Revitalisation Urban Spaces

The rapid increase in population, in conjunction with increase in the rate of urbanisation, had led to unplanned and uncontrolled expansion of urban landscape spaces in Malaysia. These eventually resulted in the gradual loss of open spaces in the city, due to increasing demand for built up area. Projects in the urban landscape design studio accentuate designing landscape as a livable space that exists in urban environment. These 4th year Bachelor of Landscape Architecture projects have exciting potentials in revitalising development in urban city by injecting ‘Spirit
of the Space’ that make possible for changes to happen. The big challenge was how students need to design and accentuate the abandoned, failing and underutilised sites of grey fields with respect to the integrity of existing elements of value, cultural, historical and activities in the area. Grey field site normally yields lesser revenue or lower economical return due to being poorly maintained, their need for revitalization to suit the current trend of urban development is critical.

Hence, efforts by the students to take up the challenge to turn these sites into profitable, vibrant, livable and exciting sites at par with their surrounding are much appreciated. In realising this aspiration, four projects have been selected through a series rigorous selection and judgement. Among the works are the Revitalisation of Pudu Plaza, XY Greenery in Pekeliling area, Greyfield Redevelopment for the Plaza Rakyat and Transformation as a Living Territory. These projects represent creative new design ideas and innovation to revive a strong emotion and inject new life for the dry and dying sites. As the spaces exist in the midst of rapid development in the city, the selected projects are chosen based on reality of the issues such as site uniqueness and environmental richness. The quest for creative and innovative urban landscape planning and design solution is urgently needed for
creating solutions for better quality outdoor spaces and environment in the city.

Mohd Yazid Mohd Yunos