The official spelling of the city's name, and hence the spelling in Bahasa Malaysia (Malay Language) is Johor Bahru.  However, in quite a few publications, Johor Baru is used.  While in some atlases and encyclopedias, either Johor Bharu or Johor Baharu is adopted.  Locally, the city is widely known as JB (pronounced Jay Bee).

Johor Bahru is the state capital of Johor, the southern most state on the Malaysian peninsular.  Fronting the Straits of Johor (or otherwise known as the Johor Straits or Tebrau Straits), it's latitudinal and longitudinal position is 1.29N 103.44E.  It is about 40 minutes flight from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital city and about 30 minutes car-drive from downtown Singapore just across the straits.

Johor Bahru is the largest city in Malaysia after the national capital, Kuala Lumpur.  It has an estimated metropolitan population of a million in 1996 and it is projected to have a population of about 1.4 million in the year 2005 and 3.8 million in the year 2020.

Johor Bahru is still basically an industrial city as majority of it's economy is generated from industrial production.  The government, however, is now actively promoting and upgrading the city in hope that it can become a commercial city.  Already, Johor Bahru is the hub of the commercial industry in the southern region of peninsular Malaysia.

Johor Bahru, with it's excellent geographical position, favourable economic climate and stable, efficient government, is fast developing into a regional centre for tourism, high-tech manufacturing, chemical production, retail and trading industry.