Fishing Villages: Resemblance to the Pre-colonial City Landscape at the Straits of Malacca in Peninsular Malaysia

This paper describes a study of the traditional port-city landscape in Peninsular Malaysia. The study uses traditional fishing villages as the case studies because of their similar geographical locations and because those fishing villages that still exist in the present day bear the closest resemblance to traditional city patterns. These traditional cities, such as Malacca and Kota Johore Lama, at one time served as Malay port cities in the Malay Kingdoms before European colonization. The literature review offers a historical survey of the old cities and a study of the fishing villages. The study shows that the traditional cities and fishing villages have a compact settlement pattern with low-rise high-density housing units. A survey was conducted of the fishing village settlement patterns, consisting of site visits, interviews, and studies of aerial photos. The analysis finds that the settlement patterns show similar zoning divisions to those of the traditional port cities: vessel landing, workshop, and ...