The influence of interest and understanding of housing developers on gated communities development

Abstract

This research is aimed to examine the influence of housing developers’ interests and understandings as a framework of gated community’s typology in Malaysia. It is underlain by the question of which type of gated community the developers chose between 2007 and 2010. During those periods, two kinds of gated community exist namely gated community scheme (GACOS) and strata gated community scheme. Developers’ decision thus would represent their interpretation of gated community which at the same time allows this research to work significantly different from previous researchers who have been interpreting gated community from consumers’ perspective. Therefore, this research has been conducted in accordance to qualitative orientation and case study in design. In order to elicit housing developers’ choice, agency models framework has been utilised. 12 housing developers in Southern Johor have been interviewed using semi-structured interview method with the support by observation on the final products, information gathered from planning and land authorities as well as documents used for management purposes. Collected data have been mainly analysed qualitatively to elicit the final products of housing developers’ involved in terms of their physical and management characters and the reasons behind their decisions. As a result, it is found that all interviewed developers chose to develop GACOS. However, since gated community only refers to strata gated community scheme as stated in the Planning Guidelines 2010; GACOS conceptually can only stands as a ‘temporary secure neighbourhood’. As such, the wall and guard components of the temporary secure neighbourhoods would not last due to their temporary status. This situation shows that housing developers actually have short term interest on the type of gated community they built as long as they can achieve their economic interest once the physical development is completed despite the economic burden that the residents have to bear for a long time to come.