Ho
Progressive, Smart, Connected Senior Living
Intergeneration Re-engagement
Taman Paramount is a unique residential neighbourhood in Petaling Jaya, Selangor with its strong local community among elderly, but the young people do not often show interest to stay in the neighbourhood over a long period of time, because Taman Paramount does not provide facilities to support self-actualization needs other than physical and social needs.
LRT station has been upgraded with pop-up plaza activities and residential street connecting LRT and commercial district has been introduced with road diet concept by transforming part of roads in front of each gates into pocket park for the visitors or youngsters to interact with the local community as they pass by. Urban intervention along residential streets eventually linked to a road intersection before crossing to commercial district which is the heart of Taman Paramount. Creating art at the road intersection will slow drivers speed and eventually increase safety of pedestrian crossing the road. Looking at the core of Taman Paramount, there are multiple rows of shophouses surrounding the proposed site which will be further developed in phase 3. Parklet projects have been implemented trying to solve traffic congestion issues in front of shophouses. Encouraging each shop owners to reserved parking spaces at their shopfront and transform them into different urban pocket activities, such as sidewalk cafe, reading newspaper corner, chit-chat corner, bicycle parking, etc. Slowly, vehicle traffic will be replaced by foot traffic. Therefore, the proposed site will have greater potential to achieve better environment for livable communities. Enhancing the ‘soul’ of Taman Paramount will be the main design intention, for such a congested neighbourhood, by introducing shared-spaces development to be supported by existing and new community.
Knowing and understanding the site of Taman Paramount, my proposal for this mixed-use development is to introduce generation reengagement to the existing community. Why? Most of the young community work or study at Taman Paramount, but they don't live there. They commute to work or study everyday by LRT. Unlike the older generation, they have generated a strong sense of attachment. They always hang out with old friends at kopitiams located within the heart of Taman Paramount, exactly where the proposed site is. Although most of
the working adults go for lunch at kopitiams and food courts, interaction between generations is still lacking. The existence of this huge generation gap will not help Taman Paramount to sustain its communities. Therefore, intergenerational programmes will be the main focus to bring generations together. The reason of bringing the young and old together is to solve common problems faced by an aging society. In Petaling Jaya, there is a common problem that “older people are living longer, but living longer unhealthily. Then they need a lot of resources to take care of them. It eventually affects the country’s productivity.” - Wong Teck Wee, president of the Malaysian Healthy Ageing Society. Looking into Taman Paramount, as TOD site, having high distribution of residential lands, there is a great potential to convince young generation to live there (most of them agree that Taman Paramount is a good place to live with family) and re-engage with the elder community. Promoting reengaging the generations may help elders to cope with the problems of aging - loneliness, boredom, loss of status and loss of ikigai (purpose of life) - New Straits Times, 22nd Nov 2019. Therefore, hoping that by creating new retail typology and age-integrated facilities could encourage young people to re-visit and re-engage with the existing aging society. This age-integrated facilities will bring the young and old together as a “big family” in Taman Paramount.
This proposed new retail concept is something new in our shopping mall culture. The consumer’s needs today are changing. They prefer buying online and no longer need to go to malls to see products display. Shoppers now shop for an experience. There is a great challenge in retail design with shopping experience that they could not get online. We can call it Social Commerce. According to Mike Lim, the director of DP Architect, “the shopping experience is now more emotional, spontaneous, creative, based on inspiration and the ‘surprise’ element. Currently, malls tend to operate like chain stores - with similar tenant mix and interior design concepts. The mall designer needs to create an exciting environment that evokes unpredictable and spontaneous moments as well - that prompt the consumer’s desire to shop when they feel inspired. The ‘cookie-cutter’ mall will not work anymore.”
Followed by the first strategy of creating new shared-retail typology or social commerce space is to draw crowds of young generation to re-visit proposed site. Age-integrated facilities will be the next focus to encourage those young generation to re-engage with existing aging society. A senior center and kids day-care center are intentionally located in the center, so that young and old get to interact before or after they bought groceries. Tea houses are proposed in the center for all generations to enjoy tea talk session and perhaps join a “book club sharing day”. Kids from day-care center will be scheduled to make crafts with the elderly. Elderly could also tell stories to the kids. The elderly surely enjoy seeing kids being active and happy. In fact, kids are the most powerful ones that could make elderly forget about loneliness, boredom, etc. Koteon, a multi-generational facility has proven an answer to the urgent problems surrounding aging in Japan through introducing social program for preschoolers and elderly home residents. Overall, the age-integrated facilities are further developed with cross-mall route concept to target the great population of working adults, 300m radius away from the proposed site.
By solving the roots of aging problem, eventually this will lead to a livable communities bringing the young and old as a “big family” of Taman Paramount.
