Institutional property rights of residential public open space in Sabah, Malaysia

There is still a lack of research on social-ecological system, especially implications of property-rights structure and transaction costs on neighbourhood commons. This is true for residential public open space (POS) governance, particularly regarding its ownership regime, consumption and management rights. Thus, a new institutional economic paradigm is employed in this research to address the four objectives as follows; (i) to study the relationships of diverse property-rights structure attributes with quality of residential POS; (ii) to examine the POS commons dilemmas that resulted by the local diverse property-rights structure issues; (iii) to develop a common-property self-organising system in order to address the issues of local property-rights structure and dilemmas of POS; and (iv) to formulate and validate a social-ecological system model. A mixed-method design, mainly a phenomenological case study approach, was adopted. Based on the two districts of Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah, various main sampling methods, data collection and data analysis techniques were performed on the respective units of analysis. These mainly involved issues of Sabah’s POS property-rights, social dilemmas of POS quality, 172 POS sites, 12 public officials, 8 private suppliers, 200 residents and 5 experts. Results showed that three property-rights attributes: title deed existence, community involvement and POS site handing-over period to local government have statistically significant associations with POS quality, at X2 (1, N = 172) = 22.984, p = 0.000; X2 (1, N = 150) = 7.938, p = 0.005; and X2 (2, N = 150) = 30.047, p = 0.000, respectively. The present local property-rights structure is adversarial as opportunistic stakeholders’ behaviour and commons dilemmas were externalised. Lastly, the self-governing with polycentric system and a conceptual theory-based social-ecological system model are necessary and valid to address the status quo of property-rights and POS dilemmas. The model also renders a better understanding of social-ecological system interrelationships. Aside from leading to policy assessment and design that must be transdisciplinary in structure which aims at curbing POS quality issues, the model provides policy and management insights, by encouraging public officials to consider reengineering the POS ownership, consumption, management and maintenance system, via the adaptive property-rights re-allocation

Measuring urban governance using governance and legislation index: a case study of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

It was recognized that good governance is important to achieve the equitable and sustainable development which secure the common future. This is because active, effective and fair governance helps promotes the business development by putting in place integrated policymaking capacity and ensuring stable and secure societies towards sustainable development. Seeing this, hundreds of governance-indicator datasets have emerged. Stakeholders have relied heavily on these data in making cross-border decisions. Nevertheless, it is argued that most of these data are perception-based indicators; therefore, the decision made is bias and incorrect. On this ground, this paper attempts to identify and explain the quality of governance for the Kuala Lumpur city using an objective data-driven index, the City Prosperity Index (CPI). This paper employed content analysis of secondary data and literature, relying on statistical data from Kuala Lumpur City Hall, Election Commission of Malaysia and The World Bank. Results have shown that governance in Kuala Lumpur is a moderate solid factor (65.0) in contributing to the city’s prosperity. Comparing to other cities, Kuala Lumpur ranked 20 out of 47 selected cities. There is still plenty of room Kuala Lumpur to improve its governance to remain competitive and sustainable. In conclusion, objective data is good as data produced will not be bias. Nevertheless, it should not be generalized to reflect the overall quality of governance. This is because there are many other governance related variables can only be obtained via perception-based data. It is recommended that the GLI measured in this paper should be use together with other subjective data to give a most complete coverage of the overall quality of governance of a city

An urban governance approach in the development of commercial brownfield: a case study of Iskandar Malaysia

Brownfield development has become one of the sectors to be emphasised imperatively due to emerging greenfield scarcity throughout Malaysia. A brownfield site may have real or perceived contamination issues that require intervention to revive for beneficial use. As of to-date, there is still a number of brownfield sites in Iskandar Malaysia, albeit brownfield revival projects, via planning and policy measures, have been carried out over the years. In this light, a mode of governance is suggested to be a significant factor in the stagnation and success of brownfield development. Therefore, this paper aims to revisit the urban governance modes of brownfield development in Iskandar Malaysia, with a focus on commercial brownfield development. Specifically, two objectives are highlighted in this paper: (i) to assess the site-level success of completed brownfield developments, namely the Paradigm Mall, Skudai and the Danga City Mall, Johor Bahru; and based on the assessment outcomes, it is then (ii) to identify an efficient and suitable mode of governance for commercial use brownfield development. A measuring tool and an indexing scheme to screen brownfield sites were employed alternately. Results show that the Paradigm Mall achieved a higher site-level success compared to the Danga City Mall. Under this light, compared to the corporatist mode of governance, the clientelistic mode of governance with a material objective is highly in relation to a better success of commercial use brownfield development in the background of Iskandar Malaysia. These findings offer valuable messages and insights to practitioners, particularly local policy-makers, that an often-neglected governance mode approach is essential in determining the brownfield development outcome

Factors influencing high-rise gated community collective action effectiveness: Conceptualization of the Social-Ecological System (SES) framework

Managing common property in gated communities is challenging. Although numerous studies have demonstrated that there are several determinants of collective action effectiveness and performances in gated communities, empirical research drawing on a multidimensional social-ecological system (SES) framework in quantitatively exploring relationships between institutional– physical–social factors and gated community collective action remains lacking. Therefore, based on Ostrom’s social-ecological system (SES) framework, this study attempts to identify factors influencing the self-organizing system (collective action) of gated communities in China. Using stratified purposive sampling, ten gated communities with various characteristics in the Taigu district were selected, in which questionnaires were then distributed to 414 households to collect valid data within the communities. Taking the ridge regression as a more robust predictive SES model with a penalty value of k = 0.1 and regularization, R Square of 0.882, this study, among 14 factors, ultimately identified six key institutional–social–ecological factors based on the descending standardized effect size, and they are: (i) types of community, (ii) presence of leaders, (iii) exclusiveness systems of a gated community, (iv) age of gated community, (v) strict enforcement of rules, and (vi) number of households that affect residents’ collective action in terms of community security, hygiene and cleanliness, and facility quality. The research findings provide urban managers and communities novel insights to formulate strategic policies towards sustainable housing and building management

Importance of indigenous knowledge in flood risk reduction: a review

Interest in Indigenous Knowledge (IK) system has been particularly highlighted in flood disasters, due to the likely increase of flood events resulting from anthropogenic climate change through heavy precipitation, increased catchment wetness, and sea level rise. Therefore, bringing IK of flood risk reduction into focus and context to deepen the understanding of how people manage their own changing circumstances can bring more pertinent information about flood risk reduction. This paper reviews the significance of IK in flood risk reduction. Specifically, the paper discusses IK flood forecasting, early warning signs, adaptation and coping strategies in flood risk reduction around the world. The Methodological approach employed for this paper is the review of existing literature on IK in flood Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), and then a summary of the outcomes of the studies reviewed was discussed. However, it was deduced from the review undertaken, the need for an intensive empirical study to be conducted to explore how efficient these strategies or techniques are, in relation to flood risk reduction, which this paper strongly recommends for further investigation. Additionally, the paper concludes by emphasizing that although the IK of flood risk reduction is embedded in varied regions around the globe, still there is a need for further study to be carried out in order to unveil why the similarities and variations in flood risk reduction practices/strategies between regions

Interrelationships between public open space, common pool resources, publicness levels and commons dilemmas: a different perspective in urban planning

Public open space (POS) is central to the environment, and oftentimes spatial and architectural designs are emphasised in urban planning as part of creating quality POS. However, such initial design and planning of POS may not adequately encapsulate the sustainability dimensions of the complex social-ecological behavioural patterns of POS consumption and management, hence resulting in space mismanagement, underinvestment, and quality degradation. This phenomenon is particularly true and relevant in the context of government/state-owned POS. Therefore, an objective of this perspective paper, coupled with the concepts of the publicness levels, is to provide a different understanding of exclusivity and subtractibility natures of POS, primarily using the theory of common pool resources (CPRs), which subsequently helps explain and rationalise the perennial, adversarial POS management, quality and sustainability status quo. This paper reveals that, instead of being considered as pure public goods, scarce POS owns two inherent attributes of CPR, namely non-excludable and subtractive (rivalrous) that are ultimately susceptible to social/commons dilemmas, covering the Tragedy of the commons (overexploitation), management shirking, free-riding, underuse, disuse, and moral hazard, which lead to degraded, unsustainable POS. The commons or CPR theory can indeed offer a new paradigm shift, making urban planners and landscape managers to embrace that the unexclusive natures of CPR-based POS are truly finite and depletable and thus vulnerable to POS dilemmas. Hence, to achieve quality, sustainable POS commons, effective governance in terms of consumption and consistent management is vital. For future research, urban design as a necessary societal role is suggested, which has established the need for effective allocation of POS management via an adaptive institutional property rights design

Institutions on public open space governance

Meagre discussion on the institutional property-rights structure essence has rudimentarily determined the POS governance and its quality. Thus, two objectives are highlighted; (i) to examine Sabah’s current practice (rights distribution) in urban-rural POS governance and (ii) explore the POS’ social dilemmas that tied in with such institution. Reviews of interdisciplinary analytic perspectives, content analysis on documents and semi-structured interviews were performed. The practice with diverse property-rights structure is indicatively perceived as “property-rights tragedies”, which ensue in sub-optimal POS and quality of life issues. Therefore, re-engineering of POS market via dynamic property-rights re-assignment is postulated as the panacea for improved wellbeing

Interrelationships between land use land cover (LULC) and human thermal comfort (HTC): A comparative analysis of different spatial settings

A few studies on outdoor human thermal comfort (HTC) have been conducted in the tropical region in a hot and humid climate; however, there is a paucity of discussions on how exactly different spatial settings influence HTC. Thus, this paper aims to examine how land use land cover (LULC) affects HTC on the basis of the simulation of Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) indices via ENVI-met and Rayman. The results reveal that people living in the urban area have a higher tendency to experience strong heat stress (25% of the areas with PMV ranging from 3.4 to 3.9 and 2% of the areas, where PMV reached 4.1), followed by the rural area (43% of the areas with PMV ranging from 2.1 to 2.4), and the suburban area (more than 50% of the areas with PMV values less than 2.4). Surprisingly, a concrete LULC in the suburb area exhibits a higher air temperature than an asphalt surface at 4 p.m., due to the large area of high albedo that increases the reflection of solar radiation, subsequently contributing to warming up the airmass. Similarly, sandy, and loamy LULC tend to emit more heat during nighttime, while the heat is absorbed slowly during daytime, and it is then slowly released during nighttime after 6 p.m. Spatial settings that promote heat stress in the urban area are mainly contributed by an LULC of asphalt, concrete, sandy, and loamy areas. Meanwhile, people in the suburban and rural areas are less likely to experience heat stress, due to agricultural plantations and lowland forest that provide shade, except for the barren lands-loamy areas. The result also indicates that tree-covered areas near the river in the suburban area afforded the best thermal experience with PMV of 2.1 and PET of 30.7. From the LULC comparison, it is pivotal to consider tree species (canopy density), surface material (albedo), sky-view factor, wind direction, and speed toward designing a more comfortable and sustainable environment

Solar chimneys as an effective ventilation strategy in multi-storey public housing in the post-COVID-19 era

This paper studies the effectiveness of a solar chimney for improving ventilation and air-exchange rates in multi-storey public housing in tropical climates for the potential mitigation of airborne disease transmission. Virtual models of a typical apartment room with natural cross-ventilation, replicated across four levels to mimic a multi-storey block, were set up with six internal wind velocity sensor points per floor. The simulation software Energy2D was then used to evaluate the performance of the models, first testing the presence of a solar chimney, and then additionally the degree to which the solar chimney model was affected by a complementary ceiling fan. Wind velocity was also measured, as this is a variable that affects ACH rates. Using a non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test, the introduction of a solar chimney was found to have a significant impact on air-flow rates (a variable that positively affects air-exchange rates), resulting in a p-value of 0.000 and Z-value of -3.920. Regression analysis determined that the solar chimney’s effect was enhanced when complemented by a ceiling fan (R-squared value of 0.4687). Consequently, we propose several design strategies that may enable the adoption of the solar chimney concept to improve natural ventilation in residential units

A review on architectural and urban design approaches to reducing the urban heat island effect

With the ongoing rapid urbanisation, humans enjoy the comfort of living with the use of advanced technology and infrastructure, without consideration towards the pollution produced daily, such as waste, heat, and exhaust gas emissions. Human-induced climate change has resulted in extreme weather and climate events, causing a consequential increase in the urban heat island effect. A large amount of radiant heat is focused in the city area, threatening the threshold of comfort in urban living, affecting our future generations to come. Therefore, this paper discusses how this phenomenon could be mitigated through a few design approaches. The existence of green roofs helps reduce the direct absorption of heat in buildings while water bodies help lower the surrounding temperature of a place. Additionally, using high reflectivity and spectral emissivity materials in buildings can also lower heat absorption into a building. Also, the design of urban wind corridors increases airflow into an area, hence cooling the surrounding temperature. When these steps are strategically incorporated into a design, the amount of heat could be significantly reduced, hence extenuating the urban heat island effect. However, more in-depth research is needed to ensure that it could successfully palliate the urban heat island effect in a city. It is hoped that this study could be a comprehensive guide to designers and engineers, or any individuals in the field of architecture and urban design in tackling the problem, hence achieving their target in eliminating the urban heat island effect in future works