READINESS OF THE LOCAL COMMUNITY IN HERITAGE MANAGEMENT: A STUDY ON ADAPTIVE REUSE APPROACH OF HISTORICAL BUILDINGS IN PERAK

The local community is often referred to as the target group in the planning and development process that meets local needs. This matter also includes efforts to protect heritage products including historic buildings from the threats of destruction. By that, this study aims to explore the involvement of local community in heritage management by focusing on historical buildings in their area. Besides, this study was also done to identify the readiness of the local community in the protection of historical buildings from the threat of destruction through the adaptive reuse approach. This study uses the instrument of questionnaire distributed to respondents consisting of 444 people from the local community through the simple random method. The questionnaire was analysed using the Statistic Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 16.0 software. The descriptive statistics used are frequency and percentage. There are six historical buildings that undergone adaptive reuse involved in this study. The study results found that majority of the respondents have an understanding in conservation and preservation efforts of historical buildings through the adaptive reuse approach. Respondents of the study also agreed that historical buildings that are still in their area should be protected from annihilation by the method of changing their functions. In addition, respondents of the study also confirmed that responsible parties have played proactive roles in conserving and preserving historical buildings in their area