Understand
Founded only in 1954 as Malaysia's first planned town, PJ has become a busy commercial and residential hub in its own right with over 450,000 inhabitants. In the later years, further expansion to the north saw the rise of the Damansara area that gave birth to such housing estates as Bandar Utama, Kota Damansara, Damansara Perdana, Bandar Sri Damansara and Damansara Impian.
Addresses in PJ are remarkably bureaucratic. The town is divided into numbered sections seksyen, which to further confuse things are denoted with just S eastern PJ, SS central and western, PJU northern, and PJS southern. The northern chunk is also known as Damansara. "SS" is an acronym for "Subang-Sungei Way", and just to keep you on your toes, sections SS 12 through 19 & PJS were part of Petaling Jaya, then re-assigned to a new neighbourhood city Subang Jaya, covering the west area of Kuala Lumpur.
Each road in a section is numbered, so an address like "No. 38, Jalan SS 21/58" means house 38, road 58, section SS 21. There is no definitive form for a PJ address. Therefore the above example could well be written as 38 Road SS 21/58, 38 Jln SS 21/58 or simply as 38 SS 21/58. Most major roads developed during the 1960s are given names,e.g. Jalan Utara, Jalan Selangor, Jalan Kemajuan. Certain secondary roads, even those located at residential or industrial areas were also given names. For example, Jalan 8/8 in Section 8 is also known as Jalan Tengas, Jalan 13/1 is also known as Jalan Bersatu. In addition, the roads of PJ Old Town or Section One are simply named as Road 1, Road 2 etc. As for the predominantly industrial Section 51A, the roads are named as Jalan 222, Jalan 225 etc.
The numbered sections are usually but not necessarily located adjacent to each other. For instance, Section 16 is adjacent to section 17 which is adjacent to Section 19. The 'missing' Section 18 originally to be named Section 1B is located way across the other side of town adjacent to Section 1A. Likewise, without a good map, it can be an onerous exercise to locate PJ roads. For instance, Jalan 21/20 is adjacent to Jalan 21/18. However Jalan 21/1 is also adjacent to Jalan 21/18. Most odd numbered roads are parallel to odd numbered road, even numbered roads are parallel to even numbered roads, and odd numbered road and even numbered roads are perpendicular to each other. In addition, residents within a local PJ community may sometimes choose to refer to their local roads simply by their numbers, omitting the prefix altogether. For instance, in Damansara Jaya, residents often choose to refer to the road 'Jalan SS 22/39' as simply 'Road 39'.
