In August 2018, Penang State Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow hosted a press conference to launch his vision for the future of Penang State, ‘Penang 2030: a family-focused green and smart state that inspires the nation’ (Penang2030 Unit, 2019). This vision contained four main themes intended to guide Penang's development over the coming decade: increase liveability to enhance quality of life; upgrade the economy to raise household incomes; empower people to strengthen civic participation, and; invest in the built environment to improve (societal) resilience. Chow's approach to achieving this vision is said to be ‘people-centric’, opening up urban governance and planning decisions to members of society, in addition to the government. It also aims to balance economic advancement with environmental well-being in order to achieve sustainable development. These steps would allegedly help to work towards the Penang state government's goal of becoming ‘an international, intelligent city that is clean, green, safe and healthy, brimming with energy, expertise and entrepreneurship’ (Lim, in Ng, 2016: np).

The Penang 2030 agenda can be situated within the convergence towards urban and regional planning in in which governments have sought to establish their own sustainability initiatives in line with the UN Agenda 21 programme on sustainable development (Raco and Lin, 2012: 192– 193).1 For example, the plan also fits in with the 11th Malaysia Plan, which targets ‘green growth for sustainability and resilience, and places climate mitigation at the centre of the nation's future economic growth’ (Jacobs, 2016b: S26). In doing so, it has sought to emulate forms of urban development from other leading world cities in Asia. For example, under Chow's predecessor, Lim Guan Eng's leadership, Penang sought to attract Singaporean capital in order to replicate the city-state's ‘development playbook’, and to promote a ‘clean, green, safe and healthy’ city (Ng, 2016: np). The Penang state government also sought to model Hong Kong's approach to ‘embracing change and being a regional hub’; and emulate ‘the Dubai model’ for attracting tourism and trade (Ng, 2016: np).