Much to love: Visitors taking a boat ride in a scenic lake at Gunung Lang Recreational Park. Its 260-million-year-old limestone hills make Ipoh a gem with beautiful natural surroundings. — Filepic/The Star
LET’S face the facts about Ipoh. Perak’s capital is still struggling to reinvent itself after having lost its shine following the collapse of the tin mining industry.
It didn’t help that the opening of the North-South Expressway in 1981 saw most people choosing to bypass Ipoh and drive straight north or south.
But there are still many who have chosen to move to Ipoh for what it offers: a slower pace of life, cultural offerings such as food, affordability, the hospitality of its people, and its cleanliness.
Certainly, the nightlife and shopping are not reasons to keep going back to Ipoh. Instead, it’s the centuries-old shophouses in the Old Town, natural and historical sites, especially its 260-million-year-old limestone hills, caves and jungles, that visitors want.
The relaxed life is the attraction. Many of my friends from Kuala Lumpur and Selangor have chosen to retire in Ipoh, also because of its lower cost of living.
It has become a gem in its own way with beautiful natural surroundings while being just about a two-hour drive from Kuala Lumpur.
So the last thing people want is for Ipoh to become another concrete jungle like New York City. What on earth was Ipoh Mayor Datuk Rumaizi Baharin thinking when he said recently that Ipoh could become another Big Apple?
He reportedly said residents of Ipoh must have the right attitude to reflect the international recognition the city is receiving.
“People are looking at Ipoh; therefore, we need to do better,” he said.
Ipoh should not be a New York, not even a Kuala Lumpur or a version of George Town.
The silver state has its own strong distinct character.
The comparison with New York is far-fetched and impractical. The comparison is also a bad one because New York is not well-run. It may look glamorous in the movies but its transport system, especially the subway, has long been in shambles, with a host of well-known issues from homeless people to drugs and crime.
The New York Times reported that “New York City, for all its glory, is facing many problems: record levels of homelessness; a budget teetering on the brink; stubborn crime rates. But it also has a problem small in size too: rats. Millions of them.”
The Big Apple is also one of the world’s most expensive cities in the world, with an acute housing problem. Ipoh’s Mayor could have made a much more humble and practical comparison: Adelaide in Australia is a possible example to emulate. In comparison with Sydney and Melbourne, it is always dismissed as a sleepy hollow, but there is really nothing wrong with that.
It has excellent education facilities with most parents believing their teenage children should be sent to universities there without big city distractions.
Supported by good facilities and a well-run administration, Adelaide is in many ways like Ipoh, with plenty of greenery around, and hidden gems to be found a short drive outside the city.
Perak can also promote itself more as a preferred choice for tertiary education as there are at least 12 universities in the state, with four in Ipoh itself.
It should also push to have more branch campuses of international universities.
Another possible Australian city to benchmark against could be Perth, which is probably the nearest to Malaysia, and is known for its quiet and laid-back lifestyle that provides opportunities for work-life balance.
There are also plenty of Chinese cities which have already bypassed New York, London, and Paris in attractiveness and their vast network of public transport.
These are also safer in comparison with big cities in the United States and Europe but the drawback in these Chinese cities is their huge population and competitiveness.
Ipoh needs to sell itself better. In fact, Perak needs to sell itself better.
As Sultan of Perak Sultan Nazrin Shah said in his book, Globalisation: Perak’s Rise, Relative Decline, and Regeneration, the state’s biggest problem is that it has not progressed as much as Johor, Penang, and Selangor, experiencing slower structural transformation, while those other states have seen rapid industrial development.
Penang, for example, had already set up a free-trade zone as early as 1970, and started setting up assembly plants then, creating jobs on a large scale and attracting workers from neighbouring states, including Perak.
Penang has gone up in value as it has become the centre for the production of semiconductor microchips.
“As gaps in income and job opportunities with neighbouring states widened, Perak began to lose population. A negative-feedback loop has been created in which a shrinking base of human capital has narrowed economic opportunities and has propagated further out-migration of talent that the state so badly needs,’’ the Asia-Europe Institute said.
Perak began to start relying on the export of agricultural and manufactured goods, tourism, and education but this was not sufficient.
Sultan Nazrin Shah has compared Perak with the town of Cornwall in Britain and Pittsburgh in the United States.
Cornwall’s last operational tin mine closed in 1998, leaving it as one of the poorest counties.
Between 1961 and 2011, it had one of the highest levels of emigration in Britain but Cornwall has worked hard to rebrand itself. It has a university with research strengths in engineering, the sciences, and renewable energy through the University of Exeter’s branch campus in west Cornwall.
Mining companies have begun exploring for lithium and copper there.
Perak, especially Ipoh, needs to capitalise on what it has, in terms of tourism.
Day trippers will not help the state in terms of supporting the hotels and restaurants in a big way. They are merely visitors, not tourists who spend money and stay in hotels.
Its activities are not sufficiently publicised although 2024 is Visit Perak Year. There seems to be a lack of coordination among stakeholders.
Mayor Rumaizi, however, was right to point out that China has leaped very far in the past two decades, and there is no reason why Ipoh cannot do the same in terms of mindsets and development.
And Ipoh must be commended for its “Doughnut Economics” ambition.
It received the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Award recently for its efforts to transition from a resource-intensive economy to a regenerative model focused on health, waste management, and ecotourism, aligning with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
The “Doughnut Economy” is an alternative economic system for a future that meets every person’s basic needs while safeguarding the health of the living world. The visual framework for such sustainable development is shaped like a doughnut according to the book by Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist.
Ipoh is the first city in Asia to receive this accolade. Well done.
There is still a silver lining for the state. It just needs to sell its narrative better and more effectively.
One thing it does not need to be is another New York, that’s for certain.
