Place Attachment of Residents to Green Infrastructure Network in Small Town

This study explores attachment of town residents towards green infrastructure network in Taiping, an old town in Central Peninsular Malaysia. Green infrastructure is greenery and open spaces linked by streets, waterways and drainage ways around and between urban areas, at all spatial scales. In Taiping, the green infrastructure network consists of the Lake Gardens (town park), street planting, open spaces of public buildings, pocket spaces between shop-houses, school playfields, residential open space, home gardens, and river corridors. Six dimensions of place attachment including familiarity, favourite place, meaningful place, emotional response to physical attributes, concern and satisfaction for green spaces are elicited from 335 residents using survey questionnaire. The survey was conducted in neighbourhood areas, town centre, government institution and the Lake Gardens. The findings suggest that a majority of residents perceived strong attachment to the green infrastructure of the town. Majority of the residents valued their town park (91%) and hill sites (68%) as their favourite places for leisure and physical activities that afford them positive emotional feelings including relaxation, solitude and relieving stress. They also evaluated the open spaces are places for active functioning including sports and physical exercises as well as passive performances such as site seeing, strolling and resting. Diversity, coherence and naturalness of the green spaces generated the attachment to the town. An array of green spaces including size, types and mixtures of elements distributed in town allows experiential choice that affords physical, cognitive and social wellbeing.

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