Iskandar Malaysia Open Day

The hottest topic in Johor development nowaday is the Iskandar Malaysia.Now they were having an exhibition (they called it open day) last week at CitySquare, JB.

By seeing its venue of the Iskandar Malaysia open day- Johor Bahru City Square Mall, you get a glimpse that the success of Iskandar Malaysia Project is very much rely on the participation of Singapore in it. Furthermore it’s started held during Singapore’s public holiday- Good Friday, last week Friday till Sunday. How one do not relate its largest target audience is Singapore?


The most attracting topic to me is the Iskandar Educity which reside in the Nusajaya. Previously I only managed to find where is the Marlborough college’s location, I was there to know further where exactly the other universities and colleges’ location in Nusajaya.




The whole project’s development blueprint is seems so astonishing and ambitious, until it makes me feel bit unreal, given the experience the Malaysian Government having in the once-so-promising Multimedia Super Corridor in Cyberjaya. I think I need more studies before really look up on this yet another mega project.


This is the bird eye view of the Iskandar Educity.

I feel the campus size of NMIT and Southampton University is not that big,kinda like just a few buildings- somemore they are sharing the student center which is between NMIT and Southampton. Will this kind of campus-life-limited university be welcomed by foreign students?


The bigger-sized Newscattle University also doesn’t look attractive to me actually. If I were to have that amount to study private uni, I think I would prefer to study in IMU (same medical uni as Southampton) or MMU Cyberjaya. Well, just my 2 cents.
Another university/college in Iskandar Malaysia- the Singapore funded MDIS, was not seen any of the display board. Strange..

This is the Marlborough College, but it’s opened to secondary school students, think its students will more likely to stay in-campus dormitory right? Secondary school student not likely to drive…


Apart from the superb Medini development from the Arabian fund, Danga Bay also in the progess of transformation into a hub of leisure and commercial. According to the salesgirl, the current festive mall and surrounding will give way to all these skyscrapers where the current festive mall and zoo function only to capture the crowd’s focus.

They are going to build some serviced apartment next to the current Tune Hotel, which the asking price from them is RM600 psf ! really mad…..

Another very interesting topic will be the future JB’s rail system after the government announcement of the RM1.2billion KTM railway upgrade. The guy from Iskandar Investment Corp that entertained us kept reiterate to us that this RM1.2billion upgraded project is not something similar to Kommuter System in Kuala Lumpur, so I also have no idea how this project is being carried out. RM1.2billion merely for station upgrade? But the train cabin still remain the same as current? (if so, then really no good hope, as the train speed is so slow)

Here I get to know the rail system going to play a major part in JB public transportation is the BRT- Bus Rail Transit. I had no idea how it worked until I came to this Iskandar Malaysia Open Day.

The BRT is nothing but special bus lane, which is different from what we having in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore - the bus lane is at the leftmost lane. The BRT lane is built at center of the road, and the other mode of transports are not allowed to use the BRT lane. For more info you can google the Brazillian BRT system, which is hving the most advanved BRT system as of today.


Given the low density of population in JB, I agree BRT is the most economic and realistic public transportation to be deployed in JB (moreover, I think Kuala Lumpur should have similar system too).

Under the Iskandar Malaysia plan, there is another big project carried out at east side of JB- the Aptec city, which they focus on commercial exhibition expo. I personally not too familiar with JB east, so I can’t comment but leave the photo to tell.

As a conclusion, I feel optimistic on the Iskandar Malaysia, as the global economic has evolved into "mega-region" comprises of various cities competing each other to other mega region. To survive in the future, Singapore can't standalone by itself, neither does the Malaysia do. These 2 countries left no choice, but have to coorperate each other for mutual gain.

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努沙再也 依斯干达城 Kota Iskandar, Nusajaya, Johor