TRISHAW peddler Tan waits at the junction of George Town’s Lebuh Armenian and Lebuh Cannon for customers day in day out, occasionally chatting with the local residents and shopowners there whom he once called neighbours.

The 52-year-old used to live near the historic Khoo Kongsi temple in the heart of George Town’s Unesco heritage site before he moved out three years ago to a flat some 1.5 kilometres away.

His reason, like many of his former neighbours, was that he could no longer afford the rent.

“Many people have left. It isn’t that they don’t want to live in town. The rentals are just too high now.

“Landlords have been raising the rentals. They can get more, maybe RM2,000 a month, if they rent out to businesses,” said Tan.

Unesco recognition and tourism boom

George Town made the Unesco World Heritage Site listing in July 2008, thanks to its “outstanding universal value” (OUV) – tangible and intangible cultures that resulted from over 500 years of trade and cultural exchanges between the East and West.

Since then, the former British Straits Settlement has seen a tourism boom, with the state getting 6.25 million visitors in 2015, compared to under four million in 2007.

Many pre-war shophouses, which had little value when rent for buildings built before 1948 was controlled under the Rent Control Act (repealed in 1997), became attractive investments to local and foreign investors.

Many have since been renovated into boutique hotels, guest houses, bed-and-breakfast lodgings, cafes, galleries, museums and other businesses catering to the increasing number of tourists.

But the growth in tourism has brought with it a different set of problems.

Heritage property prices and rentals have skyrocketed since 2008, depending on their building condition, size and location.

The Star daily reported last October that the price of heritage buildings in George Town was up between 37% and 200% since 2008. The price for one square foot (psf) ranges from RM550 to over RM2,000 these days, compared to RM400 to RM700 in 2008.

Rentals in some places in the heritage zone are now between RM3,000 and RM8,000, compared to between RM1,000 and RM3,000 a month in 2008.

The surge in demand for many of these buildings has caused longtime tenants – families and old trades and businesses – to move out as landlords seek higher rentals from new businesses.

According to the George Town World Heritage Site: Population and Land Use Change Surveys commissioned by Think City, the city’s residential population dropped by some 80,000 in 2009, to under 10,000 in 2013.

The George Town Special Area Plan (SAP) also acknowledged the threat of displacement and loss of residential population in the world heritage site (WHS), and the need to arrest the problem before things went out of control.

Focus on locals, not tourists

Penang Heritage Trust (PHT) vice-president Khoo Salma Nasution said that to address the declining number of city dwellers, the authorities should prioritise the primary stakeholders of the city – the people who lived and worked there – over tourists.

She said efforts were needed to make George Town more liveable, so any scheme by the authorities should be one that benefited locals, such as urban regeneration that would improve life for residents, and encouraged others to move back to the city.

“Many heritage towns elsewhere encourage the setting up of colleges, so premises in the heritage sites can provide lodgings for students,” Salma said.

The well-known heritage conservationist and author of numerous books on Penang said that tourism was “fickle” and authorities needed to devise ways to keep people wanting to live in the city.

“A city needs a striving local community. The authentic values of the city and its people must be in the forefront. The city is much more than a street art destination,” she told The Malaysian Insight.

Salma believes better enforcement by the local authorities can also help improve conditions in the city.

“We are not doing the best we can yet,” said the Penang Island City Council (MBPP) councillor, who was appointed in January.

Since the tourism boom, the MBPP has been dealing with problems like illegal hotels and cafes, and increasing traffic congestion.

The SAP helps MBPP monitor the WHS and ensure sustainable management according to the World Heritage Committee’s conditions, gazetted late last year – eight years after the Unesco award.

The SAP controls management, restoration and developments in the 260ha heritage zone, which has 2,569 buildings in the core zone and 2,444 in the buffer zone.

Keeping the living heritage alive

Salma said if a habitat changed and became unrecognisable to the point that locals felt like tourists in their own city, the people would eventually move away.

“A living city is like an ecosystem, where everyone who lives in it supports each other to sustain the ‘habitat’,” she said.

“There are many new people in Penang who do not understand the importance of the intangible heritage.

“When we lose the intangible heritage, it is gone forever.” – April 15, 2017.