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ictims of forced evictions in Bandung, West Java, are finding it hard to adapt to their new lives in a low-cost rental apartment (rusunawa) far away from their former homes, which is a story of struggle very much similar to their counterparts in Jakarta — the capital is a big proponent of rusunawa as a solution to urban renewal.

One evictee, Iya, 67, said since he moved to a rusunawa he could not earn any money. He sold beverages before he was evicted.

“What will I sell on the fifth floor? I don’t even have any capital. I am ashamed that I have to beg for food now,” Iya said recently.

Since the eviction on July 26, 48 families were forced to move from Jl. Stasiun Barat to the Rancacili Rusunawa, 12 kilometers south of Bandung.

The Bandung administration had accommodated 37 families in rusunawa units while another 11 families had to cram on the floor, waiting for the completion of another rusunawa in Sadang Serang. “While they wait, they share the space divided only by thin plywood,” Rosid, another evictee, said.

During the eviction, 15 families had their businesses on Jl. Stasiun Barat demolished.

The provision of rusunawa for victims of forced evictions is not the best solution because it fails to involve the participation of affected communities and will create new social problems, young architects say in a discussion after watching American documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth over the weekend in a Bandung café.

In a discussion organized by Indonesia’s Architect Without Borders (ASF) and the Kabar Kampus student media group, Sri Suryani, an architect who helped the Bukit Duri community in South Jakarta, and Arip Yogiawan from the Bandung Legal Aid Institute (LBH Bandung), said participation was key to urban renewal.

The documentary by Chad Freidrichs tells the story of a failed urban renewal project in St. Louis, Missouri, in the US during the 1950s. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project was heralded as a breakthrough at the time.

Instead of upgrading the city slum, Pruitt-Igoe became a project that exacerbated class segregation. The centralized management of the 2,000 units of housing in 33 towers also contributed to Pruitt-Igoe’s slow decay.

In roughly 10 years, it became a hotbed of crime and poverty and eventually in 1970s the US government demolished Pruitt-Igoe.

Arip said the forced eviction in Kampung Kolase on the Cikapundung riverbank had successfully turned a densely populated kampung into Teras Cikapundung, a popular green area, especially on the weekend.

“But it created another problem. The happiness of middle and upper class residents in seeing their city become more orderly turns into a problem for the community evicted,” Arip said. “Relocation to rusunawa falls short of providing adequate support.”

Arip said the children who moved to rusunawa still went to school in Kampung Kolase. “It means added costs for them [because of the longer commute],” he said. He emphasized that forced evictions was developing into a serious problem because the administration, led by Mayor Ridwan Kamil, a very popular figure in social media, failed to involve the community’s participation in urban development. (evi)