It is time to redesign our places of worship

Mak Khuin Weng

Friday prayers is often a bane for road users from 12pm to 2pm. The double parking created an altercation that turned into a racial issue. Many people have called for calm and some have offered solutions.

I’m going to give my two cents worth on how this issue needs to be handled by the authorities, but before we get to the solution, I want to address why it is important to resolve the issue.

If there is a property on fire, traffic congestion would prevent a fire truck from reaching the fire on time. Similarly, if a person is suffering from a heart attack or an ambulance needs to rush a patient to a hospital, the last thing the patient needs is a traffic jam right on the road leading up to the hospital.

There are certainly many other emergencies that can happen, but suffice to say, leaving traffic problems unresolved in the long term can have dire consequences for people caught in an emergency, especially when we realize that such traffic problems aren’t unique to mosques but can also happen around churches and temples.

To solve this traffic problem, I would suggest that religious buildings be redesigned into multi-storey buildings with built-in car park floors.

Aesthetically, it can be done to be pleasing to the eye.

Functionally, it provides a solution to the problem where cars are double-parked along the road.

Furthermore, a redesigned place of worship can also have built-in stalls. This way, the stalls that spring up along the roads to cater to the mass of worshippers can also be housed away from the roadside.

Having all these activities housed within a complex can also ensure that everyone can perform their religious obligations even when it rains. The built-in parking lot can also be designed to be disabled and elderly friendly.

There are numerous benefits of rethinking the design for our places of worship to fit into urban living. Shouldn’t we explore this idea further?