Users’ Legibility on a Proposed Affordable Township for B40 and M40 Income Fishing Community at Kuala Kedah, Malaysia

School of Housing, Building & Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author (Ahmad Sanusi Hassan): sanusi@usm.my

Abstract

This study highlights traditional towns and settlements of the fishing communities and their proposed township design. It has proposed one site for the design at Kuala Kedah for the resettlement programme of the fishermen community administered by the Fisheries Development Authority of Malaysia (LKIM). The design will reflect users’ recognizable patterns in their contextual urban design elements. Urban design elements are pinpointed in this master plan, referring to the traditional town’s setting. The aim is to preserve the socio-economy and tradition of the existing fishing community. This research uses space syntax analysis to examine the level of permeability and wayfinding in justified graph analysis as well as the level of integration and connectivity in axial maps within the urban contexts of the proposed township. The results show that the proposed master plan’s layout plan has very good overall integration with good permeability and connectivity with easy wayfinding in a layout master plan of the designated private and public areas. For this master plan design, applying space syntax is important for evaluating and analyzing the spatial configuration surrounding an area, providing valuable insights into how the layout of urban design elements influences users’ perception of spaces.