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Habitat III: Who belongs in the city?
The late governor Ali Sadikin said in 1977 “people that are forced to live in the margins of the city are those who need more attention and to receive the benefits of development.” Residents replied, “we want to be guided, so that we can do business without the fear of being targeted by the police.”
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Vivianti, 35, lives with her husband and their twin sons Kevan and Kevin, 2, in the shack under the Tomang-Pluit toll road in Pejagalan. They had been living there since 2010. Before eviction, they sold meatballs but they had their meatball cart destroyed during the eviction. JP/Seto Wardhana
(JP/Seto Wardhana)
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ommuting in and out of Jakarta is characterized by packed buses, crowded trains, congestion and pollution. While apartment buildings proliferate, attracting residents with their “investment potential”, the poor are gradually pushed to the periphery. It leads to a burning question: Who belongs in the city?
We tend to forget that Jakarta extends beyond the special capital region (DKI). In developing business centers, we are left with the issue of finding space for housing and other residential needs. It makes us wonder whether or not a director general or deputy minister should coordinate the capital.
Jakarta is home to 9.7 million people at night, but 12.7 million people inhabit the city in the daytime according to 2014 data. The disparity of 3 million people can be accounted for by adults who commute to the city by day but reside outside the city with their families.
Naturally, the Jakarta workforce resembles a pyramid with the richest few at the top and the impoverished masses at the bottom.
Some people reside in Jakarta — in luxury houses, apartments, dense villages or on the outskirts of the city, while others reside outside the capital in Bekasi, Tagerang, Depok and Bogor or even in Karawang and Rangkasbitung.
If we divide the pyramid by location, most likely the upper middle class can afford to live closer to the center of the city and those who possess less wealth further outside the center of the city. We watch the consequences of this every day, passengers aboard a train or a bus smashed in like canned sardines and immobile automobiles frozen in traffic.
We often complain about global inequality. It is said that roughly 67 people control the assets for 1.5 billion people. In terms of inequality, Indonesia remains below the average ASEAN country. While equality is increasing in Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, Indonesia’s income gap is widening. The GINI index measurement moved up from 0.35 in 2007 to 0.4 in 2015 according to the Central Statistics Bureau (BPS).
In Jakarta inequality is growing. A multitude of evictions have relocated low income residents to housing far from their jobs, severing their social and economic ties and adding to their living costs. The city has become increasingly exclusive.
At the end of 2015, World Bank identified the main causes of income gaps as “inequality of opportunity, unequal jobs, high wealth concentration and low resilience among the poor”. Indonesia has ratified the UN-Habitat Agenda, which states the right of every person to receive adequate nutrition and housing. It implies spatial justice, people’s right to have access to public services and security of tenure, to be affordable to everyone.
If this cannot be achieved due to soaring property prices, then the consequence is to stop serving the concentration of capital. It is the government’s responsibility to induce growth centers in areas to deliver space for every citizen and regulate the market. There are mechanisms available to the government, including controlling land usage, allocating specially designated areas, housing management through co-ops, assistance for land registration and President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s kampung deret (village neighborhoods).
Many of the evicted settlements occurred before the Law on Water Resources, and its regulations, Government Regulation No. 38/2011, and some occurred before independence.
Efforts have been lacking to enlighten citizens on spatial plans or on how to build along rivers. Various rights to register land, including the 1961 Agrarian Law or Government Regulation No. 24/194 on registering land without documents, have not been explained to people in villages. Meanwhile Jokowi’s agenda “Nawacita” requires citizens to be knowledgeable as a prerequisite of human development.
The late governor Ali Sadikin said in 1977 “people that are forced to live in the margins of the city are those who need more attention and to receive the benefits of development.” Residents replied, “we want to be guided, so that we can do business without the fear of being targeted by the police.”
Instead of evictions that involve hundreds of police, military personnel, public order officers, costly equipment and clouds of asbestos fiber escaping from roofs during demolitions, why not help people decide on optimal solutions and to resettle peacefully without destroying their assets?
There are many groups of volunteers and academics who have been working in villages and have appealed to the governor for participatory approach. This week, Indonesia is attending the Habitat III - UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in Quito. It is difficult to imagine what ideas will represent Jakarta in this conference, especially in response to the sustainability challenge.
A key question that the government needs to answer is: Who belongs in the city?
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The writer, an architect and urban planner, is a member of the Settlement Forum (Forkim).
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