Malaysia resilient initiatives: case study of Melaka into resilient city

Asia experienced 70% of all the disasters in the world and there is no indication that this will decline in the future. The disaster experienced by a city is mostly caused by the combination and collision of climate change, urbanization, socialeconomic instability, terrorism, natural disaster, cyber-attack, poverty, and endemic outbreak. The crisis fallen upon a city has captured attention of many audiences, thus in order to conquer the issues, city needs to be resilient in order to face and overcome the situation. Melaka was declared as a world heritage site and the government are taking serious efforts in order to maintain its heritage site by making it a resilient city. This article discusses the policy related initiatives taken by Melaka in preparing the city into resilient state. This is done by using literature and document analysis method on relevant reports, policies and literatures. The output of the research would be beneficial to the state of Melaka in the context of local authorities preparing strategic directions and managing urban development in order to become a resilient city

Conservation of Living Heritage: Elements in Conserving Portuguese Community’ Cultural Heritage

Rapid urban development in today’s cities poses significant threats to heritage site with deterioration and destruction to the heritage by introduced pollution, political war, growing tourism activities, and natural disaster. The concern for the safeguarding of heritage materials and intangible assets has begun with a series of conservation practice that begins with material conservation, values conservation and living conservation approaches. Conservation of living heritage is by emphasizing the role of core community living in traditional settlement inside heritage area. The city of Melaka was declared as World Heritage Site in 2008 and the living heritage in the traditional village of Portuguese Settlement risking with the extinction of cultural heritage in the future due to insufficient cultural heritage conservation management. The purpose of this article is to highlight the conservation elements being used to conserve living heritage particularly for living heritage community. This article was conducted using qualitative research, by using literature and document analysis on relevant literatures, reports and standards. The result revealed the main factors contributed in conserving the living heritage came from elements of community participation, awareness, good communication, capacity building, and stakeholders’ involvement. The findings indicated that strong relationship among the elements will build a sustainable community within the heritage site particularly for the core community and at the same time conserving its heritage value