The meaning of street as a place of attachment: the Malaysian urban experience

Abstract

The rapid and uncontrolled urban development in Asian cities has contributed to the loss of local place identity. This weakens the authenticity of the city's character and disrupts the continuity in meanings and attachment embedded in the people's experience of the places. Meaning is constructed as a result of people's experience and association with a place. This paper suggests the importance of meaning and attachment in securing place identity with reference to the main shopping streets in Kula Lumpur city centre. Questionnaire surveys and face to face interviews were conducted to examine meanings and significance of the places to the users. The findings demonstrate that various meanings are translated in the functional, emotional and social attachment and strongly influenced by the length of engagement, familiarity, cultural characteristics and the degree of economic dependency. The streets are considered very important in sustaining the economic and social activities roles and ethnicity of the users influence how they interpret the meanings of the streets. This paper concludes that meanings strongly contribute to the sustainability of place attachment and place identity.