‘Green the city to boost trade’ - The Star

Dec 9, 2007 By CLARA CHOOI

IPOH: Perak exco member Datuk Chang Ko Youn is pushing to add more green to the city, which he believes will help boost the businesses of traders here.

For a start, Chang said the city's two main roads - Jalan Sultan Idris Shah (formerly Jalan Brewster) and Jalan Sultan Iskandar (formerly Jalan Hugh Low) - should be lined with large, shady trees.

"Scrap one lane from these streets and turn them into four-lane roads instead of five.

"The extra space can be used to plant rows of beautiful trees so that people can actually walk along the pathway and shop, even during the daytime," he told reporters after attending a prize-giving ceremony of the national-level annual Orchid Competition and Year-End Mega Sales 2007 at the Ipoh City Council here on Sunday.

The added greenery, he said, would also help lower the temperature in the city thus making it more pleasant for shoppers to stroll about the five-footways.

Chang, who is state Urban and Local Government Committee chairman, said that he had proposed this to several businessmen two years back but they had not been agreeable.
"The state government will not want to do something like this unless these businessmen are for it.

"However, the feedback I got from some of them was that they feared scrapping one lane from these roads would worsen the traffic jams in the city," he said.

Chang disagreed with this however, saying that traffic jams were merely short-term problems.
"In the long-term, businesses along these two main streets will boom because people will tend to slow down and look at what these shops have to offer.

"After all, city centres are not meant to be sped through," he said.

He added that he had proposed the idea to members of the Perak Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry but they had yet to give their feedback.