Life Science Journal 2014;11(11) http://www.lifesciencesite.com http://www.lifesciencesite.com lifesciencej@gmail.com 127 Evaluating Common Spaces in residential communities: An Examination of the Relationship between Perceived Environmental Quality of Place and Residents’ Satisfaction Mayam Shabak, Nima Norouzi, Aminatuzuhariah Bte Megat Abdullah, and Tareef Hayat Khan Department of Architecture, Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia maryamshabak@gmail.com Abstract: Gated communities as fruits of the high-density urbanism seek for security, prestige and new lifestyle and their common space is known as a significant component that could be one of the main reasons of residential satisfaction and life quality and creating sustainable urban living space in cities. Therefore, this paper presents a way of evaluation the success of a common space with dimensions measuring the quality of the relationship that residents have with their common space. Based on these dimensions, a questionnaire was administered to residents of different residential complexes in the city of Johor in Malaysia. Data was analyzed by SPSS and descriptive analysis to show which items are most important in the context of Malaysia to estimate the level of success in a common space. In addition, the research found which environmental quality aspects have more or fewer effects on residents’ satisfaction. [Shabak M, Norouzi N, Megat Abdullah A, Khan H.T. Evaluating Common Spaces in residential communities: An Examination of the Relationship between Perceived Environmental Quality of Place and Residents’ Satisfaction. Life Sci J 2014;11(11):127-131] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com . 17 Keywords: Common space; residential community; environmental quality; residents’ satisfaction; gated communities. 1. Introduction At the beginning of this new millennium, majority of the world’s population lives in cities and number of urban residents is increasing every day. Therefore understanding about measuring the environmental quality of residential areas becomes essential. There is also growing interest in many parts of the world, in sustainability indicators that reflect conditions in the residential areas. Therefore, residential common space as a vital space by creating a fertile ground for growing social interaction seems to be very significant to enhance a sustainable society. During these two recent decades, many researches have been done in the field of measuring the environmental quality (Amerigo & Aragones, 1997; Adriaanse, 2007). Some of these researches pointed on subjective aspects of place quality, especially residents’ satisfaction and some others studied objective features or combination of both. However, there was no integrated system to evaluate common spaces of residential gated complexes. Accordingly, this research has attempted to describe a residential gated community and its type and properties and defined its common space as a very significant space for reaching a sustainable society and has tried to evaluate the reasons of success in residential common space by understanding the interrelationships between objective measures of environmental features and people’s responses to them. 2. Gated Community There are many definitions for the gated communities from the first one by Blakely and Snyder (1997) as a residential area with limited access till more recently definition by Blandy et al. (2003) as walled or fenced housing developments with restricted access, using CCTV and/or security personnel. Among many different opinions about advantages and disadvantages of gated communities like segregation in public space, unsustainable development landscape and offering collective goods; the gated development is still becoming increasingly popular in developing countries. On the other hand, all earlier investigations mainly focus on gated community’s forming reasons, limited public physical space and social segregation. Only few of them have explored the residents’ perception of common space and their relationship with space. So this research tries to evaluate common spaces in terms of user’s satisfaction especially in the Malaysian context. 2.1. Gated Community in Malaysia “Gated Community and Guarded Neighborhood” was defined by “Department of Town and Country Planning” as a group of residents living in a fenced, guarded area (2010). These areas can be either high-rise property such as condominium or bungalow, terrace and detached houses (section 6 of the Malaysian Strata Title Act 1985). They follow a mixture of security, privacy and wealthy lifestyle of their residents. Therefore, four types of gated