Policies for a safer, more compassionate homes
THE following is a short description of what ails Malaysian housing estates at the present time. The essay serves as a starting point of a more concerned attitude about developing communities through housing planning and design and not to make housing mere shelter or just as an investment commodity.
Children’s safety
There are three dangerous aspects when it comes to children’s safety in our housing developments. The first is the death of many children from falling off flats and high rises from corridors and windows. The second is death from being run over by cars and vehicles while walking to school and to the playground. The third is the frightening aspect of children being kidnapped off the streets in broad daylight.
Policies of housing that must be developed are as follows:
All high rise or flats over three stories must incorporate safety features to prevent children from falling off in the design of the corridors and windows. Some simple solutions are to provide a minimum of three feet of extended floor slabs or a trellis system that can act as a sun shading device and for drying clothes.
If these conditions are not met, then designs must exhibit how children can be safe from falling off the windows, balconies, and corridors.
To prevent injury and death from car accidents, the planning of housing estates must ensure that children have a cross free pathway to the school and playground. The developers must demonstrate that a child of 12 years and less can walk to school without crossing a single road. Failing to do this design, the developers must demonstrate that there are adequate bridge crossings, traffic lights, humps, and others in which it will be safe for children to walk.
The housing developer must demonstrate that the paths which children normally use to walk to school, the playground, and to the shops are not isolated from street surveillance. This can be done by the proper planning of community facilities, kiosks, and other structures overlooking the streets. There must be a reorganisation of house layouts in neighbourhood clusters, resitting community buildings, and rescaling of schools to fit the minimum 15-minute walking distance. It is also encouraged that all house types must demonstrate a usable ‘serambi’ (not a car porch) in front with full visual access to the street.
Old and infirm
High rises and landed properties in housing estates give very little consideration to the old and infirm. With an increasing ageing population and the rise of such conditions as strokes and knee ailments at an earlier age, there are many residents who are virtually trapped in their own dwellings. Residents of walk-up apartments on upper floors find great difficulty climbing up and down the many stairs.
The policies with regards to the old and infirm should be as follows: Walk-up flats and high rises must be equipped with at least a single lift with a minimum two-person capacity.
This lift is meant only for the old and infirm. These occupants will be issued smart cards that would activate the lift or access the lift lobby. Healthy residents are not allowed to access the lift with the exception of those who are pushing the wheelchairs.
All landed properties with two- or three-storey terraced houses must include a single bedroom on the ground floor to make accessibility for the old and infirm possible. All landed properties of housing should indicate a ready-made space for a personal lift to be installed.
Avoiding privacy violations
In a multiracial country like Malaysia, it is important to understand and respect each other’s customs, rituals, and belief systems.
Unfortunately, the design of flats or high rises as well as terraced housing in Malaysia shows a total lack of consideration for avoiding privacy violations pertaining to rituals and cultural values. The most obvious violation is the visual violation of the back to back windows in the rear alley.
The 20-foot distance in between windows affords privacy violations of sight as well as smell. Muslims who must observe the modesty or aurat rule find much difficulty in this case.
The smell of cooking would permeate through the opposite or adjacent house, thus causing racial tensions. Privacy of sight also occurs during the clothes drying ritual in the early morning or afternoon.
The placement of blocks of flats adjacent to each other with a mere 50 feet separating them is also something of a violation in relation to sight. The violation of smell comes from the burning of incense by the Indians or joss sticks by the Chinese would allow smoke to permeate to the next door neighbour.
The idling of cars also contributes to toxic fumes wafting to the adjacent house, which has a covered porch.
The policies which must be instituted are:
Terraced housing layout can be replaced by cluster type housing to avoid any presence of back alleys.
If back alleys are unavoidable, then the design of windows and fenestrations must ensure there is no visual intrusion but adequate lighting.
The use of ‘chimney stacks’ to draw off smoke from cooking and ritual burning of incense or joss sticks should be incorporated into ceiling designs.
For flats and high rises, the use of cluster apartments over a stair core should be replaced with an external corridor with access directly from the stair core. No occupant should be made to pass by another apartment in order to get to their own.
Basic rituals and needs
There are a few basic needs that are still not met by apartments in Malaysia.
Drying – there is inadequate dying space given to apartments nowadays.
A back serambi of 30 square feet should be considered. Front corridors can also be made into drying areas with the proper balustrade designs and extended floor slabs to capture the water drips.
The use of the kolong or open ground floor is possible for the first and second floor occupants.
The use of the roof as an extra drying space for the third and fourth floor could also be possible.
Storage – there is inadequate storage space in our apartment save the JKR police barrack. In the excellently designed police barracks of old, each apartment unit comes with a six-foot by eight-foot storage space on the ground floor in an open ground plan.
This storage facility is excellent for motorcycles, children’s bicycles, and other things. Storage facilities should be a must for walk up high rise designs.
Thermal comfort – there is poor thermal comfort in present flat design with all masonry walls with little fenestrations. The design of the JKR police barrack must be emulated with its use of timber walls over reinforced concrete structural frame, generous fenestration in its louvered wall, and ribbon fins as well as gaps in walls of rooms to make air flow possible.
Racial harmony and interaction
Building racial harmony and community interaction through planning and design is important for any country so as to have racial harmony through interaction of the various members of the community. By having community interaction mutual understanding and tolerance of rituals and belief system will materialise.
The problem with Malaysian housing is that firstly, there is limited outside space to linger and sit, and secondly, the community buildings display a lack of sensitivity to public and people oriented architecture.
From the planning perspective, there is little public furniture such as benches to wait for school busses, park furniture, pavilions, wakaf huts, and shady trees to encourage people to leave their houses and come out into the open air.
There is hardly a sidewalk and places to stop and snack or rest.
The community buildings such as the mosque and Dewan Serbaguna are fenced up in an unfriendly manner.
There are hardly any other community related facilities.
The policies should be as follows:
Provide public seating for 10 per cent of the population along the sidewalks, parks, playgrounds, and open air cafes.
Provide safe vehicular free environment for walking, jogging, and aerobic dancing.
Encourage the setting up of many kiosks or mini architecture for people to congregate around.
Provide various community buildings such as temples, churches, and mosques, and design these buildings so that other people can access them.
Design community halls or branch libraries and market places in an open and friendly manner whilst encouraging other facilities to be set up like club houses, Rukun Tetangga offices, family restaurants and many others.
Plan houses in a horse-shoe or U-shaped configuration with no more than 30 units per cluster of neighbourhood.
Create terraced clusters of Muslim and non-Muslim entities in blocks of 10 units in order to avoid privacy violations and encourage interaction with common rituals and values.
Create public spaces in shopping malls for people to linger and sit. Provide 20 per
cent gross area for public spaces.
Crime basically occurs in housing estates which have the following features:
A centralised community area
Isolated streets with terraced housing of middle income to high income grouping
A smooth escape route of grid-iron streets
Existence of the isolated back alleys
Commercial and residential areas that are isolated from one another
Few community or public amenities and furniture A non-pedestrianised street A fenced up community building design
All of the above features make community presence during the day and night to be completely scarce.
The simple objective of planning for safety is to put lots of ‘eyes on the street’ or street surveillance. By creating houses that have ‘eyes on the street’ and by creating facilities that would encourage people to come out of their houses and mix and mingle with others, there would be less crime perpetrated.
Thus the policies with respect to crime should be:
Houses should be designed with a front ‘serambi’ or verandah for people to view the streets in front.
Fences should not be too visually closed up on all houses and community or public facilities
Streets should be paved and pedestrianised with public furniture for seating.
Terraced houses should be designed in U-shaped planning format with no more than 30 houses per cluster.
There should be many community buildings such as mosques, hawker stalls, kindergartens, branch libraries, badminton courts, basketball courts, kiosks, newsstands, pavilions, and others spread out and not centralised in an area.
All community buildings should be designed with their fences that affords seating and not be visually unobtrusive but porous on to the streets.
House owners should be given permission to open small shops in their premises such as barber shop, food stall, tuition classes, sundry shop, laundromat and similar commercial activities that do not intrude too much on the acoustic and visual privacy of other residents.
It is hoped that the following brief description of policies may provide a starting idea to make Malaysian mass housing more humane and culturally responsive in our socio-political contexts. There are of course many more policies that might touch on energy saving measures and such issues but the above policies, if implemented, would provide the basis for a sustainable community in Malaysia.
All the policies mentioned above are completely doable and require a concerned party to see them through.
The developers must target safety and social health as their main selling points whilst the authorities must spearhead visionary decisions that would help communities come together for our greater good.