IN-PERSON ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

Malaysia’s cities, shaped by layered histories, multicultural identities, and uneven modernisation pressures, offer fertile ground for testing how adaptive reuse can operate simultaneously as a cultural practice and a real estate strategy. This paper explores the cultural practice, community agency, and real estate value in Malaysia’s urban fabric, casting adaptive reuse as a locus where heritage, economy, and lived social life converge. Rather than seeing architecture purely as a commodity, the study treats built space as a social arena – inhabited, negotiated, and reimagined by people whose everyday practices inscribe meaning upon it. The research is structured around three interlinked aims. First: to identify the socio-cultural, institutional, and economic factors that enable community-initiated adaptive reuse projects to succeed. Second: to investigate how such community-led interventions influence rental values, market attitudes, and perceptions of authenticity in transforming urban districts. Third: to propose a reflexive framework for adaptive reuse that privileges cultural integrity and community participation while remaining responsive to market dynamics. The findings resist the dichotomy between heritage preservation and commercial development. Instead, they suggest that culturally attuned, community-driven reuse can engender new forms of urban vitality: spaces infused with lived meaning, creative economies, and a renewed sense of identity. Recognising community-led adaptive reuse as a legitimate form of heritage production challenges established conservation paradigms. In this sense, adaptive reuse becomes a means of negotiating between past and future – an act of cultural continuity, economic recalibration, and urban imagination.