Minimum dwelling space of low-cost walk-up flats forces life to spill outdoors involving daily mundane activities affecting neighborhood social vitality. In design, this affordance of such 'marginal' outdoor space has been neglected. Using data derived from systematic observations in various low cost walk up flats, this paper explores the use of these outdoor near home spaces and found that they support various domestic, social and retreat activities generating liveliness in the otherwise barren low cost environment. Potentials for social encounters and casual surveillance were partially affected by flats configurations.Keywords: building layout, near home space, social interaction Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. https://doi.org/10.21834/aje-bs.v2i5.221 Abdul Aziz, A., 2(5) Oct / Dec 2017 (p.39-51)
This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncnd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for EnvironmentBehaviour Studies), Faculty of
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IntroductionIn Malaysia, the provision of urban housing for the low income group has become increasingly critical as urbanization expands, rural-urban migration escalates, and cost of living enlarges the proportion of urban poor (Agus, 1990). Development of low cost housing has been an important social and political agenda in Malaysian development policies. In the Eighth five-yearly Malaysia Plan, 200,513 low cost housing units were built. Another 165,400 units of low cost were targeted to be built between 2006 and 2010, within the Ninth Malaysia Plan (Government of Malaysia, 2005). Zero squatter policy targeted by some states also contributes to growing demands. In the urban fringes of major cities, walk-up flats were popular due to the relatively high density and the lower construction, land and maintenance costs. Layout variations of such housing have been regulated by economic efficiency and constraints of building standard. Concerns over the livability of flats grow as studies on residential preference and satisfaction repeatedly point to the importance of such low cost housing design to be more sensitive to the social implications of physical planning (Paim & Yahaya, 2004;A. Salleh & Yusof, 2006;A. G. Salleh, 2008). Emphases have been put on benefits of common open space and neighborhood amenities. However, such emphases overlook the social potentials of outdoors near home spaces and disregard human-environment transactional processes to achieve satisfaction. This paper reports on the field observations in four of the most common low cost flats types to explore the use of outdoor near home space as important social setting for the residents. It aims to find any association between flats configurations and the patterns of daily residential uses. By focusing on the behavioral observation, this study would contribute to the...