This city is home to the Petronas Towers
the tallest twin towers in the world.
Today we take a look at the capital of Malaysia,
the country’s largest urban area
and its cultural, commercial and transportation centre.
Welcome to Earth from Space.
Kuala Lumpur lies in the hilly countryside of the Klang Valley
and lies astride the confluence of the Kelang and Gombak rivers.
Its name in Malay means ‘muddy estuary.’
Kuala Lumpur International Airport,
one of the busiest airports in Asia,
can be seen in the bottom of the image.
The Klang Valley is bordered by the Titiwangsa Mountains to the east
and the Strait of Malacca in the west.
A main shipping channel between the Indian and Pacific oceans,
the Strait of Malacca is one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.
Port Klang,
is the main gateway by sea into Malaysia
and lies around 40 km southwest of Kuala Lumpur.
The Greater Kuala Lumpur area
is around 2700 sq km
and is an urban agglomeration of over seven million people
This makes it one of the fastest growing metropolitan regions in Southeast Asia.
Like many other growing cities and areas in the world,
the region is facing the daunting challenge of urban sprawl.
This puts pressure on urban land in the city,
but also on agricultural land in the periphery,
as well as on other natural resources.
Urban areas are already home to 55% of the world’s population
and that figure is expected to grow to 68% by 2050.
To gain a better understanding of current trends in global urbanisation,
ESA and the German Aerospace Center
have jointly developed the World Settlement Footprint
The world’s most comprehensive dataset on human settlement
The World Settlement Footprint suite
consists of several different products,
including the World Settlement Footprint Evolution
It has been generated by processing seven million images from the US Landsat satellite
collected between 1985 and 2015
The animation illustrates the growth of Kuala Lumpur on a year-by-year basis over 30 years
This unprecedented collection of information on human settlement
will not only advance our understanding of urbanisation on a global scale
but will also become an asset for national statistical offices,
local authorities,
civil society
and international organisations.