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Urban regeneration refers to the process of improving the condition of urban quarters, mostly the dilapidated historic areas. The heritage-led urban regeneration induces life into decaying assets and developing the future potential of a neighbourhood. It is a comprehensive and integrated vision and action which leads to the resolution of urban problems and which seeks to bring a lasting improvement into the economic, physical, social and environment condition of an area that has been subject to change. The changes in physical aspect of urban areas represent the impact of the regeneration scheme on the place. Improve condition of historic areas resulting from the conservation work carried out is believed to support the regeneration of the area as a whole. A detailed analysis of the historical context of the built form could provide valuable information of the urban morphology of the place. Townscape evaluation is a quantitative data collection methodology used to assess the physical condition of the urban heritage areas. This method involves a scoring system and has been used to assess the effectiveness of Townscape Heritage Initiatives schemes in the UK. Improvements in socio-cultural indicators in the score sheet have been made and used in the assessment of historic urban characteristics of heritage areas in Malaysia. The result from the assessment serves as a baseline indicators for the condition of the townscape of the heritage areas. The results highlighted the areas that require further improvement, hence to support future regeneration initiatives.

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Stabilisation of sulphate-bearing soils with lime/cement-based binders has always been problematic, owing to excessive sulphate-induced expansion. This paper reports on investigations conducted on the consistency and compaction properties of Lower Oxford Clay (LOC), a sulphate-bearing soil that has been difficult to stabilise in the traditional manner using lime. In the investigations, LOC was stabilised both in the conventional manner using lime as the control, and also using a wide range of sustainable stabilisers incorporating industrial waste and by-product materials. The sustainable binders included wastepaper sludge ash (WSA) used on its own, as well as binary binders comprising WSA–lime, WSA–Portland cement (PC) and WSA–ground granulated blastfurnace slag. The results obtained showed that the blended stabilisers incorporating WSA were able to modify the soil by reducing the plasticity index, coupled with good compaction, strength and volume stability properties. The findings suggested that there are economic and environmental advantages of utilising WSA and similar industrial by-products in the modification and compaction of soils, including sulphate-bearing clay soils, as equal or at times superior alternatives to the traditional stabilisers of lime and/or PC.

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