The last hours of Canny Ong in the hands of a sexual predator are difficult and painful to imagine.

A young person's future was mercilessly snuffed out. She was someone else's loved one. The fact is she could have been ours.

This tragedy, like many others in Kuala Lumpur, may not find closure - for how could any society come to terms with the brutal killing of one of her daughters in the prime of her life?

Canny' s death should open another dimension in the on-going debate about safety and protection of city-dwellers, in terms of efforts to turn Kuala Lumpur into a world class city ( KL20 ).

What is the use of a world class city when persons like Canny Ong or Noor Suzaily are not adequately protected?

We seem to have built an ultra-modern urban jungle and have carelessly provided spaces for the beast amongst us to freely prey on helpless victims.

Unsustainable trends

You just have to go around Kuala Lumpur to see how carelessly the city has been planned without consideration for security and safety.

LRT and Komuter train stations are located in deserted areas that are also poorly served by public transport. Bus stops and pedestrian underpasses are in lonely places that look abandoned, while badly-lit stretches of road look frighteningly desolate.

Large and spacious car parks are without adequate or active surveillance, and careless background checks on people working in certain critical areas seem to only attract predators.

The list could go on. These are all surely recipes for disasters and tragedies. We and our children are at constant risk. Now we feel greater anxiety whenever someone is not at home and is out and about town.

Canny's death is among the most horrific features of the underside of urbanism, resulting in a significant way from bad planning. There are, of course, many other unsustainable trends in the city and beyond.

The needless death of six individuals during the Kampung Medan riot in Petaling Jaya Selatan in 2001 was again the result of bad urban planning that encourages careless residentialisation of the poorer sections.

Insensitive planning that does not adequately care for the cultural needs of various communities - or that does not promote multi-culturally 'lived and interacted' urban spaces - leads to exclusivism.

Socio-economic disparity fuelled by ethno-cultural exclusivism provides a setting for urban riots. We need more multi-cultural neighbourhoods with genuine lived symbols of multi-cultural co-existence, not feel-good multi-culturalism in the context of affluence.

Different cultural groups must have a sense of ownership in the form of concrete and artistic manifestations of their neighbourhood.

Residential planning and patterning, particularly for the poor, should be well thought out so that multi-culturalism is actively achieved in order to avoid such residential areas from becoming war zones.

Unfriendly infrastructure

Special architectural planning, urban space management and technology should be considered and introduced to enable children, old folks and the disadvantaged to actively engage with the city.

Take a walk during peak hours in Brickfields and you will see how far KL is from being a humane city that is sensitive to its visually impaired community.

While this old neighbourhood is undergoing rapid transformation, there is absolutely no consideration for visually challenged people - indeed, they are exposed to many hazards that stand in the way of their mobility.

Their needs should have been one of the driving forces in planning the area. KL Sentral and the complex around the terminal of the KL monorail project have factored in just about everything but the needs of visually impaired people.

KL is hardly any more friendly to older people and those who are physically disabled, who do not venture out as a result. The city is not built to engage them, but is really for young, strong and healthy adults.

KLIA, too, is one of the most old-age unfriendly airports I have ever seen. The walk to the departure lounges for certain flights is rather long and exhausting. Many areas do not have and cannot accommodate walkalators. Just imagine an elderly person's problems in rushing between flights.

Pedestrian crossings - both underpasses/subways and overhead bridges - are often located in unsafe, desolate places which become perfect hunting grounds for all kind of predators.

In 1999, KL lost another of her daughters, teenager Audrey Melissa, who was on her way to school early one morning. She was raped and killed, and her body was dumped at the underpass close to police headquarters Bukit Aman.

While overhead bridges are safer because users are exposed to some degree of public view, these pose other problems. The staircase is usually too steep for older people to use.

This may seen to be not a serious problem today, but it will be soon as Malaysia urbanises and the population ages.

Planners' pipedream

The vision to transform KL into a world class city is a response to globalisation and is highly market driven. KL20 appears to be the competitive response of city planners to transform KL into another mega-city for global consumption.

KL City Hall should really shape the city around notions of sustainable urbanisation, incorporating the concerns of Agenda 21, for local consumption. These concerns would require an active integration of economic, socio-cultural, environmental and political features.

We need to benchmark beyond the economic and efforts at 'museum-ising' our ethno-cultures. The development of KL should go beyond considerations of the bottom line.

Gruesome murders may be the work of maniacs, but planners, legislators and security managers must understand that they can do much, much more to prevent the incidence of such deaths.

The real closure for Canny Ong's family and friends will not only come from the murderer being punished, but also from how the authorities choose to plan and build KL.

In the end, we do not need a world class city. That may be a pipedream of planners and politicians. What we really need is a cultured, friendly and secure city.

M NADARAJAH, a sociologist by profession, is the deputy co-ordinator of the Bangkok-based Asian Communication Network (ACN). He works on sustainable development issues.