Rethinking empowering development environment to improve youth empowerment and civic engagement

Abstract

The lack of youth empowerment has becoming a major concern for the socioeconomic growth of a nation, including Malaysia. Poor execution of policy and planning for the youth, and the lack of acknowledgment of youth capabilities on their contributions to the national economy has widen the generation and knowledge gap. This will become a major issue as the increasing number of youth in the world, and the rising rate of youth unemployment and the low average salary of fresh graduates, where it will expose to the risk of political instability, economic pain for the modest income-earners, and worsening communal value relations that will hinder Malaysia’s economy to the right path towards new growth engines that is sustainable and inclusive. Due to the lack of youth empowerment, there is a need to approach and acknowledge the hidden assets that the youth and the community represent, and make the public services as driving factor of Malaysia’s economic boost, as to generate meaningful economic contributions from community empowering processes to empowered production. The aim of this study is to look into the use of empowering development environment for the youth through civic engagement and participation of Sherry R. Arnstein’s civic engagement concept in order to improve the quality of life of the youth and their community. The objective of this research is to investigate the use of empowering development environment through youth engagement, empowerment, and integration through architectural design approaches in order to reduce the socioeconomic impacts of the community. Qualitative research paradigm was used to conduct this study as the empowering development environment is reliant on the qualitative data and feasibility literature. The analysis is carried out at the end of this dissertation by incorporating the empowering development environment with architecture design approach as an intervention of the youth empowerment.