Stages of Urban Revitalization In answering to the question of rejuvenating a deteriorated area, creating social sustainability is a crucial starting point. A greater community is needed not only to revive the area, but to make sure that the result carries on and persists through time. Hence, urban revitalization is to be seen as a process rather than an action, and it can be separated into 3 stages: STAGE 1 - POPULATE : The first step to such circumstance is to bring in more people to the area and to propagate the urban life covering a broader area. While such action of a gentrification is often associated with negative connotation that threatened local community, we cannot deny that this action does offer some desirable benefits to a place, such as the increase of occupancy rate, market, economics, urban activity levels, and the reduction of crime. As such, urban revitalization has to begins by looking at bringing in new form of lives and community rather than just merely improving the existing. STAGE 2 - STAY : Next, while higher population means more urban activities, it is crucial to make sure that such environment is able to persist on. Current Klang Town is facing a critical condition of declining due to the vicious cycle of population moving-out creating increased opportunity for social issues. This perpetual cycle has to be broken by making sure that not only the community comes in, but to stay and permanently occupies the spaces. This opens up an opportunity of rethinking the township into a Campus City - by utilizing an institution as a catalyst to incorporate students’ daily life into the fabric of the town. A new cluster of facilities is set to rebrand the whole area into a more vibrant living environment. STAGE 3 - COMMUNICATE : For a sustainable living environment, the boundary between existing community and the newly introduced student community has to be dissolved. As stated by Charles Landry in “The Creative City�: an even wider cooperation between various parties is important in order to truly achieve something: crime will be solved less through physical control but more via establishing a sense of placeness and mutual responsibility; sustainable environments are not done by looking at the environmental dimension, but through addressing how people mix and interact, cultivating their motivations and responsibility to their place and lifestyles. Interaction between cultures has to occur to prevent segregation of social groups. As such, the new institution has to be recognized as part of the bigger urban pattern. It needs to become an extension to the local public realm, and the existing community is proud to be part of it.
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