The Living History Project (TLHP) is proud to collaborate with Actsugi, a leading digital content creation company specializing in immersive 360° storytelling and high-resolution aerial photography. Together, we embark on a mission to capture the essence of Kuala Lumpur’s diverse neighborhoods through a series of stunning drone visuals.
Kuala Lumpur is a tapestry of cultures, histories, and communities.
From the bustling streets of Bangsar to the serene landscapes of Cheras, each neighborhood tells its own unique story.
By leveraging Actsugi’s expertise in drone photography and virtual tours, TLHP aims to document and preserve these narratives, ensuring that the city’s rich heritage is accessible to future generations.
This project is an ongoing endeavour. As we continue to explore and document more neighbourhoods, additional historical information and narratives will be incorporated. We invite you to revisit this page regularly to discover new content and updates.
This initiative is more than just a visual journey; it’s a commitment to preserving the stories that make Kuala Lumpur unique.
We invite you to be part of this endeavor by exploring the virtual tours, sharing your own stories, and supporting the preservation of our city’s living history.
Once a sleepy residential enclave in early 20th-century Kuala Lumpur, Bukit Bintang has transformed into the city’s premier entertainment and commercial district. During the British colonial era, the area was known for its amusement parks and open-air cinemas, drawing crowds from all backgrounds. Post-independence, Bukit Bintang evolved into a magnet for consumer culture and urban sophistication.
Today, it is a sensory overload of luxury malls like Pavilion KL and Starhill Gallery, budget-friendly eateries, designer boutiques, and buzzing nightlife spots. But behind the billboards and bright lights lies an older narrative—shophouses built in the 1920s, Chinese temples tucked into alleys, and remnants of the city’s early multicultural street life.
From above, drone shots sweep over a dynamic landscape: neon-lit intersections, bustling Jalan Alor with its legendary street food, rooftop terraces, and hidden green spaces. The district is KL’s answer to Times Square, yet distinctly Malaysian—where durian stalls thrive beneath LED screens and prayers rise from incense-filled shrines behind karaoke bars.
Founded in 1899 by the British colonial government as a Malay Agricultural Settlement, Kampung Bahru (or Kampung Baru) was envisioned as a space where rural Malays could maintain their way of life even as the city expanded. This has, remarkably, remained true. Today, it is one of the last surviving traditional Malay villages in the heart of KL.
Stilted wooden houses painted in bright pastels line narrow roads flanked by banana trees and bougainvilleas. Elderly residents still sit on verandahs in kain batik, while the call to prayer echoes from suraus unchanged in decades. And all this sits in direct contrast to the Petronas Twin Towers and KLCC skyline, which loom dramatically nearby.
The community is fiercely protective of its land and identity, resisting repeated redevelopment proposals. Drone visuals here are particularly powerful: a cultural island frozen in time amid the surge of modernity. The shots could highlight the clash and co-existence of two worlds—one rooted in tradition, the other pushing toward global modernism.
Pudu is one of Kuala Lumpur’s most storied and underrated neighborhoods. Historically a Chinese working-class area, it once formed the southern edge of colonial KL. The Pudu Market remains one of the largest wet markets in the city, feeding KL’s households for generations. Known for its bustling lanes, industrial repair shops, and age-old eateries, Pudu has always thrived on commerce at a grassroots level.
The now-demolished Pudu Jail, built in 1895, once dominated the area, infamous for its imposing wall mural and history as a British colonial prison. Though the jail is gone, it left a psychological imprint, and its demolition marked a broader erasure of physical memory.
Today, Pudu is in transition. Condominiums are rising, old buildings are being retrofitted into trendy cafes and boutique hotels. But traces of its past persist—in the clinking of mahjong tiles, the smells of roast duck and herbal teas, and the aging art deco facades weathering time.
Drone shots can show this interplay of decay and development: market roofs unfolding like scales, trains passing overhead, and gentrified shoplots growing like vines into the old.
Named after the clay brick kilns that once dotted its landscape, Brickfields began as a center of brick-making in the late 19th century, supplying the materials needed to rebuild KL after the great fire of 1881. Later, it became home to the large Indian labor force that came to work on the railways, turning the neighbourhood into a cultural enclave.
Today, Brickfields is Kuala Lumpur’s Little India, bursting with color, music, and scent. Saree shops, spice stalls, goldsmiths, and banana leaf restaurants line the streets. Temples like the century-old Sri Kandaswamy Kovil sit alongside Christian churches, Buddhist viharas, and even a Sikh gurdwara—testimony to the area’s religious diversity.
The arrival of KL Sentral, the city’s transport hub, brought massive urban development—but Brickfields continues to radiate old-world charm. It is a place where Tamil film songs blast from loudspeakers, jasmine garlands hang in temple stalls, and sweets like laddu and jalebi are made by hand.
From above, drone footage captures a kaleidoscope of cultural vibrancy: arches painted in peacock hues, trains weaving through the skyline, and alleys glowing in the evening with festivals and processions.
Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown, centered around Petaling Street, is one of the city’s oldest quarters. Born from the migration of Chinese laborers during the tin mining boom of the 1800s, it quickly evolved into a thriving commercial hub. Traders, herbalists, goldsmiths, and clan associations defined the area’s layout and tempo.
Even today, one finds echoes of that industrious spirit: red lanterns, bustling open-air stalls, traditional Chinese medicine halls, and kopitiams serving kopi-o and chee cheong fun. The neighborhood also houses the Sin Sze Si Ya Temple, the city’s oldest Taoist temple, and Chan See Shu Yuen, a rare surviving example of Southern Chinese architecture with ornate carvings and green-tiled roofs.
Yet, Chinatown is also reinventing itself. In the past decade, artists, curators, and entrepreneurs have begun to reclaim abandoned shophouses, transforming them into galleries, speakeasies, and creative collectives. Murals bloom on weathered walls. Craft stores sit beside incense shops.
Drone footage here can showcase a district layered with history—alleys that bend like memory lanes, roofs with curling eaves, and the ever-present pulse of reinvention. Petaling Street is no longer just a tourist market; it is a living experiment in preserving heritage through evolution.
