JOHOR BAHRU — Wong Lee Fei used to walk from her home in Kim Teng Park to the playground in Bukit Chagar with her children. Years later, she took evening walks with her grandchildren. These days, the 64-year-old retired educator thinks twice before going out on foot.

There was always the chance, on those old walks, of meeting a neighbour and stopping for a chat. The route took her past Rumah Berkat, the orphanage near the playground. She remembers the streets being quiet enough that she felt at ease taking the children that far.

“What I miss most is being able to step out of my own front gate in the evening and go for a walk without having to think twice about it,” she said.

In its 67th year, Kim Teng Park is reckoning with what the city’s growth has brought to its doorstep. On streets named for diamonds, an emerald, a ruby and a sapphire, residents speak of dust that settles again after they have wiped it away, lorries bearing down on roads where they used to push prams, and parked cars that make it difficult to drive through their own gates.

Regarded as Johor Bahru’s first housing estate, Kim Teng Park sits on a hillside also known as Bukit Ungku Aziz, just outside the central business district. It has 291 homes, with about 150 families still living in houses they own. For older residents, the location remains part of its appeal. Hospital Sultanah Aminah is a short drive away, and shops and other amenities are close at hand.

The estate took its name from the developer Kim Teng, who went on to build Serene Park, New Kim Teng Park and Johor Park. His sons took over the business after his death. In time, a shopping mall, a hotel, restaurants and grocery shops grew up around the hillside, putting much of what families needed within easy reach.

The neighbourhood’s ties with Singapore go back decades. In the early 1960s, British, Australian and New Zealand military personnel based in Singapore rented homes here. Local families moved in as many of those tenants returned to their home countries. Today, some tenants work across the Causeway, and residents say other cross-border commuters leave cars and motorcycles in the estate before walking to the nearby immigration checkpoint.

The street signs still carry their old names. Intan and Berlian both mean diamond, while Zamrud means emerald, Delima ruby and Nilam sapphire. A visitor may remember the estate for those names. A resident trying to pull out at a junction may remember it for the car parked right up to the corner.

Retired senior police officer Liew Guan Pheng, 75, said drivers sometimes had to edge into junctions to see past parked vehicles. Elsewhere, cars were left so close to front gates that residents struggled to get in or out.

“The biggest safety concern is at junctions. When cars are parked right up to the corner, they block the view of approaching traffic,” he said.

Liew said motorists used the estate as a route between Jalan Tebrau and Jalan Storey, with traffic particularly heavy on weekends and public holidays. He also said cement mixers and long lorries carrying steel and concrete slabs for the Rapid Transit System (RTS) project passed through residential streets, leaving dust on plants, cars and houses and making it harder for pedestrians to get around.

He said some women and older residents felt uneasy when groups of workers walked through the estate after their shifts, including at night. Several houses are rented by construction workers, while other tenants work in restaurants, shops and car washes. Residents also described rubbish left around bins and poor upkeep at some rental properties.

Wong said some landlords had spoken to their tenants after neighbours sent photographs of scattered rubbish. She appreciated their response and wanted more owners to make clear to tenants from the outset that the areas outside their homes needed to be kept clean.

For her, the sharpest worries arise on the road. She recalled her sister-in-law telling her that a motorcyclist had collided with her car while her one-year-old grandson was inside. According to the account Wong was given, the rider waved, called out something that sounded like tak ada apa, or “it’s nothing”, and rode off.

“The car was left with a bad dent, a broken window visor, a damaged side mirror and scraped paintwork. What stays with me is that her little grandson was in the car when it happened,” she said.

Rajakulasingham Balasingham, an 85-year-old golf course adviser, first came upon Kim Teng Park while house-hunting in 1972. A semi-detached house was on the market for RM45,000, a sum he could afford. What settled the matter was the quiet.

“Of all the housing estates I had seen, none could match Kim Teng Park for peace and quiet. That was what made me want to live here,” he asserted.

The RTS Link will connect Bukit Chagar in Johor Bahru with Woodlands North in Singapore. In Kim Teng Park, the work is felt in the rumble of heavy vehicles and the dust that makes its way indoors. Wong said she wiped her tables and counters three times a day and mopped the floor daily, only to find the grime settling again. At the Jalan Salleh traffic lights, she said, getting out of the estate could be a matter of luck when a cement mixer was trying to turn in.

Rajakulasingham accepts that the rail link must go ahead. What grieves him is how little of the quiet he bought into survives, and how much disruption residents have had to bear in the meantime.

“I could never have imagined that the neighbourhood I fell in love with would end up like this,” he said. “The peace that drew me here is gone, and living here has become unbearable.”

Many of the residents who remain are in their sixties or older. Some are weighing whether to leave the homes in which they had hoped to grow old. It is a grievous choice to face after decades on the same street. A move may bring a quieter room, but it cannot bring back the neighbour one used to meet at dusk or the familiar walk to the playground, first with a child and, years later, with that child’s child. What Wong longs for is still an ordinary thing. She would like to open her own gate one evening and feel at ease enough to keep walking.

Liew remembers when neighbours could stop in the street to talk, on roads where drivers now inch past parked cars to see what is coming.

Rajakulasingham chose Kim Teng Park for its quiet, never imagining how much he would come to miss it while still living there. And at dusk, Wong longs for the simplest thing the old neighbourhood gave her: to open her gate and walk towards the playground without a second thought.