| Summary: | British Malaya first had the service of a town planner in 1921. He was Charles Compton Reade, a New Zealander, who was then serving in South Australia. Initially invited on a less than one-year advisory service, Reade stayed on until 1929 - a highly devoted and visionary pioneer during the nascent growth of (modern) town planning discipline worldwide. However, Reade's planning ideas did not endear him to proponents of speculative development. They were hostile towards his centralized and public interest ideology. This book provides a fresh perspective and deepens previous studies of his town planning ideas: legislative, replanning and redistribution method, Garden City design, administration and his determine resolves, to lay down the foundation of permanent town planning policy in British Malaya. This is a story that needs to be told, to counter fashionable contemporary history writings (in particular architecture and history of Malayan towns), where Reade's contributions had been downplayed or ignored entirely, especially in Kuala Lumpur - for his work touched the lives of coolie lines, peons, clerks, Government officials, squatters to private property owners' housing; and town sites of national heritage, political and national importance. It is a wonderment and folly that his work was erased from public knowledge (and consciousness).
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