Research
What is Green vs Grey?
A research masters project involving crowd-mapping or Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS) to gather the public's placed-based values (Brown, 2012), specifically on landscape and development preferences in the Klang Valley (Selangor, Malaysia). This study will allow a better understanding of livability in one of the largest developing cities in SEA.
Aims:
This study aims to map the place-based values of participants residing in the Klang Valley. The two place-based values that will be mapped are 1) landscape values and 2) development preferences.
After mapping these two values, a comparison of both landscape values and development preferences will be conducted to assess their compatibility and conflict, which will contribute greatly to future spatial planning.
Background:
Parks and open green spaces are recognized for making an important contribution to urban environments, in particularly livability (Chiesura, 2004). Livability consists of various aspects including environmental quality which affects the quality of life (van Kamp et al., 2003; Kashef, 2016). With the responses on the map, the results can serve as a proxy for social value conflicts, classifying areas of acceptable and inacceptable types of developments.
Significance of Research
This study will be one of the first spatially explicit location-based social research conducted in Malaysia. Existing social research on green spaces are mostly descriptive and this study will contrast or compliment those studies. Additionally, the spatial data from this study can also assist in identifying the importance of green spaces in the Klang Valley. Finally, this study also aims to contribute to practical planning and decision-making based on public needs to improve urban environmental quality, which is one of the key aspects of livability.