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The purpose of this paper is to present a socio‐legal case study, examining how the legal notion of “reasonable safety” provision has come to be constructed by municipal cemetery managers in relation to gravestones and other memorial structures over the last decade in England.

The paper takes a social constructionist approach to the subject of the case study. It is based upon a literature review of relevant law, policy and guidance, and on the results of qualitative face‐to‐face, semi‐structured interviews with a small sample of English municipal cemetery managers.

The issue of memorial safety illustrates the tensions that can arise between safety and conflicting priorities, in this case sensitivity to the bereaved. The paper shows that the simple promulgation of guidance will not automatically lead to it being accepted by all as “good practice”. The interviews show how organisations and individual managers have sought to make sense of, and render workable, their legal obligations, by drawing upon, and at times ignoring or adapting, available guidance.

The interview study is based upon a small non‐random sample, accessed via a single phase of enquiry in Spring 2008. The influence of fear of liability may manifest differently in other cemetery managers and/or change over time. In view of the novel, and powerful, “resisting‐forces” in the case of cemeteries direct comparison with the risk perception of managers in other parts of the built environment may be difficult.

Given the lack of existing research in the field of liability perception by landowners, the paper contributes to the analysis of the generic processes by which safety guidance is negotiated, and reconciled with competing drivers in the management of the built environment.

This paper aims to trace the development of Hong Kong's Happy Valley from a space associated with dangerous miasmas to the site of a racecourse, recreation ground and a series of cemeteries for the colony's foreign communities while examining the relationship between the exclusion of Chinese from Happy Valley and the notion of colonial order.

This paper makes use of empirical evidence from historical documents, such as newspapers and government records, and applies Michel Foucault's notion of the heterotopia as a theoretical model.

This paper provides insights into the relationship between space and power in the colonial setting. It demonstrates that the imposition of colonial order in Happy Valley was a process that involved the exclusion of Chinese and that the various ways in which this order was reinforced, contested and negotiated revealed it to be shallow and incomplete.

This paper sheds light on an underexamined but important colonial space in 19th and early 20th century Hong Kong and complicates the notion of colonial control.

This paper focuses on the morphological transformations of Cairo's historic cemeteries that currently form a significant part of historic Cairo designated by the UNESCO as a world heritage site. Cairo's historic cemetery continues to be a main burial ground for the city reflecting layers of funeral epochs. Besides offering burial grounds, Cairo's city of the dead had always hosted living functions including residential and crafts among other activities.

Adopting a historico-geographical approach, this study traces morphological transformations of the eastern necropolis of Cairo. Using analysis of archival documents, cartographic and photographic analysis of the eastern necropolis, the study detects changes on three major aspects: (1) impacts of the ever-growing urban city core; (2) transformation of the cemetery's internal urban fabric and (3) change of the size of the residential urban block inside the cemetery.

Findings highlight alarming transformations on the said aspects, threatening the historic value and the urban integrity of Cairo's eastern necropolis. This calls for rising necessities of documentation projects for Cairo's necropolis, as well as urgent necessity of strict applications of local laws of urban conservation.

Despite their rich urban variety, cemeteries have been rarely investigated within the scope of urban morphology. This paper is among the few works that investigate cemeteries using tools and approaches of urban morphology. It also calls for further applications of morphological investigations and wider adoption of morphological approaches for the study of historic cemeteries in order to support their preservation.

The purpose of this paper is to implement the istibdal waqf concept using a geographical information system (GIS) for the benefit of socio-economics and Muslim cemetery waqf management. GIS is a technique that provides clearer, precise and faster access to a location based on actual space data. It attempts to analyze the area that one wishes to develop to establish whether it fulfills the criteria set for istibdal.

This research was conducted qualitatively. The study begins with the development of the concept of istibdal waqf and the concept of GIS. The concept was developed by conducting a literature review of books, articles, newspapers, fatwa and circulars related to istibdal waqf and GIS. After the concept was formed, field studies were conducted on two mosques, namely, Jamek Jelutong Mosque and Masjid Jamek Sungai Nibong because both mosques have gravesites located within their compound. To obtain information on the problems faced by the mosques Jemaah community, researchers have interviewed the Mosque Committee Members and Jemaah Community in both mosques using the unstructured interviewing method. This process is essential in managing both material and spiritual for sustaining socio-economics of the society.

The results showed that by applying GIS technique could identify new land locations according to the criteria set by istibdal. Additionally, new location environments found through the GIS application can be viewed more clearly and accurately than using the manual method. The findings also revealed that some of the mosque managers and the heirs of the waqf grave land were not open-minded in accepting the istibdal concept of the grave that had been allowed by the Syarak until the process of expanding the mosque was affected. The study also found that the maslahah consideration was considered between doing istibdal waqf and not doing istibdal waqf, the maslahah of doing istibdal waqf is greater because general (umum) maslahah should be prioritized compared to the special (khusus) maslahah. In addition, this effort can appreciate the morality and ethics of waqf donors to donate their wealth or properties for benefit of society.

This study only focuses on Muslim cemetery waqf in Penang Island.

This study is expected to benefit both material and spiritual where Muslim cemetery site can be developed for expanding mosque site and consequently able to accommodate the increasing of Muslim using the mosque.

This study proposes the transformation of the concept of istibdal waqf from the traditional methods to modern and advanced methods using the GIS application. The study also demonstrates how the software for solving the real problem can be used, i.e. the problem of a limited mosque space for sharing space with a cemetery in Penang.