Johor Bahru local development plan: a preliminary content analysis for housing sector

In Malaysia, the Regional and Town Planning Act 1976 emphasizes the need for a development plan system as a control mechanism for the usage of land. A development plan system involves a Local Plan whereby the function of the system is to plan, to control and to drive a development at the district level. Therefore, any party who wish to a start housing development must initially make reference to a local plan. In other words, a developer must refer to a local plan to ensure that a future and an upcoming housing development fulfill the requirement set out by the local plan. However, a question arises whether or not a local plan could possibly give sufficient information and thereafter, able to assist a developer to identify whether or not the particular land is ready and suitable for housing development. Thus, the main objective of this research, particularly for housing sectors is to identify the sufficiency of the local plan contents and whether a completed local plan encompasses all aspects of the needed information. In other to achieve the objective, the method of content analysis was used to analyse contents of Johor Bahru Local Development Plan 2002-2020 as a sample.