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Stories of Resilience—Public Housing Communities and the Kuala Lumpur Community Gardens Initiative

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Resilient Planning and Design for Sustainable Cities (UPADSD 2022)

Part of the book series: Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation ((ASTI))

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic saw cities worldwide implementing various pandemic mitigation measures, including social and physical distancing, among others. However, these measures did not deter numerous public housing residents from continuing their participation in community gardening initiatives. This seemingly atypical behaviour sparked an interest in investigating these individuals’ social characteristics and commitment to community gardening initiatives through semi-structured interviews. Recruitment of participants was done through a series of multi-stage sampling: purposive, followed by a snowball. The findings revealed that many of the participants were retirees and homemakers, with a balanced gender composition. They were primarily seniors between the ages of 60 and 75, with only a few from the 40–50 age range. Their time commitments in the community gardens revealed vast differences between genders, with the men devoting more of their day to community gardening than the women, and the interviews revealed why. The combined documentation of the characteristics and stories of the participants could provide researchers, policymakers, and local authorities with critical information about the community’s needs, strengths and experiences, driving planning, policy development and decision-making to be in sync with the norms and perspectives of the public housing residents of Kuala Lumpur.

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Acknowledgements

The research team would like to express their highest appreciation to the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur City Hall, Department of Agriculture Malaysia, research colleagues and the residents of the public housing neighbourhoods for making this research possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Design and Architecture, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

    Shahida Mohd Sharif, Norsidah Ujang, Shureen Faris Abdul Shukor & Sreetheran Maruthaveeran

  2. Department of Horticulture and Landscaping, Faculty of Sustainable Agriculture, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, 90509, Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia

    Shahida Mohd Sharif

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  1. Shahida Mohd Sharif
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  2. Norsidah Ujang
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  3. Shureen Faris Abdul Shukor
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  4. Sreetheran Maruthaveeran
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Correspondence to Shahida Mohd Sharif .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Architecture, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Francesco Alberti

  2. Department of Architecture, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Paola Gallo

  3. Department of Geography, UFS, Bloemfontein, South Africa

    Abraham R. Matamanda

  4. Urban and Regional Planning, School of Planning, Design and Construction, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Eric J. Strauss

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Sharif, S.M., Ujang, N., Shukor, S.F.A., Maruthaveeran, S. (2024). Stories of Resilience—Public Housing Communities and the Kuala Lumpur Community Gardens Initiative. In: Alberti, F., Gallo, P., Matamanda, A.R., Strauss, E.J. (eds) Resilient Planning and Design for Sustainable Cities. UPADSD 2022. Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47794-2_12

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