ABSTRACT
The human geographer Terry McGee (1967) contended that urbanization in Peninsular (West) Malaysia was taking root in an ‘unstable setting’. 1 While the historical context of his diagnosis was the volatility of inter-ethnic relations in the aftermath of the watershed ‘race riots’ of 13 May 1969, his characterization has remained remarkably durable, notwithstanding substantive socio-economic and cultural changes brought about by the epochal New Economic Policy (1971–1991) and its subsequent incarnations under different guises.
