Delineation of the Malay public realm in the historical Kuala Kangsar

Kuala Kangsar is known as one of the key royal town in Malaysia. Yet it's urban form has been affected by Colonial influence which had caused the original archetypical intimate and tight configuration of Malay urban core to be drastically ruptured. The paper traces back the pre-colonial urban core configuration of Kuala Kangsar into the era of beginnings of the town, under the reign of Sultan Mansur Shah. The method uses interviews from the inhabitants in the study areas and content analysis from text documentation for Geographical Information System (GIS) mapping. The analysis thus found three patterns reflecting the three phases of Kangsar evolution; i) pre-colonial; early Perak Sultanate, from 1550 to 1800 along; ii) the-colonial, after the appointment of British Residence, 1874 to 1929; iii) the present form. It found that the original 'Malay' urban core of Kuala Kangsar on the banks of river Perak reflected the usual intimate compact planning. The pre-colonial also shows the close intimacy of the public realm in the Kuala Kangsar area. The pre-colonial pattern reflect the intimacy and compactness reflected in other Malay historic core much less affected by colonisation such as Kota Bahru