A Case Study on Tan Hiok Nee Street (THN Street)

The five-footway is a continuous sheltered walkway found along rows of shophouses resulting from local planning laws around the 1800s in Southeast Asia. There are some streets with five-footway that experience large amount of human activity while some do not. This dissertation aims to study the human activity along five-footways and presents principles that affects human behavior.

The study presented in this dissertation are stemmed from my own observations on the drastic difference in the vitality of shophouses and usage of five-footways in the city I had grown up in, Johor Bahru. It led me to wonder what makes them so successful or what caused them to become vacant and forgotten spaces in urban cores. From my personal experience in occupying a five-footway, I had always registered to them as places for social encounters as it offers pleasant places which brings pride and cultural identity. Under pressing issues of becoming redundant, or to be demolished to make way for new built, I humbly hope this study could be beneficial in providing a framework in making pleasant five-footways and keeping

The analysis will emerge from the methodology of public life studies outlined by Gehl’s book, How to Study Public Life. Behavioral mapping was performed to record the preferred locations for stationary activities and Tracking study was conducted to record the movement patterns across the street. To progress this, a case study has been conducted along the five-footway of a chosen street - Tan Hiok Nee Street (THN Street), in Johor, Malaysia. The street pose as a suitable study sample as there are parts of the street that are filled with street life and parts that are rather dead. Building on theoretical principles associated with successful street-making developed from literature review, findings are compared with five key criteria: Rhythm, Point of Reference, Connectivity, Comfort and Safety. Through a combination of site mapping analysis, behavioral mapping and photography analysis. the study evaluates the design features of five-footway and existing forms of local appropriation by shop owners and local town council to understand the human-environment relationship in five-footway.

This dissertation has sought to translate theories associated with successful street-making and active frontages onto the practical applications found through the case study of THN Street. Through investigating the human-environment relationship based on my findings, I hope to have contributed to the development of conceptualizing five-footways as an urban feature that socially benefits to the successful of the street. Evidently, five-footways holds the capacity for social adaptations that are small-scaled and localized. In this respect, the concept of the five-footway as an urban feature for street activation emerges. Although not claiming that having active frontages everywhere is the ultimate strategy for successful streets, the research emphasized five-footways as an Active Frontage that can attract and accommodate for a diversity of street life.
In this extent, I propose the view that the five-footway could be seen as an urban design feature that sets a transitional active edge that has the flexibility for local adaptations to create designs that are sustainable and resilient to change of use.
The potential of five-footways can be concluded as follows:
[1] Capacity to hold and encourage activities
[2] Adaptability for localized personalization
[3] A