The Essence of Young Elderly Active Lifestyle: A Phenomenological Approach

Objectives. A quality housing environment reflects a sense of convenience among its residence through physical characteristics such as housing conditions and availability of certain facilities. A housing environment that promotes active lifestyle has become a vital research objective. Methods. We employed a phenomenological research to explore the meaning and essence of having an active lifestyle from the standpoint of 12 young elderly aged 60-75 years residing in two neighbourhoods in Malaysia. The phenomenological data presented description of how these young elderly maintain an active lifestyle. The account provided information about their lived experience of being both physically and socially active and why they valued maintaining an active lifestyle. Results. Findings suggest that gender has no influence on maintaining an active lifestyle; rather the neighbourhood environmental factors fostered their physical and social activity. Young elderly have learned to maintain an active lifestyle by being aware of the importance of being active at an older age. Discussion. The evidence suggests that active lifestyle has positive effects on young elderly health and well-being. The essence of the experience is staying occupied and that staying occupied has the potential to be both physically and socially active. Keywords: Active lifestyle, neighbourhood environmental factors, phenomenology, young elderly

Recycling awareness among undergraduate student under KAED environmental education: a case study of KAED’s students recycling behaviour

The combination of the Muslims practices of conservation and the environmental education in KAED ensured the recycling awareness of the students in the faculty. Recycling awareness among students helps in cleaning up the environment and participating in the daily natural life cycle to achieve sustainability. The amount of waste carried out of the studio step in the faculty everyday could be a real problem. Students work in the studio most of the time, everyone comes with food and drinks plus the paper used for the projects and model making. The purpose of the research was to analyze the relationship between the recycling awareness of the students and the environmental education they undertake in KAED. The study examined the differences in recycling awareness among the students of KAED and focused towards the students’ recycling awareness in relation to the year of study and the environmental studies they undertake. Chi-square and correlation were calculated for the data to determine the difference in recycling awareness among students in different years of study with respect to gender, department, attitude, facilities location and recycling knowledge undertaken in the faculty. The findings showed that the students’ recycling awareness is significantly related to the year of study. Gender and department showed no relation with the recycling awareness of the students. The results also showed that facilities location played an important part on awareness. Recommendations included intensifying the environmental educational programs to plan for more sustainable environments and increasing the number of recycling bins for better accessibility. Future studies are recommended to focus on the enhancement of the environmentally friendly behavior with respect to sustainable development

Determinants of aged-friendly urban neighbourhoods in Malaysia / Hanan Mohamed Hassan Elsawahli

Malaysia is experiencing a rapid increase in its elderly population. According to 2010 census, the number of elderly has risen from 1.4 million in 2000 to 2.1 million in 2010 and is projected to be 3.4 million by 2020. As Malaysia progressed towards becoming a developed and competitive country by 2020, aging population will be a main challenge to planners and policy makers in terms of designing aged-friendly neighbourhoods and providing accessible amenities and services to meet the needs of the elderly. There is a growing interest in aged-friendly neighbourhoods as the neighbourhoods that promotes an active lifestyle among its elderly population, and hence, ensures healthy aging. In Malaysia, active lifestyle among the young elderly is greatly understudied. This study looks at young elderly active lifestyle from the social and physical perspectives. By applying an ecological perspective and building on the WHO framework on ‗age-friendly communities‘ that is based on ‗active aging‘, the study conceptualized aged-friendly neighbourhoods. Data were collected from young elderly aged 60-75 years residing in two neighbourhoods with highest elderly population: TTDI in Kuala Lumpur and Taman Meru in Ipoh. The study adopts mixed methods approach; the qualitative approach involved a phenomenological research to elicit the essence of young elderly active lifestyle experience as lived by 12 young elderly; the quantitative approach involved surveying randomly selected 385 young elderly with regard to their neighbourhood as facilitating/obstructing their active lifestyle. Nine (9) neighbourhood environmental factors were hypothesized to influence young elderly active lifestyle (social interaction, walking, facilitators to walking, physical barriers to walking, convenience, accessibility, permeability, maintenance and safety) as explained by two domains social cohesion and physical activity to identify determinants of aged-friendly neighbourhoods. The qualitative approach included using a simplified version of Hycner‘s process for explication of phenomenological data. For the quantitative approach, the main statistical techniques used for the data analysis were exploratory factor analysis, multiple analyses of variance (MANOVA) and multiple linear regressions. The results of the qualitative data explication showed that the essence of the experience is staying occupied and that staying occupied has the potential to be both physically and socially active. Findings of the quantitative analysis showed that permeability was the salient predictor of young elderly active lifestyle, followed by accessibility and then walking. Therefore, aged-friendly neighbourhoods are those neighbourhoods that are permeable, safe, based on human-scale, pedestrian-friendly, provide access to recreational facilities, have directness of routes, high connectivity and provide many destinations within adequate distance. Triangulating findings from both approaches revealed that aged-friendly neighbourhoods are neighbourhood where their elderly population is both socially and physically active. The results also showed that social activities contributed more to young elderly active lifestyle. This implies that there is a need to understand in more detail the association between subjective and objective neighbourhood environmental measures; and that efforts to curb young elderly active lifestyle should be the responsibility of multi -disciplinary research

Crime and housing in Malaysia: case study of Taman Melati terrace housing in Kuala Lumpur

Recently, Malaysia has adopted the “Safe city program”, which is focused towards creating violence and crime free cities. To achieve this, it is important to address crimes and disorder in residential areas. So far studies identified that changes in built environment and modifications in space design can impact residents and offenders’ perceptions of criminality. Various CPTED measures are employed to create defensible space. This paper examines the effect of physical design on the occurrences of crime in Taman Melati residential area of Kuala Lumpur City and tests the effects of the built environment on the possibility of crime reduction through physical planning measures

Crime and the planning of residential areas- a comparative analysis of two Taman Melati terrace housing units

Globally, the design of the built environment has played a crucial role in preventing design. Increasingly, two school of thoughts namely Defensible Space and New Urbanism are seen as guiding the CPTED agenda for the coming decades. This paper aims to explore the relationship between residential crime and the design of the built environment in relation to these design concepts. The study analyses and compares the safety level in Taman Melati Terrace Housing in two different locations, which have characteristics of Defensible Space and New Urbanism. Although there are many studies examining the relationship between the design of the built environment and crime occurrence, only few examined the built environment design as complying with the two concepts design principles. There is little research in Malaysia supporting this argument or rejecting it. This paper aims to examine the form of the built environment (Defensible Space/New Urbanism) that has an impact on the safety level. The results showed that the housing location complying with New Urbanism planning principles had a higher safety level than the housing location complying with Defensible Space planning principles

Spatial assessment of the impact of flood to Melaka's economy

Melaka used to be a significant trading state in the 16th century. It had attracted traders from various continents to be its trading partners. Many of these traders had left their footprint enormously. Over the years, these tangible and intangible historical assets have been an attraction to tourism sector which contributes significantly to Malaysian GDP. However, due to the impact of climate change and rapid urban development in Melaka, the flood has posed a risk to Melaka's economy especially in the tourism sector. To protect its interest, Melaka has taken proactive measures in mitigating flood incidences. Thus, this study intends to examine the impact of the flood on Melaka's economy from 2012 to 2016 using spatial assessments. This study employs a quantitative approach by using secondary data obtained from the Department of Statistics Malaysia and the Department of Irrigation and Drainage. Moran's I, Local Indicator and Spatial Association and Bivariate Moran's I were used to analyze the data spatially. Findings show the mitigation measures taken have relieved the risk posed by floods towards economic activities in Melaka as a whole