Exploring Opportunities of Adopting Biophilic Cities Concept into Mixed-Use Development Project in Malaysia

Mixed-use development project in urban area emerged to cater the increase of population in the region. Due to rapid urbanisation, many research recommended the engagement of human with nature in cities development, including the mixed-use development project since nature and human are holistically created to complement each other. This is where the United Nation (UN) under its sustainable development programme has established 17 development goals that amongst all cover both sustainable cities and communities. This shows the urgency of having cities that best fit human nature. However, although many mixed-use development projects were constructed with senses of nature, many of these projects are harmful to environment as they are unable to sustain the natural habitat as well as human needs. Hence, there are many attempts to connect human with nature in Malaysia via sustainable cities and green cities concepts although no specific guidelines on these have been established. Recently, emerged the term biophilic cities, a new concept combining sustainable and resilient cities, which are also seen as the panacea to these mixed-use development project issues despite the efforts done via the former concepts of sustainable and green cities alone. Generally, biophilic cities resemble green cities with a few enhanced greener criteria that affiliate human to nature as opposed to green and sustainable cities that merely bring nature to human. Therefore, this paper aims at investigating the elements of biophilic cities that can be adopted for mixed-use development project in Malaysia. Via systematic literature review, this paper listed the criteria of biophilic cities from previous studies, which are then used in designing the questionnaires distributed to 173 construction players in the mixed-use development projects in Malaysia. It is found that biophilic cities encompass four main criteria that are important to be adopted in mixed-use development project in Malaysia, namely "building", "block", "street" and "neighbourhood", with a total of eight design elements. As biophilic cities are closer to human needs and environment whilst able to manage the rapid urbanisation and increased world population that is meant to be tackled by the mixed-use development project, construction players should start to consider adopting the biophilic cities concept in their mixed-use development project in Malaysia.