Reviving The Stalled Portland-Kota Kinabalu Sister City Initiative Through Civil Society Participation

This title (paper) has been presented at the 2nd International k@Borneo Conference 2021 organised by Pustaka Negeri Sarawak that has been held virtually on 14 and 15 September 2021. This paper have been prepared by Sanen Marshall and Brenda Wright from Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.

Abstract

The authors discuss the issues and challenges of inter-city linkages from the perspective of international relations, enlarging on the case of Kota Kinabalu’s and Portland’s attempt to forge a sister city relationship beginning in 2014. The paper discusses some basic ideas of city governance such as the importance of local democracy in addition to the problems besetting cities such as poverty and slums. The authors therefore acknowledge the need for sister city relationships over and above the need for state security in international relations. The paper thus explores the unfortunate inability for Kota Kinabalu and Portland to make good on their attempt to contract a formal sister city relationship. The authors argue that there have been examples of non-elites in the international system forging relations in solidarity with one another. Therefore there is no reason why - since the elites of Kota Kinabalu and Portland have failed to establish a sister city relationship – non-elites like the homeless and the squatters in both cities should not be given the opportunity establish genuine people-to-people links for their mutual benefit and self-help. In the process of researching and writing this paper, the authors researched news reports and interviewed residents in both Kota Kinabalu and Portland.

Keywords: sister city, democracy, homelessness, squatters, elites

Introduction

The emergence of the city as the prevalent form of human habitation is thus a result of the concentration of more and more production facilities in urban centres. More than half of the world’s population currently lives in cities. There are currently ‘at least 550 cities,’ that is a 640% in the increase of cities of the world since the 1950s (Davis, 2006, p. 1). Rural-to-urban migration was the foundation of burgeoning post-1945 urban populations in Western cities although today inter-city migration contributes to the sharp increase of the population in such American cities like Portland. Therefore, it is worth noting that the units of the international system, which were primarily assumed to be states, and were involved in dictating foreign policy, no longer operate unrivalled in a security dominated international system. On the contrary, the issues of international relations go way beyond state security into areas such as social welfare (Keohane and Nye, 1987, p. 67).

Cities compete with each other in the area of production facilities leading cities to desire being the locale for the headquarters of major multinational companies. Adidas headquarters, for example, is located in the city of Portland, Oregon. The Nike headquarters is located in the county just neighbouring Portland. The city of Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian state of Sabah, on the other hand has an industrial park, which claims to feature ‘a total of 242 industrial investors who have started their clusters of operations, 17 research and development and institutions, five utility companies and 24 commercial entities.’ These facilities are reported to be worth RM2.69 billion in investment while creating ‘8,766 job opportunities’ (Daily Express, 2016b, p. 1). This author has not come across any reports of the city of Kota Kinabalu being the locale for the headquarters of a major multinational company, although there have been regional offices of such companies located in the central business district of the city.

Cities compete, just like states do, though seldom in terms of high politics or security. They compete for tourism, education/international students, technology transfer and other benefits to be accrued from the international financial, trade and investment regimes. It is therefore noteworthy that competition between cities in the area of low politics involves considerations such whether ‘local residents [are] friendly to strangers’ (Kolb, 2006, p. 68). This is particularly important for cities that want to cash in on hosting major cultural and sporting events, which draw thousands of visitors from overseas, in addition to drawing international students.

The Sabah-Oregon Collaborative, for example, was a subsequent initiative involving the Malaysian state of Sabah and the American state of Oregon to create a ‘greater impact’ in ‘local environmental, wildlife conservation and social development initiatives’ (Daily Express, 2016a). However, it was really the 2014 attempted sister city tie-up between Kota Kinabalu in Sabah and Portland in Oregon that was the fulcrum upon which this wider collaboration was based. The Collaborative therefore continued to hope to ‘formalise a Sister City status between the two cities.’

Most Western cities have local council elections. This is a completely different situation when compared to Malaysia. At the 2018 UN Habitat’s World Urban Forum (Kuala Lumpur: 07-13 March 2018) a participant from Kota Kinbalu remarked that ‘not a single city in Malaysia – [the country] that was given the honour of hosting the World Urban Forum – has local council elections’ (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2018). At the same Forum, another participant, a retired senior civil servant, noted that the forging of Malaysian sister city relationships are still within the purview of Prime Minister’s department, which is at heart of Malaysia’s central government. It therefore seems that the Malaysian city, like many of its counterparts in Asia, is thus not free to contract formal relationships outside its borders without the explicit approval of the central government.

Because of the non-democratic administration of the nationally embedded city of Asian countries, it is worth exploring the question whether cities like Kota Kinabalu are reaching out to cities in the Western world with a warped impression of how things really work in places like Portland. The following analysis considers the case of Kota Kinabalu and Portland.

Portland and Kota Kinabalu

In the wake of the 2014 visit by a US President to Malaysia and his joint agreement with the Malaysian Prime Minister to ‘establish sister city relationships,’ the Portland–Kota Kinabalu sister city initiative was born. The ‘big part of the discussion’ according to then ambassador to Malaysia Joseph Y.Yun was ‘how to elevate the relationship between the two countries and the importance of people-to-people relationship that is outside of formal diplomatic channels so our groups of people can come together’ (Daily Express, 2014). Kota Kinabalu had only 536000 residents in 2010 but had expected to see that figure double by 2020 (Senior Administration Staff DBKK, 2019). Portland’s population is 654,741 currently but is also said to be growing fast (United States Census Bureau, 2019). In terms of expenditure, Portland city dwarfs the small operating budget of Kota Kinabalu, with Portland operating a $5.7 billion budget currently and Kota Kinabalu operating a RM32.7 million ($7.86 million) budget as reported in 2019, just before the onset of the pandemic. Among the more subjective qualities ascribed to the cities was that they both possessed ‘human qualities like the warm and welcoming nature of the people’(Malay Mail, 2016). Both cities are gateways to tourist sites such as mountains, seasides, forests.

The Portland-Kota Kinabalu sister city initiative thus began with important government meetings, especially in Portland. The Malaysian state of Sabah, of which Kota Kinabalu is the capital city, sent a high-powered delegation to Portland, Oregon. This delegation included the Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister and the Mayor of Kota Kinabalu. The Sabah delegation’s visit was for the purpose of signing a Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Kota Kinabalu and the Portland-Kota Kinabalu Sister City Association (PKKSCA). The visit was important enough for the US Ambassador to Malaysia to accompany this delegation in order to witness the signing ceremony. The Ambassador was quoted as saying ‘we hope this visit and establishing the Sister City partnership between the two cities will lead to stronger people-to-people ties and increasing tourism, business activity and academic exchanges between the people of both cities’ (Inus, 2014, p. 1).

The emphasis on ‘people-to-people’ is a reflection – at least from the US perspective – of what the sister city relationship is all about. City Hall Portland (2001, p. 1) thus gives some background to this form of international relations when it notes that the ‘Sister City movement in the United States was inaugurated … in 1956 as the “People to People program,” whose purpose was to established greater friendship and understanding between the people of the United States and the peoples of other nations through direct contact.’ Thus while the Sabah delegation did go on to meet with the Mayor of City Hall Portland (at that time one Charles Hales) and several other local governmental officials, the initiative was never quite a government-to-government one since no formal agreements appear to have been signed by City Hall Portland with regard to the sister city relationship with Kota Kinabalu.

This is an important point to remember since on the Kota Kinabalu side there seems to be confusion at the highest levels of authority by those who were subsequently asked about the attempted tie-up. A Linked-In posting by one Amy Webber who at the time of writing in 2014 was the ‘Assistant to the President of a non-profit association that is creating a Sister City relationship between Portland, Oregon and Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia’ also stated that ‘[w]e are currently waiting for our 401c3 status. Once this is established, we will be “Friendship” Cities for a year and then “Sister” Cities (Weber, 2014, p. 1). Unfortunately, Portland and Kota Kinabalu never did become sister cities. Our research indicates that it is unlikely that they ever did achieve the probationary one-year period as friendship cities.

Still Sister Cities?

However, we might be forgiven for thinking otherwise from what we read on the Internet and in the Sabah/Malaysia press. Let us therefore look at what some quarters think is the status of the relationship between Portland and Kota Kinabalu. A Wikipedia entry entitled ‘Kota Kinabalu’ list ‘sixteen sister cities’ for the former including ‘Portland, United States’ (Anonymous (Wikipedia), 2018, p. 1). What is remarkable is that the declaration that Portland and Kota Kinabalu are sister cities is rightly sourced.It is referenced to a report of a major English daily, The Star online. In this report of January 2016, the then mayor of Kota Kinabalu is quoted as saying that ‘the sister-city status that was established since Sept 29, 2014, has brought about various potential developments and opportunities’ (Lee, 2016, p. 1). The Wikipedia article thus correctly understands the then mayor of KK to be asserting that Kota Kinabalu and Portland are sister cities. It was later in that same year that we perhaps get the first indication of problems when Sabah’s leading English daily quotes US Ambassador to Malaysia Joseph Yun’s response to a criticism of the Portland – Kota Kinabalu tie where the reporter writes “In case some think the Portland-KK-Sister Cities pact had produced nothing, Yun says nay: ‘We have made tremendous progress since the idea was first conceived two years ago’” (Kan, 2016). By 2017, the same Sabah paper had latched on to the idea that ‘nothing came of the plan to twin Portland.’ The Daily Express reporter went on to note that “there has been criticism that twinning of cities are an excuse for officials to go on paid holidays using taxpayers’ money.” To this, a subsequent Mayor responded:

In 2014, Kota Kinabalu signed the friendship city MoU with the city of Portland in Oregon, USA...We are, indeed, honoured that they chose Kota Kinabalu … Kota Kinabalu was chosen as a friendship city with Portland because of the similarities between the people in both cities. The relation between the two cities will provide opportunities to connect businesses in both cities, especially in education and environment (Santos and Chin, 2017, p. 9).

The Mayor’s response in early 2017 quoted above indicates that the City of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia signed a friendship city memorandum of understanding with the City of Portland, Oregon, USA. However, the City of Portland does not appear to recognise the City of Kota Kinabalu as a sister city or even a friendship city. The latter is the interim stage or the one-year probation period during which City Hall, Portland decides whether to confer sister city status on the relationship between Portland and Kota Kinabalu. A public records request put in to the City of Portland on December 4th, 2017 for documentation showing any agreement or understanding for the City of Portland to be a “friendship city,” “sister city” or similar with Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia …from 2014 to present’ received a response from the Office of Government Relations that ‘[t]he City does not possess or is not the custodian of the records in your public records request’ (Pfaffle, 2018, p. perscomm). Not even a record of the issuing of the 401C3 document attesting to even friendship city status?

Problems in the ‘Asian City’

If elite collaboration between the city of Portland and Kota Kinabalu have failed to formally contract a sister city relationship, should not civil society take over? This is far from being a phenomenon of concern singular to Portland and Kota Kinabalu. While cities are increasingly emerging as important actors in international relations, a less welcome social segment cities are also gaining prominence by their global prevalence. It was reported ‘around a quarter of the world’s urban population lives in slums. And this figure is rising fast. The number of slum dwellers in developing countries increased from 689 million in 1990 to 800 million in 2014…’ (World Economic Forum, 2016). In the biggest economy in the world, 5.8 per cent of the 2003 American urban population dwelt in slums. The most recent 2017 statistics for the state of Oregon reported that homelessness had increased 6 percent over the previous two years to a total of 13,935 persons. Of this number, Multnomah County whose administrative centre is the city of Portland saw the highest increase in homelessness, that is, from 3,801 (2015) to 4,177 (2017) or almost 10 percent (Hewitt, 2017).

A few years back, City Hall Kota Kinabalu acted to order the removal of a cluster of squatter homes occupying state land not to far away from the city centre in order to clear the way for a project funded by the Federal Government. The cluster of squatter homes was self-named Kg. Syarif Osman and was populated by people of Rungus, Kimaragang and Sungai ethnicity, all of whom are indigenous to Sabah. Ironically, among the old, dilapidated houses that they were occupying was one that appeared to have served as the abode of the British colonial Resident of Jesselton (Kota Kinabalu). They themselves were somewhat aware of this, claiming that the house that they were occupying once belonged to a Dutchman.

‘Some 300 squatters in 55 families’ were thus targeted for removal or relocation (Chin, 2014, p. 3). Ironically, the project for which they were to make way was the building of the new high court complex for Kota Kinabalu. A couple of researchers managed to interview one of the residents. The interviewee was a woman with two or three young children who hailed from the Interior of the Malaysian state of Sabah and was now living with her with two young children in the squalid conditions of the squatter settlement. She was weeks away from eviction. She reports

I was born in Kampong X in the Interior of the Sugut District. The government went to my original kampong and from there we were chased away because they said that they wanted to make an estate to plant palm oil. Then we moved to Kampong Y in the Kota Marudu District, nine Kampongs were relocated there. But from there some of us were also chased away and now we have moved to this city. So even back then we were saying, ‘Why is it the Government wants to give residential settlements to the foreign migrants? But whereas we local people are not given a residential settlement.’ This simply is the problem with them (Former Sugut District Villager, 2014).

The Sabah State Government did apparently eventually provide low cost housing for her neighbours but for some reason she herself was not able to access the facility . The woman and her children, in fact her entire squatter settlement, were eventually evicted. She spent a few weeks in Kota Kinabalu and eventually returned to her home village in Kampong Y in the Kota Marudu District, although it is not known whether she still remains there. The decision-making processes of what is a-less-than-democratic Asian country (Malaysia) – and one which has still no local council elections – appears to have fallen victim to the problem of not sufficiently ‘widening the scope of the decision-making process’ for the city (Abbott, 1996, pp. 3–4). It is a legitimate concern for ‘community development’ and one that often enough gets left out in urban planning, when it should instead be the case that ‘community development activities involve the poor in improving their living conditions….’ (Abbott, 1996, p. 70).

Solutions from the ‘Western City’

The situation in Portland is somewhat similar and yet dissimilar with regard to illegal squatting on government land. In 2015, a homeless camp known as Hazelnut Grove was set up on a patch of empty land in the neighbourhood of Overlook in north Portland. The city initially and for a number of years offered the residents basic services like portable toilets, trash pickup, and fencing at an affordable monthly cost (Zielinski, 2021). The continued presence of this homeless camp in the Overlook neighbourhood was the cause of much consternation among some office bearers in the Overlook Neighbourhood Association. The City eventually decided in January this year that Hazelnut Grove must relocate from Overlook. Nevertheless, the fact that Hazelnut Grove was able to hold out for years on end – much like their compatriots in Kg. Syarif Osman of Kota Kinabalu before their eventual eviction – is a testimony to their success in community development. As yet, Hazelnut Grove still exists in Overlook and has yet to be dismantled. There could be a number of reasons for the acquiescence of the City of Portland, among which could be that the homeless persons in Portland – many of whom activists themselves – are better organised in claiming their rights to a home in the City. A series of interviews conducted with Hazelnut Grove residents regarding the lessons that can be taught and learned from their successful venture in setting up and maintaining a homeless camp on the fringes of a well-to-do neighbourhood proved enlightening.

‘If Portland and Kota Kinabalu, which are in America and Malaysia respectively,’ the first author of this paper asked ‘are in the process of becoming sister cities, what does Hazelnut Grove think about their role – being non-politicians and not business persons - in relation to how you can form links with the people of Kota Kinabalu?’ One Hazelnut Grove resident responded that people’s ‘basic needs’ need to be represented by the ‘politicians from my city and from your city, if they are going to be meeting and carrying out the interests of their cities.’ So what lessons specifically does Hazelnut Grove have to offer to the homeless people or squatters in Kota Kinabalu? To this question, the same Hazelnut Grove resident responded:

Solutions on homelessness. Here in Hazelnut Grove we are trying to become sustainable, you know, [in terms of] solar power, figure out where to get our own water, you know ... systems of support. And this is true of both cities … we all need systems of support that don’t depend upon the kind of system that is currently in power. So what we have to have is a changing of the power. The power needs to go back into the hands of [the] people, not into the hands of people with money ….(Ryan, 2017)

Another Hazelnut Grove resident listed down some specific actions that could be taken in relation to the Portland-Kota Kinabalu sister city initiative such as

1. ‘creat[ing] (joint) conferences with interested parties (across countries), which are already taking place between [people from] different states inside the USA. [These people] want to solve problems, so they wanted to see how we were doing it, so they can try to do it in their states

2. ‘educat(ing) (people) through doing documentaries, like we have done. We have done several documentaries (for example) we went with ideas that I put forth about following the day in the life of a houseless person – what does it take to meet their basic needs. We decided to do a film on the root causes of houselessness.’

3.‘educating people (by) using…curriculums at high schools and colleges….it’s (about) changing perceptions, we did an art collective last year, where we gathered a group of houseless folk, who were interested in art…and didn’t even know their talent….it was amazing.’

4. ‘having communities get together and do these things, promotes a relationship between them, because there’s such a level of separation, say (between) city neighbourhoods, governments (state-level), you know it goes all the way up and there are separations…’ (Castor, 2017)

Conclusion

Preliminary results from this paper indicate that there could be possible exchanges between non-elites in the two cities, since they share similar problems and they therefore could also actively share common solutions. Such a utopian approach to non-elite collaboration between cities is perhaps not unwarranted. The growing global poverty crisis, which is largely due to structural exploitation of the urban poor, has also contributed to the grassroots demand for an end to the divide between rich and poor. For this to happen, however, it is not just cities that must emerge as international actors but disenfranchised non-elites such as the homeless and the squatters who must appear on the global stage as actors in their own right.

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