C) FIVE FOOT WALK WAY
One of the most distinguish, most said character of the shophouse is actually five foot walkways. This is a covered walkway along the road and is within the shophouse property line but it is for public use, it provides pedestrians shade from sun and rain. It’s a result from the Raffles Ordinances (1822) for Singapore which stipulated that “all houses constructed of brick or tiles have a common type of front each having an arcade of a certain depth, open to all sides as a continuous and open passage on each side of the street”. This practice spread to other States in British Malaya and by-laws with requirements for “verandah-ways of…at least seven feet measuring from the boundary of the road …..and the footway within any verandah-way must be at least five feet in the clear.”
The five foot walkway provides an interesting secondary urban fabric as the pedestrians walk through different shophouses with mysterious depth of sight. Often the five foot walk way also runs
the shophouses business by extending premises to the walkway.. or even trying to gain visual publicity to the public by exhibiting their items outside their premises.