A comparitive study on the effect of community facilities in urban low cost housing on the well-being of residents in Klang and Shah Alam, Malaysia

• Main Author: Abdul Karim, Hafazah
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: TH1-9745 Building construction
• Online Access: http://eprints.usm.my/34836/1/HBP2.pdf; http://eprints.usm.my/34836/

Housing in urban areas is blessed with available facilities for residents to choose from; may that be for education, grocery shopping, eating, recreation, praying, medical services and others. Residents can choose to go to any of these facilities for their needs and wants. There is however some variance in the choice of facilities in different housing areas yet the availability of facilities has to some degree an effect on the satisfaction of residents towards their housing environment. As Johnston (2000) defined in The Dictionary of Human Geography, `housing as a sustainable entity provides houses, infrastructure, amenities and social facilities that are important to the development of human growth such as education, health, economic and recreation’. This paper revolves around the findings of a research relating to the level of satisfaction of residents in low cost flats towards the availability and accessibility of facilities. There are a selection of five locations of low cost flats in Shah Alam and three locations in Klang. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used to approach this study. Survey data were analysed through the SPSS program and also by the Grounded Theory Analysis. The findings will show that the factors of availability and accessibility of facilities plays an important role in the level of satisfaction of these residents. Findings will also show that that the respondents in Shah Alam are more satisfied compared to those in Klang towards the community facilities domain in their housing area. In general, it can be concluded that residents living in Shah Alam has a higher level of well-being than in Klang where community facilities domain is concerned.