ABSTRACT
When Malaya gained its independence in 1957, Kuala Lumpur was chosen as the capital of the newly independent nation. In 1963 it became the political and administrative capital of the Federation of Malaysia. Since the late 1990s, while Kuala Lumpur has remained pre-eminent as both a national and regional centre for commerce, consumption and finance, its capital city function has been gradually transferred to a new federal administration centre at Putrajaya, about 25 kilometres to the south. Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya are now ‘twin-cities’ with complementary functions. City marketing and image making are now important elements in the competition between cities on the regional and global scale. The Kuala Lumpur-Putrajaya corridor forms the spine of the developing Kuala Lumpur city region (see figure 9.1) and is at the core, therefore, of the federal government’s attempts to create a ‘world class city’ (Kuala Lumpur City Hall, 2008), which also presents a progressive image of a modern Malaysia to the world. Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203804247/bf6e5a47-5ff9-4b66-8c94-1af3b966ff28/content/fig9_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
