IDENTIFYING“THIRD PLACES” IN RELATION TO BUSINESS
PREMISES IN MELDRUM WALK
Hasanuddin Bin Lamit, Amir Ghahramanpouri, Sepideh Sedaghat Nia,
Mahdi Torabi
Department of Landscape Architecture, Department of Architecture, Faculty of
Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
ABSTRACT
Based on what Oldenburg stated, a “third place” is a
place of “refuge” other than the home or workplace. It
provides the opportunity for people to meet old friends
or even make new ones where people can regularly visit
and commune with their friends, relatives and even
strangers. Mehta and Bosson (2010) concentrated on
place based characteristics of “third place” and
classified four groups, i.e. personalization and
permeability (as subjective), and seating and shelter on
the street (as objective characteristics). This paper
aimed to distinguish third places and their
characteristics, which support human scale and social
interaction through studying in Meldrum Walk, in
which the priority is given to pedestrians and nontraffic activities. In this study determining the way
pedestrians perceive these environments, leads us to
group all business premises as “third place” and “non
third place”. “Non-third places” also divided in two
groups. Only restaurants grouped under the “third
place” category in Meldrum Walk.
Key words: Third Place, Pedestrian priority Street,
Seating, Shelter, Meldrum Walk
1. INTRODUCTION
Oldenburg (1981) declared that other than the home or
workplace, people need a place of “refuge”, which is
the basis of the community. It can be an informal
gathering place that provides the opportunity for people
to meet old friends or even make new ones. He used the
terms “Third Place”, for places with such
characteristics. “Third place” also provides people
regularly visit and commune with their friends, relatives
and even strangers. Emphasizing the social role of
urban public space which street is its major type, Jacobs
(1993) asserted, “Sociability is a large part of why cities
exist”. Small business premises, cafes, coffee shops,
bars, pubs, restaurants, community centers, general
stores, and so on qualify as third places when, for
example, at least some people signify their welcoming
and comfortable characteristics in which people gather,
meet, hang out and socialize (Mehta and Bosson, 2010).
According to Jacobs (1961), such businesses premises
which later Oldenburg (1981) named them “third
places”, are the basic components of safety in the street
and its sidewalk in different ways. While the existence
of considerable quantity of stores, she added other
public places should scatter along the sidewalks of a
district as an essential for such surveillance and some
public places that could serve people during the evening
and night need to be accessible.
Resulting from transformation of public space,
Oldenburg establishes some of both social related and
physically based, desirable qualities and trends of “third
place” in urban spaces (Carmona and Tiesdell, 2007).
Later, Mehta and Bosson (2010) concentrated on placebased characteristics of “third place” and classified
traits that support human scale and social interaction in
four groups. These are (a) personalization of the street
front by the business, (b) permeability of the business to
the street, (c) seating provided by the business, and (d)
shelter provided by the business on the street space.
They added that personalization and permeability are
subjective but seating and shelter are objective
characteristics of a “third place”.
On the other hand, surveying users’ perceptions leads
us to group businesses in “Third Place” and “Non-Third
Place” categories. For instance, when at least three
people perceived a business that acts as a meeting place
or community gathering place and can be accounted
“third place” (Mehta and Bosson, 2010).
According to Carr et al. (1992) relaxing is one major
need of people in public space. Sitting can represent
and fulfill this need. Gehl (1994) has categorized
different types of seating in four groups i.e., café chair
(provided by private businesses), benches, chair and
secondary seating. All except café chairs are provided
by public agency.
Pedestrianisation of public spaces, especially in
downtown areas (Robertson, 1993) through giving the
priority to the pedestrians (Gehl and Gemzoe, 2004), is
a solution aimed to enhance the environment socially
and economically, which. Focusing mainly on
pedestrian, these spaces can serve places of cultural and
entertainment events through supporting walking
(Prokai, 1999).
Following this concept, Asian cities, introduced
pedestrian priority streets such as Meldrum Walk,
which offer various purposes by different users at
different times (vertical quality of spaces). In Asia,
people have a high tendency to sociability and do
activities in groups. In addition, they consider streets as
places for relaxing, eating, drinking, and socializing
(Mateo-Babiano and Ieda, 2007).
Based on what was stated before and through surveying
pedestrians’ perceptions, this paper aimed to identify
and group third places, which support human scale and
social interaction through the studying of the Meldrum
Walk as a recently pedestrianised street in Johor Bahru.
The main research question is as follows:
Regarding to business premises, which places do people
perceive as third place in Meldrum Walk?
2. MATERIAL AND METHODS
The methods used in this study are observation and
questionnaire survey in order to classify businesses
which people perceived them as a third place and
identify their characteristics. Focusing on the objective
characteristics of “third place”, behavioral observation
of pedestrians and visual surveying of the street provide
the information on the shelters and seating
opportunities.
Pedestrians were asked whether they have favorite
places in Meldrum Walk or not and the questionnaire
included open-ended questions for them to explain their
reasons. Accordingly, the businesses were grouped in
“third place” or “non-third place” while they perceive a
business that acts as a meeting place or a community
gathering place and have the characteristics of this
concept (Table 2).
2.1 Meldrum Walk
Meldrum Walk (pedestrian street) is located in the
heritage part of Johor Bahru in south of Malaysia.
Fig. 1: Meldrum Walk selection
By narrowing the two-way street into a single-lane
street, it is developed as a pedestrian priority street. As
an attractively landscape passage for pedestrians, it has
cafes as well as entertainments by street artistes or
cultural performances. The selected section of the
Meldrum walk with an area of 2413 square meters is
located between Jalan Siew Nam and Jalan Siew Chin
(Refer to Fig. 1).
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 1 illustrates the summary of information on the
current condition of Meldrum Walk.
Table1: Summary of information and current condition,
(Source: Adopted by researcher)
Year of pedestrianisation 2005
Street events
9
Uses along street frontage
Offices
9
Shops
9
Restaurants/food courts
9
Entertainment places
9
Pedestrian usage:
0.058
Day-time peak density
(pedestrian/sq m)
0.085
Night-time peak density
(pedestrian/sq m)
Access to transport facilities (within 200 meters)
Bus stops
9
Taxi stands
9
Public car parks
9
Pedestrian facilities
No
Covered streets
Secondary (informal)
Public seats/rest areas
9
Private seating area
9
Five foot pathway
Questionnaire forms were given to 75 street users. In
total, 66% of users with various non-working purpose
visit this street. So the stated reasons for the presence of
this group is shown reported in Table 2.
Table 2: Main categories of visiting purpose
G2: Non-Third Place
G1
Purpose of visit
Frequency
Valid Percent
Working
24
33.8
Recreation and
18
25.4
Leisure
Shopping
14
19.7
Travel
5
7.0
Others
10
14.1
In brief, surveying sustained pedestrians of street while
doing some stationary activities shows that
eating/drinking, talking and watching the other people
are the most observed (89%) activities in Meldrum
Walk. Based on the different postures of the visitors
while doing various activities, mostly (78%) sit rather
than stand or lie.
While describing their visit they mostly reported,
accompanying “with friend(s)” (42%) and “alone”
(41%), and about the purpose (non-working) of their
visit, “recreation and leisure” (25%) was the highest.
Respondents use terms such as “meet friends”,
“relaxing/refreshment and chatting with friends”, “hang
out”, “watching football with friends” “betting” or even
“meet strangers and find new probable friends” and so
on which meant they spend time with certain people
there, and business premises are considered as “third
place”. But other business premises that people hint as
reasons, use terms such as “cheap”, “accessible”,
“food/drink” “site seeing” and so on which have a less
sociability concept and taken into account as “similar
businesses”. The other street level businesses, which do
not have the characteristics of the two previous groups,
are put into the group of “all other business” (see Table
3).
Table 3: Grouping businesses in (Meldrum Walk)
1. Third place
Restaurant (1-2-3-7-8-9-11)
2. Similar
business- in
same category
as G1 but not
“Third places”
3. All other
businesses
Bet shop (4)
Pork shop (12)
Restaurant (13)
Mobile shop (15)
Book stall ( )
Super market7-Eleven (19)
Hair salon- Barber shop (6),(22), (23)
Office (17)
Hotel reception (14), (18), (21)
Camera shop (24)
Restaurant (16)
No defined (5)-(10)- (20)
4. Inactive in
street level
Reviewing the respondents’ answers on describing
businesses of their interest and reasons, “eating and
drinking” was the major reason among those that can
define a “third place” and other similar businesses.
Many stated restaurants especially those with extended
premises and more working hours (e.g. “Mamak” 24hour Indian Muslim restaurant in Lot 11) or other bigscaled premises with a variety of food and drinks have
more potentialities of being perceived as third places.
Some old street patrons stated that they usually go there
to chat or play chess and other games with their friends
and sometimes they need to spend time or wait for the
announcement of the betting results.
Related to seating opportunities, in Meldrum Walk, café
chairs are the priority (86%) and sitting on the ledge of
flower boxes and stairs are the other opportunities for
those needing to rest and sit (Fig. 2). The restaurants of
lot 2, 3 and 11 have a bigger size than the others and
they together offer the most (82%) of the sitting
opportunities.
3%
café chair chair
secondary seating
11%
86%
Fig. 2: Seating distribution in Meldrum Walk during the
day (Source: Field survey)
Only restaurants in lots (2) and (3) provide shelter in its
sidewalk. It utilized shelter in specific times of the day,
when there is a need for protection from heavy rain and
morning sun. In the afternoons and evenings, the
shadows from the surrounding buildings, cover the
sidewalks and the chairs there. In this street even when
there are fewer patrons, these businesses lay-out their
chairs on the five feet walkways, which is right in front
of their shops, and benefit from the semi-open space
(see Fig. 3).
Fig 3: Temporary shelter
CONCLUSION
In this research of identifying the “third places”
business premises are based on the respondents’
perception, all third places on this street were not
addressed and this is one of the limitation in this study.
This is very common that we see some people move
from one place to another businesses premises
(restaurants) in lots 7, 8, 9 and 11. It appears they
would have specific perception and image about these
places and they may consider them as one whole area.
Further research may find the reason for such
relationship.
In the context of Malaysia as people like to chat and
meet other familiar or sometimes even new people
while having their food or drink, so restaurants are the
most nominated businesses premises realized as “third
place”. In addition, they sometimes gather to watch live
football matches in restaurants and cafes.
On the other hand, five feet pathway as the semi open
spaces have their uninterrupted role in providing shelter
in addition to their other roles. Therefore, in such
pedestrian priority streets, some businesses premise,
especially those offer food or drink and benefited their
customers from attached comfortable open space and
provide them shelter (when it is necessary), are mostly
perceived as “third place” if there is a number of
regular patrons gather and socialize regularly there.
Other informal places where people usually gather and
meet their friends, but are not related to any business
premises, may have the characteristics of “third place”
that was not the scope of this paper.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank the “Center for The
Study of Built Environment in the Malay World
(KALAM)” and International Doctoral Fellowship
(IDF)- provided by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and
Ministry of Higher Education, for funding this research. REFRENCES
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Hasanuddin Bin Lamit received the Dip in
Architecture from UTM, B.Arch. from West
Australia, M.A. in Landscape Design and
PhD from Sheffield University. He is an
Associate Professor in Department of
Landscape Architecture, Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia. His current research interests are
urban design and history/ philosophy of
landscape architecture.
Amir Ghahramanpouri received the B.E in
Engineering Architecture from Islamic Azad
University, M.sc in Urban Design from
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). He is
a PhD student, Department of Architecture,
UTM. His current research interests include
urban design and architecture.
Sepideh Sedaghat Nia received the B.E. in
Engineering Architecture from Islamic Azad
University- Central Tehran Branch, M.sc in
Urban Design from Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia (UTM). She is a PhD student,
Department of Architecture, UTM. Her
current interest includes urban design and
architecture.
Mahdi Torabi received his M.A in
Engineering Architecture from Islamic Azad
University Central Tehran Branch. He is a
PhD candidate, Department of Architecture,
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. His current
interest includes self-selection in the
Architectural Design Process (ADP).