floor for commercial activities while the first floor will be accommodation for students.
The second PBSA in the works is a privately-owned row of 10 shophouses along Acheh Street, also located within the heritage zone.
Yew said the owner is currently restoring the shophouses and has agreed to park the project under the PBSA programme.
“These may not be much but we hope to start the ball rolling and show other property owners that they can do this with their vacant shophouses,” he said.
There are several colleges located within and near the inner city, so providing accommodation for students is the best way to get them to live within the city, he added.
In order to attract people back, the cityscape needs to be improved, beautified and made pedestrian friendly.
“This is why we have our back lanes beautification project... we want to provide safe connectivity within the inner city that pedestrians and cyclists can use away from the main roads and traffic,” he said.
The city council plans to upgrade nine kilometres of back lanes all around the inner city so that those in the city can travel safely on bicycles, or by walking, from one point to another.
Other than safe connectivity, another main infrastructure that is bound to get youths and students to live in the city ― high-speed internet ― will soon be laid out in the city.
On February 1, Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow announced a partnership with TIME dotcom for the telecommunications company to roll out fibre infrastructure all over Penang island, including the city, within the next three years.
Chow said Penang is soon to become a “Gigabit City” in this collaboration with TIME where the fibre coverage will also encompass landed properties and shop lots.
TIME dotcom has already laid out 3,217km of fibre optic cables in Penang to high-rise apartments as the company was not able to connect to landed properties previously.
Chow stressed that the costs of laying of fibre optics by TIME was fully borne by the company while the state only facilitated the instalment of the fibre optic cables.
TIME chief executive officer Afzal Abdul Rahim said the company had invested RM200 million since 2011 to lay fibre optic cables in Penang.
“In this collaboration, we hope to reach as many landed properties and shop lots as possible and we have also identified a dozen schools that we will provide connectivity to on the island,” Afzal said.
Yew said the laying of the fibre optics will provide high-speed internet in Penang and within the inner city while setting the tone towards 5G connectivity in the future.
“With high speed internet infrastructure, it will complement our repopulating George Town programme along with our technology start-up programmes, Penang Science Cluster and our plans to bring in more institutions to train up our future generation in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” he said.
He said the combination of science, technology and engineering programmes, high-speed internet and PBSA will not only attract students to George Town, it could also train up a new pool of talents for the state.
“Who knows, they might even continue to live in George Town and bring life back to the city,” he said.
