About Concept Urban Village

Sweet memories of Village Life~

Do you still remember the traditional values of village? Cooperation, helpful, warmth, sense of place, unites, sharing,  closet the relationship among villagers, kindness, self-help spirit.. arrrh~ even cannot forget the sweetest memories of going to river for a swim, hiding behind the trees to play seek and hide. We walked / biked to the school every early morning, families can have dinner in the evening instead of night time because none of traffic congestion as now urban people are encountering... more and more and more..  :)

That's why the urban village is so welcoming until today. Urban village :- leading village life in urban areas. The wonderful spirit of village integrated in convenient and sufficient urban area, where public transport  commercial, job opportunities, infrastructure, retails, and entertainment are so much better than traditional rural area location. Live, work, education, and play all in Urban Village.

Synergy, Vibrancy, Sense of Place

I summarize few of the basic principles of Urban Village. They are Synergy, Vibrancy, and Sense of place. After this I will talk about those physical features to achieve the principles above. 

Synergy

Synergy can be defined as the interaction between 2 or more places or elements until produce a combined effect, which is greater than their separate effects. Let's look on the examples Urban Village. Synergy in this context, can be refer to mixed-uses development. Combination of residential, commercial, recreation and public facilities have achieve synergy by creating the live-work-play-leisure within the community. With this, multi-level building is encouraged because has a wide range of goods and services under one roof,  plus it is within walking distance of much of the housing.

Vibrancy

Vibrancy at here is refer to people and bicycle movement. As mentioned above about the mixed-uses development, it had lead to more activities accessible within small radius so that, it is feasible to walk or ride a bike. short distances mean  greater opportunities for walking and cycling.  It helps to reduce the dependent onto automobiles. More pedestrian walkways and cycling ways are provided and this encourage the vibrant and movement of people. Not only for local residents, but also welcoming the non-residents from other gardens / residential areas. This directly enhance and improve the interaction and vibrancy within and between the zones.

Sense of place

This is the most critical components to indicate the spirit and ambiance of Urban Village. A living place most important is able to provide the sense of place to the villagers, this is related to villagers pride on their living areas. In short, it should be livable. For instance, villagers indeed can work or purchase their daily needs out from this zone. However, the fundamental spirit of Urban Village is through the mixed land uses, where live, work, education, buy and play all in ones had create and enhance the interaction and understanding to each other, at the end, the sense of pace achieved. --- You know where you lived, you know who are your neighbors,  you know what are the join forces and united village living is, you have the community pride, you know who you are.

Urban village is there to stay, but to create that environment in the city with many of its population born in the city and without any experience of village living is a challenge itself. For some of the children, perhaps spending hours in front of computer screen chit-chatting with friends is better than going out and picnic under the hot sun. Some of them might have thought frozen chicken found in supermarket is the "chicken" instead of those running around in the compound of a village house.

New strategies are needed. Planners' creativity and innovative are needed. We need to apply new terminology, approaches and concept of discussing with them and along the process in building the underlying concept of urban village into their mind. For example, since many have acquitted with the idea of going green as a cool thing, perhaps asking the youth to plant trees while going for outing should be the way forwards.