Habitable bridge acts as smart growth initiative design intervention of urban sprawl

Abstract

Urban sprawl has become a major concern in every big city in the world. Malaysia, as a developing country, can not shy away from this problem too. This is because of the poor planning and lack of awareness on the impact of the urban sprawl to the social, economic and environmental aspect. This will become a major issue as 2.5 billion more people move to cities by 2050, accounting for approximately 68 percent of the global population. Due to scarcity and rising land values, the population has shifted to the city's outskirts, causing urban shrinkage and making the city less competitive and appealing. As a result, there is a movement such as New Urbanism and Smart Growth development to improve urban planning and reduce the impact of urban sprawl. Malaysia's National Urban Policy also incorporates smart growth development to improve urban planning, with one of the key thrusts being to promote the optimum use of existing infrastructure and to revitalise the attractiveness and liveliness of urban centres. As a result, there is an opportunity to find an alternative way to reduce the expansion of the urban periphery while also bringing people back to the city. The aim of this study is to look into the use of habitable bridges as a design intervention in urban sprawl cities through smart growth development. The objective of this research is to investigate the use of smart growth theory, architecture, and the environment to build a habitable bridge. Next, a habitable bridge that improves accessibility and walkability of the surrounding neighbourhood is proposed, and finally, a habitable bridge is proposed to reduce the impact of urban sprawl in a city. The qualitative paradigm was used to conduct this study because the adaptation mechanism is heavily reliant on feasibility literature and qualitative data rather than quantitative data. The paper focuses on subjective and exploratory findings in order to prove the theory that architecture and smart growth are linked. The method is largely implemented through a literature review and observations of urban sprawl sites, with secondary data derived from case studies and qualitatively assessed through a feasibility study. The analysis is carried out at the end of this dissertation by incorporating the smart growth theory in the habitable bridge as an intervention of the urban sprawl city.