Social Interaction in the Back Lanes of China Town

Abstract

The back lane is often associated with annoying, disgusting, narrow and dark. This paper concerns the use of the back lanes of the old shop houses in China Town, Kuala Lumpur.  The instruments used in collecting data include observation, unstructured interview and literature review.  The use and physical characteristics of back lanes were identified.  It was found that the back lanes of China Town in Kuala Lumpur showed the success of turning back streets into lively alleys.  Thus, the back lane could be considered as part of urban design strategies and not as leftover spaces.Keywords: back lane; social place; pedestrian; urban eISSN 2398-4295 © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21834/ajbes.v3i13.151