The association between riverscape and place attachment in historical cities in Malaysia

Abstract

The landscape architecture covers aesthetic aspects, as well as, individual’s activities, and their sense of attachment to urban elements. The river as a natural landscape can play a significant role in urban rehabilitation and residents’ well-being and welfare. The rapid urban development and urban regeneration has inadvertently resulted in a limited attachment to urban ecosystem and landscape designs that make to loos urban river identity and river place meaning. In addition, the riverscape design was not sufficiently studied in historical city rehabilitation. In addition, urban riverscape design focuses on physical aspects while understanding the meaning, social value, social bonding, and psychological sense to riverscape as a place in historical city development still remains a challenging proposition to be undertaken. Hence, this study is motivated to address the need to investigate the association between riverscape and place attachment in historical citied. The study conducted a comprehensive literature review on place attachment dimensions identified by previous research. The study determined twenty three dimensions within three clusters, physical/environmental, personal, and psychological. The dimensions are, pro-environmental behavior, connectedness to the nature, emotional association, person dimension, psychological dimension, place meaning, place identity, recreation experience, destination loyalty, leisure involvement, willingness, sense of place, place satisfaction, length of residence, scale of place, emotional connection, moral factors, place continuous, social bonding, social well-being, and civic and natural dimensions. In conclusion, these dimensions need to be considered in riverscape design and development in heritage cities, such as Malacca in Malaysia, to enhance quality of life and livability, simultaneously. As a future study, formulating the association between riverscape design and place attachment is proposed.