Urban public park from ex-landfill: Impact to community health
Issues on inadequate urban green areas provision to meet the needs of community social recreation become more crucial with the increase of urban population and lack of urban spaces. To deal with the issue, the Malaysia government has developed policies to reuse ex-landfill as public park. However, p...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/54792/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/54792/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/54792/1/HEALTH%20AND%20ENVIRONMENT%202014.pdf |
| Summary: | Issues on inadequate urban green areas provision to meet the needs of community social recreation become more crucial with the increase of urban population and lack of urban spaces. To deal with the issue, the Malaysia government has developed policies to reuse ex-landfill as public park. However, public health issues related to the landfill gas emission have threatened public’s confidence in the appropriateness of the public parks to be developed at the ex-landfill areas. Therefore, this paper serves as the background study to identify the impact of the redevelopment of urban ex-landfill into public park towards the community health. Field study was conducted at four study areas, which covered two ex-landfill areas and two public parks that have been developed on the ex-landfill areas. The study focused on two main aspects; community health perceptions and air quality. The community health perceptions data were collected through respondent’s self-assessment questionnaire from 287 residents within the study area. Meanwhile, the air quality data were gathered from five air parameters of landfill gas emission, which were detected from 16 gas sampling stations within four boundary areas of 1.0 kilometer radius from the study area. The findings from the survey revealed a positive impact on the public park developed from ex-landfill area towards community’s health. The analyzed data are anticipated to be used as the basic indicators to justify the community acceptation towards the proposal of 296 public parks that could served the social recreation needs of 462,500 Malaysian urban populations in the year 2020. |
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