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any are familiar with Singapore'€™s history of resettling its kampung residents to high-rise public housing in the 1970s and 1980s. The development process of the city-state is often referenced by various official statements and presentations on Jakarta'€™s plans.

A presentation by the Jakarta Housing Agency in a November 2014 symposium featured futuristic images that highly resembled Singapore'€™s Housing and Development Board apartment buildings, with a remark that they were comparable to Singapore'€™s. Recently, Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama casually referred to Singapore concerning traffic management and street racing.

I wonder, though, whether the Jakarta administration and population realize that Singapore is longing for the '€œkampung spirit'€. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his National Day speech in 2012 saw the loss of the spirit as '€œtroubling signs'€.

'€œUnconsciously, less interaction results in less consideration, maybe in more self-centered behavior, and maybe that explains why there is a rising trend of not-so-good behavior. We should do our best to be big-hearted to our neighbors, to our fellow citizens and, in fact, to our fellow human beings.'€

Last October, Singaporean Transportation Minister Khaw Boon Wan called for a '€œkampung spirit'€ in each train station to help in emergency situations such as technical breakdowns or terrorist sabotage, '€œmuch like close neighbors who will not hesitate to chip in and help when help is needed.'€

A public discussion '€œFinding Singapore'€ in July 2015 pointed out to the loss of the '€œkampung spirit'€ in the society'€™s transition from kampung to high-rise apartments.

Jakarta today is very different from Singapore in the 1970s. Jakarta'€™s current population is bigger and denser. The economy is more complex with a mix of global influences and establishments, national and local economic forces. Jakarta also needs to safeguard the kampung spirit of its kampung, because dismantling them would significantly affect urban resilience.

A kampung is typically constituted of houses that are built by its residents and of communal activities and interactions that rely on familiarity with its members. Johan Silas, a professor at the November 10 Institute of Technology (ITS) Surabaya, attributed the character of the city to its kampung. A kampung is a settlement form that predates the colonial town.

Kampung, however, are often discriminated against in development. Jakarta has continually bulldozed kampung or let them fall victim to gentrification. Last year was one of the most intense periods of forced eviction, with 30 neighborhoods demolished, 3,433 households and 433 businesses displaced in the first eight months.

One could argue that they were slums instead of kampung, but the term kampung is often used interchangeably with slums, taking away the emphasis from landscape sociability and replacing it with lack of infrastructure and land tenure.

Infrastructure and land tenure deficiency are often blamed on residents as the culprits who make the city disorderly while making money out of disorder.

Obtaining land tenure does not secure a kampung, because gentrification is still lurking. For example, the Pekojan area in West Jakarta had an important role in the spread of Islam in Jakarta by Muslim traders from India, Gujarat, Persia and Arabia, but local cultural practices evaporated in urban development along with market-driven changes. Designating old mosques as heritage buildings is good, but insufficient to preserve cultural practices as part of Jakarta'€™s urban history.

Kampung Luar Batang in North Jakarta is another example where market-driven pressure takes place. Portions of the kampung have been bought by developers. The kampung is the oldest one in Jakarta, with its history dating back to the year 1630.

My observation in Jakarta leads to three points of concern. First, the rise of evictions in 2015 and the governor'€™s promise to evict more (settlements) until 2017 (kompas.com, Jan. 8) are worrying for making evictions something normal and as a necessary evil to make Jakarta better. Forced eviction is condemned by local organizations and the international community.

The UN Habitat Report on Forced Evictions in 2014 stated, '€œForced evictions commonly result in
severe trauma and set back even further the lives of those that are often already marginalized or vulnerable in society.'€

Second, and more pragmatically, Jakarta needs its kampung. The report by the UN Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing in 2013 noted that 60 percent of Jakartan residents live in kampung. Kampung absorb the population when the city'€™s affordable housing program is insufficient or nonexistent. Housing in Jakarta gets increasingly unaffordable, even for recent university graduates with their entry-level salaries.

Third, kampung are more than their physical forms. Kampung are lives and livelihoods through a sharing of spaces, everyday encounters and mixed uses of homes as work spaces and spaces for social interactions. The spirit of social encounters is based on informality of relations and spaces that are constructed in the process.

Sure, kampung may not be ideal neighborhoods. Conflicts may occur among neighbors and social inequalities can take place. However, bulldozing them and gentrifying them are making the city more unequal and problematic.

It is ironic that most forced evictions in 2015 were for concrete embankments of waterways for flood alleviation, while floods in Jakarta are partly attributed to too much concrete.

A Tempo report on Feb. 18, 2007, after Jakarta'€™s massive flood, as well as a string of scholarly publications, have pointed to the conversion of green spaces to become shopping malls, apartments and other big developments as a significant factor that exacerbated Jakarta'€™s floods.

The immediate social media stardom of street vendors for their resilience during the Jl. MH Thamrin attack on Jan. 14 should be a reminder that Jakarta needs to reduce inequalities and to pay attention to the welfare of marginalized groups. Many of these vendors are residents of Jakarta'€™s kampung and are contributing to the urban character and economy.

To sum up, Jakarta needs its kampung, evictions are not normal and the city needs to address gentrification. Pushing kampung away by bulldozers and gentrifications are violations to the character of the city, are denials of urban history and are manifestations of social segregation and marginalization.

A resilient urban community keeps its '€œkampung spirit'€ alive. This requires recognition of kampung and their dwellers as inseparable parts of the city. It is the responsibility of the policymakers and lawmakers to construct policies and laws to make the good city a reality.

It is not about the glamorous developments and big infrastructure; it is about making a city by and for its people.