Functional Attachment in Kuching Riverfront Promenade, Sarawak - Malaysia

The relationship between people and certain places can stimulate the sense of place, this process is recognized as place attachment. Place attachment also indicates the relationship between physical image and its function, through this process the sense of a place can be established. These concepts focus on the physical elements and activities together with the meanings influenced by users that will create the identity and the meaning of the place. Allowing for this issue, the research examines the functional attachment which will affect the level of attachment in Kuching Riverfront Promenade (KRP), a popular public space among local people. By using indirect method to simplify common patterns and human-specific patterns of the place, this research covers subject of place attachment. Questionnaire survey were led to a certain area of the promenade with an overall of 165 respondents and 18 stall operators were interviewed. The findings point out that the respondents have a strong association with the local environment and designate the importance of place as economics’ dependence and recreational place. The level of functional attachment to KRP is between level 1 to level 4. Measuring at level 4 involves a higher commitment in loyalty, goals and obedience to the environment

Night Market Phenomena: Its Contribution to The Sustainability of Urban Space

Scientists identified 3 main elements of sustainable development, namely: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and social sustainability. No doubt that it is difficult to intertwine harmoniously the anthropocentric among social and economic objectives with the ecocentric’s ecologic objectives. Likewise, sustainable development can be achieved through synthesis approach between economic, social and environment. Thus, these concepts will be the result of development which has 3 dimensions - economic, social and environmental. Each of these components has its level of priority. Given the urban context, the impact of activities either negative or positive towards the sustainability concomitantly related to consequences of development. By taking Malaysia and Thailand as a case study, this paper attempts to explore the night markets phenomena which has a positive impact on urban sustainability especially in small urban spaces. Harmonization of the economic, social and environment dimensions is continually formed after the economic recession of 1997. Economically, the night market traders can increase their incomes which derived from lower-middle economic class. Social interaction also occurs between merchants and buyers. Utilization of unused urban space as a ‘venue’ of night market evidently changed unused space into a place. The research was conducted in various urban areas of Malaysia and Thailand while one example of each country is discussed in this paper. This paper also delves into the issue of sustainability in the small urban space that has been developed by the urbanites to sustain their livelihood that slowly transform the unused urban space into a place