PASAR TANI MEGA : AN ANOMALY IN PUTRAJAYA

Abstract

In 1999, the Malaysian seat of government shifted from Kuala Lumpur to Putrajaya, the new Federal Government Administrative Centre of Malaysia. As a city with state-of-the-art facilities and infrastructures, many formal spaces of consumption are built to serve the needs of its inhabitants. The fact that an informal market exists in Putrajaya causes some contradictions and disjunctures in the original planning of the city.

The focus of this dissertation is to investigate the impact and characteristics of the Pasar Tani Mega (Mega Farmer’s Market), the informal market in the planned capital city of Putrajaya. Putrajaya is chosen as the site of study because an unintended informal market exists in the midst of the many formal spaces of consumption built in this city. The Pasar Tani Mega is the informal market specifically investigated due to the importance of the Pasar Tani as an established informal space of consumption in Malaysia and also because it is the one and only informal market in Putrajaya.

The planning of and building of only formal spaces of consumption in Putrajaya suggests a top-down approach in providing spaces of consumption to fulfill the needs of its inhabitants. The hypothesis for this dissertation is that as the later establishment of the Pasar Tani Mega may indicate, having only formal spaces of consumption is not enough to satisfy the everyday needs of the consumers in a planned capital city like Putrajaya. An informal space of consumption like the Pasar Tani is deemed complimentary to ensure the smooth operation of a planned capital city in the case of Malaysia. It also hypothesized that the inconveniences found in the formal spaces of consumption necessitated the formation and contributed to the popularity of the informal market.