Watchdog to push for public involvement in city planning

An urban studies group launched a monitoring program on Tuesday aimed at educating residents on Jakarta spatial planning and campaigning for more public participation in city planning.

Elisa Sutanudjaja, the Ruang Jakarta Center for Urban Studies program director, said continuous monitoring by the citizens was vital to ensure that the administration included important issues, challenges and demands into consideration when drafting spatial planning regulations.

“The city will be a better place for the people if they are more aware and active with their roles as citizens,” Elisa said during the Spatial Planning Monitoring Program’s launch.

She said that residents should be aware of violations by the government, and know that they have the right to file lawsuits over violations.

Activists have blasted the Jakarta administration’s regional regulation draft on spatial planning, saying that the draft discussions have not involved the public and failed to address a number of important issues.

The administration was criticized, for instance, for its lack of explanation regarding the population limit, set at 10 million, in the draft of the 2030 Jakarta spatial planning.

Experts and activists voiced concerns that the population limit would lead to consequences regarding social pluralism and possible evictions of people from lower economic classes.

The Law on Spatial Planning and the Law on Public Information Access mandate that each regional administration provide easy access to spatial planning information to residents living in their jurisdictions.

Irvan Pulungan, a researcher from the Indonesian Center for Environtmental Law (ICEL), said on Tuesday that the administration did not consider the real demand for public participation in the drafting process.

“There are public needs not being taken into consideration by the government and the government has also failed to provide important information on spatial planning to the Jakartan citizens,” Irvan said.

He added that, in the past few years, there has never been adequate monitoring of the administration’s policies on spatial planning regulation, which set framework for city development for the next 20 years.

“The result is public apathy over the spatial planning by the government,” Irvan said.

Based on last year’s Jakarta Citizen Coalition for 2030 survey of 2,000 respondents, 99 percent of Jakarta residents do not understand nor have they been asked for opinions for the city’s spatial planning.

The residents considered spatial planning a responsibility of the government, never knowing that the planning had or could have violated their rights, Irvan said.

“On the other hand, the citizens never realized that their actions may also violate spatial planning regulations, like when they build a driveway using part of the pedestrian area,” he said.

Governor Fauzi Bowo said earlier that he refused to totally revise the 2030 Jakarta spatial planning draft, as requested by a coalition of urban NGOs.

The 2007 Spatial Planning Law requires that each province submit proposals for new spatial plans two years after being issued, while regencies or cities had three years to submit plans.

Jakarta has failed to meet the deadline.