The Malaysian residential property market is currently in a state of stagnation and overhang has become a serious concern. Discussions were held with property developers in the southern region of Peninsular Malaysia to elaborate the problems faced in operating in the industry as well as their causes. Several developers who were found to perform well under the slumping market. From the discussions, they were found to have taken innovative approaches to housing, offering houses based on eco-concepts, space optimisation, security through layout management, as well as structural features that appeal to the lifestyle needs of current homebuyers.

To date, many urban centers are plagued with a variety of environmental and social issues which weakens the quality of life of its residents. As a result, there is a trend of outmigration, where urban residents are moving away from these urban centers, contributing to the decline of these traditional economic centers. Maintaining a strong residential presence in the urban centers is important to sustain the place, therefore residents should be encouraged to remain in the urban vicinity rather than to leave. Using Malaysia as a case for the research, this paper explores the determinants to urban residents' intention to remain. It is suggested that the residents' intention to remain is affected by both the natural environment, which covers biodiversity and greenery in the neighborhood, as well as the social environment, which covers safety and the sense of community in the neighborhood. The research will be of primary interest to local planning authorities as well as housing developers.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors impacting the student satisfaction with the public and private universities of Malaysia and Pakistan, which are countries representing South/South-East Asia in cross-culture perspective. The study has applied a quantitative survey design guided by five hypotheses. A questionnaire was distributed among the students of private and public universities. A conceptual framework has been developed based on the modification of Student Satisfaction Index (SSI) model to measure the satisfaction of students from different aspects, such as university image, university location, quality of academic staff, university facilities, student expectation, overall student satisfaction. The research method used was a survey-based questionnaire that consisted of a total of 396 responses from the university students. The data were analyzed with SPSS and SmartPLS 3; the results indicate that when the comparison was made separately between private and public universities of Malaysia and Pakistan. The comparative statistical score was obtained using independent sample t-Test, the university facilities of Malaysian universities resulted higher than universities in Pakistan. Therefore, the independent sample ttest results conclude that the university facilities have a significant evidence (p=0.00) to support our research findings that university facilities do affect the student satisfaction more in Malaysia (mean=4.1788) than Pakistan (mean =3.7212) and the research hypothesis is significant that there is a significant difference in student satisfaction towards university facilities in Malaysia and Pakistan. Similarly, the quality of academic staff (p=0.035) has a significant effect on student satisfaction in Malaysia (mean=3.8283) and Pakistan (mean=3.6641). Furthermore, this leads the student expectation and overall student satisfaction level of Malaysia students are higher than students in Pakistan. However, student satisfaction level on university image and university location in Malaysia and Pakistan do not differ. The study is useful for university management to improve university students satisfaction. The future researchers are recommended further explore demographic and cultural variables impact on student satisfaction.

While urbanisation has always been welcomed as a driver to economic amelioration, it has also been criticised for raising expectations and complicating the lives of  urban residents. With urban development, wellbeing is often compromised as income disparity increases, quality of life decreases. Of late, crime has been a major concern. Criminal activities have eroded the sense of urban wellbeing and caused the desertion of neighbourhoods.  While the Malaysian government tries to achieve sustainable urban development by containing urban sprawl, crime is undoing these efforts. Interviews with residents in crime-prone areas show that many are increasingly threatened by criminal activities in their neighbourhoods and have shown high tendencies to move out of the neighbourhoods. Steps to contain this problem is by having neighbourhood-level security measures as well as heightened involvement in community safety initiatives