1 Why a scoreboard matters
Kuala Lumpur’s Mass-Rapid-Transit network is finally up and running, and transit-oriented development (TOD) plots are sprouting around almost every station. Yet each precinct still feels like “an island in a sea of asphalt.” To see how far we have to go, it helps to compare KL with global leaders on three people-first yardsticks:
| Rank | City vibrancy(Oxford Economics 2025) | Resident happiness(Happy City Index 2025) | Walkability / pedestrianisation(Compare-the-Market 2025) |
| 1 | New York | Copenhagen | Munich |
| 2 | London | Zurich | Milan |
| 3 | Paris | Singapore | Warsaw |
| 4 | San Jose (CA) | Aarhus | Helsinki |
| 5 | Seattle | Antwerp | Paris |
| Kuala Lumpur | 135 th globally, #2 in Southeast Asia (thestar.com.my) | 167 th (Bronze tier) (timeout.com) | Not in global top 50 (no ranking published) |
| Why it matters | Economic/creative energy | Day-to-day life satisfaction | Safe, car-lite streets & public realm |
The takeaway is blunt: KL scores mid-table on vibrancy, lags on happiness, and doesn’t register on pedestrian indexes. Big TOD floor plates alone won’t fix that.
2 MRT success—and its hidden limitation
When the Putrajaya Line completed its 57.7 km run in March 2023, daily Rapid KL ridership jumped 24 % year-on-year. Yet six-lane arterials and flyovers still sever one station catchment from the next. The very expressways that speed cars now slow human connectivity.
3 From TOD 1.0 to TOD 2.0: linking the dots
British architect Richard Rogers reminded us that “everyone has the right to walk from one end of the city to the other in secure and beautiful spaces.” Turning that into policy means four moves:
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Stitch over & under highways – land bridges and shaded underpasses that replicate the Saloma Link success across the MRR2 and DUKE corridors.
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Linear parks & micromobility spines – continuous river-edge greenways connecting Bandar Malaysia to Sentul.
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Fine-grain retail for SMEs – 6-8 m shopfront bays with capped rents to keep kopitiams and indie F&B alive between stations.
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District-scale zoning – treat the 800 m catchment of several neighbouring stations as one “urban room,” harmonising setbacks, parking ratios and public-realm funding.
4 Policy levers
| Lever | What to do | Metric to watch |
| Use MRT 3 tenders to hard-wire walkability | Specify shaded 5 m sidewalks & max 15 km/h design speed on feeder streets | KL’s score in future walkability index releases |
| Last-mile value-capture fund | Channel a slice of TOD land-premium into bridges, cycle lanes & shade | % of MRT riders whose trip stays car-free door-to-door |
| “City room” bonus FAR | Extra GFA if a project delivers publicly accessible ground-level links | m² of new car-free public realm per station |
| SME-friendly leases | Reserve 25 % of TOD retail bays for local operators on 3-year capped leases | Survival rate of SME tenants after 3 years |
5 What success looks like
By 2030 a rider should step off at Cochrane, stroll under canopies past cafés, cross a green deck over the MEX highway, and board another train at TRX—no Grab car required. Stations become portals, not cul-de-sacs, and KL climbs the tables above: cracking the top 100 for vibrancy, breaking into the Happy City “Silver” tier, and finally appearing on the walkability leaderboard.
6 Call to action
We built highways for cars in the 1990s and rail for commuters in the 2020s. The 2030s must be the decade we build streets—for people. TOD 2.0 isn’t just transit-oriented; it’s transit-interwoven, ensuring every station strengthens the spaces in between. If Kuala Lumpur embraces that shift, it can join the global league of truly vibrant, happy, walkable cities.
Reference List (alphabetical)
AzQuotes. (n.d.). Richard Rogers quotations. azquotes.com
Compare the Market. (2025). The world’s most walkable cities. comparethemarket.com.au
Institute for Quality of Life. (2025). Happy City Index 2025. happy-city-index.com
KLIA2.info. (2025, May). Saloma Link: A modern marvel in Kuala Lumpur. klia2.info
MRT Corp. (2024). Circle Line (MRT 3) project overview. mymrt.com.my
New York Post. (2025, May 29). These are the world’s best cities for 2025, according to Oxford economists. nypost.com
Paul Tan Automotive News. (2023, March 3). MRT Putrajaya Line fully opens March 16 – 57.7 km from Kwasa Damansara to Putrajaya Sentral. paultan.org
Prasarana Malaysia. (2025, January 17). Prasarana reached all-time high of 1.18 million daily trips on train & bus services in 2024, up 24 % from 2023. paultan.org
The Edge Malaysia. (2024, September 2). Revival of MRT 3 may point towards a better year for the construction sector — CGS. theedgemalaysia.com
Wikipedia contributors. (2024). Saloma Link. In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org