My grandmother’s house was surrounded by low fences with a one-meter-tall gate as an entrance. Then there was a long path with exotic fruit trees and flowers before the porch, before the front door. The house itself was surrounded by rambutan garden. It was an ideal preferred environment and territory for the family. At least that is how I remember that place from when I used to live there and the weekly visit later on.
Stereotypically the locals usually having a lot of kids, because they believe more kids give you more financial opportunity, and less access to education. Most of the generations who were born before the 80’s are fulfilling the hard labor market for the textile factories surrounding, which was started to operate at the 80’s. Due to lack of education, their lands usually being sold in little pieces to new settlers anytime they need money. As the parents get older, the remaining piece of land at the end will be divided for eight to nine children, so each kid will have small piece of land to build their house among the new settlers. Hence the rising of the density, resulted in smaller living area, and bigger environmental problems.
The village has changed physically and mentally, as I saw when I paid visit earlier this year. The wetland was converted into residential area, creeks have been used for untreated wastewater disposal, trees and birds are disappeared, and bunch of new settlers occupied more spaces. Once an ideally preferred environment and territory, now have less adequate physical setting as a preferable place to live. However, generations of local people who grew up in the village for decades still have the well-developed cognitive maps, positive feeling, as well as connection, both social connection to the community and to the land. In the meantime, conversation about forced eviction was getting more intense throughout the years. Local people predict eviction might happen anytime soon, and it will never be easy.
One of the solution offered by the government to avoid tumultuous on the day of forced eviction is by relocating the local people to a high apartment building with thousands of people living there. Here is when the problems of The Pruitt-Igoe Housing project replicates.
Forced eviction is a big problem in big cities throughout Indonesia, especially Jakarta. The relations between government and developer, plus lack of knowledge about social, psychological and pro-urban-poor economy system on physical removal, resulted in violence. As human is a territorial animal who are attached to a certain physical space, most of the local people refuse to be removed from their roots. Meanwhile the government never learn how to make a good urban planning to help transform a village to become an urban area without messing with the local people’s territory. Violence and human right abused have been used to overcome this situation. However, the local people usually give a good fight and government will face a hard time. Local people will fight well in their own territory the familiar place where they have control. In their territory, people also have a strong sense of community, cooperation, as well as social commitment to reach the same goal among the settlers: to remain stay in their own land.
It will not be easy to force local people to leave their territory and their root as they will suffer the loss of connection to the land where they feel accepted. Only in their own territory human and animal can do what they want, and functioned the most effective. More than that, losing the preferred physical, social, psychological environment will also cause them losing their social interaction among friends and bigger family circle. Meanwhile, the high-rise apartment buildings from the government designed with many intrinsic problems.
One of them is the absence of buffer zone. Human needs transition to move from private space to public space, thus a preferred territory needs to have semi-private and semi-public space, or at least one of them as a social buffer zone. As mentioned in earlier, my grandmother’s front yard can be seen as semi-public space, and the porch as semi-private space. Those two elements are luxury for the apartment designed for the relocation project. Government apartments usually around 30 floors high or more, consists of a row of tiny living areas with parallel entrances on the corridor.
This design gives a minimum transition from public space to private space, which often known as wasted space or defensible space. Without defensible space, the occupants don’t feel any responsibility to the corridor because they see it as a public space. The lack of ownership means no one will take care of the corridor unless the building has its own cleaner, but we talk about cheap housing here, with lack of services. The absence of caring on the corridor shown by the condition on the hallway of one of the cheap apartment that I visited couple years ago, it was dirty and smell like urine.
This situation creates to a lose-lose situation for the local people who become unrooted anywhere, they lost connection and territory to their land, and can’t cope with the new space. If only government help them with pre-familiarization to the new place, and change a little bit of the apartment design to give a buffer zone, it might work better.
Adjustment on the entrance gives more space for social buffer for a better transition from public space to private space by giving a semi private space. This little tweaks will give more vigilance to the occupants, make them caring the site more, and improve their well-being. Positioning window will help residents to have a general check towards the public space to give then the concept of transitioning.
However, I believe better option is to have a better urban planning with a pro mindset to poor urban citizen, to help keeping their preferable environment and territory, but also fit with the transition from a village to urban area.
Reference:
Lecture on Coping: territory, November 9, 2016
Humanscape, Chapter 8, Coping strategies: choice and control
The village has changed physically and mentally, as I saw when I paid visit earlier this year. The wetland was converted into residential area, creeks have been used for untreated wastewater disposal, trees and birds are disappeared, and bunch of new settlers occupied more spaces. Once an ideally preferred environment and territory, now have less adequate physical setting as a preferable place to live. However, generations of local people who grew up in the village for decades still have the well-developed cognitive maps, positive feeling, as well as connection, both social connection to the community and to the land. In the meantime, conversation about forced eviction was getting more intense throughout the years. Local people predict eviction might happen anytime soon, and it will never be easy.
One of the solution offered by the government to avoid tumultuous on the day of forced eviction is by relocating the local people to a high apartment building with thousands of people living there. Here is when the problems of The Pruitt-Igoe Housing project replicates.
Forced eviction is a big problem in big cities throughout Indonesia, especially Jakarta. The relations between government and developer, plus lack of knowledge about social, psychological and pro-urban-poor economy system on physical removal, resulted in violence. As human is a territorial animal who are attached to a certain physical space, most of the local people refuse to be removed from their roots. Meanwhile the government never learn how to make a good urban planning to help transform a village to become an urban area without messing with the local people’s territory. Violence and human right abused have been used to overcome this situation. However, the local people usually give a good fight and government will face a hard time. Local people will fight well in their own territory the familiar place where they have control. In their territory, people also have a strong sense of community, cooperation, as well as social commitment to reach the same goal among the settlers: to remain stay in their own land.
It will not be easy to force local people to leave their territory and their root as they will suffer the loss of connection to the land where they feel accepted. Only in their own territory human and animal can do what they want, and functioned the most effective. More than that, losing the preferred physical, social, psychological environment will also cause them losing their social interaction among friends and bigger family circle. Meanwhile, the high-rise apartment buildings from the government designed with many intrinsic problems.
One of them is the absence of buffer zone. Human needs transition to move from private space to public space, thus a preferred territory needs to have semi-private and semi-public space, or at least one of them as a social buffer zone. As mentioned in earlier, my grandmother’s front yard can be seen as semi-public space, and the porch as semi-private space. Those two elements are luxury for the apartment designed for the relocation project. Government apartments usually around 30 floors high or more, consists of a row of tiny living areas with parallel entrances on the corridor.
 |
| There’s a directness from social space (corridor) to private space (living area) without social buffer |
This design gives a minimum transition from public space to private space, which often known as wasted space or defensible space. Without defensible space, the occupants don’t feel any responsibility to the corridor because they see it as a public space. The lack of ownership means no one will take care of the corridor unless the building has its own cleaner, but we talk about cheap housing here, with lack of services. The absence of caring on the corridor shown by the condition on the hallway of one of the cheap apartment that I visited couple years ago, it was dirty and smell like urine.
This situation creates to a lose-lose situation for the local people who become unrooted anywhere, they lost connection and territory to their land, and can’t cope with the new space. If only government help them with pre-familiarization to the new place, and change a little bit of the apartment design to give a buffer zone, it might work better.
 |
| Changing the entrance position to create transition area |
Adjustment on the entrance gives more space for social buffer for a better transition from public space to private space by giving a semi private space. This little tweaks will give more vigilance to the occupants, make them caring the site more, and improve their well-being. Positioning window will help residents to have a general check towards the public space to give then the concept of transitioning.
However, I believe better option is to have a better urban planning with a pro mindset to poor urban citizen, to help keeping their preferable environment and territory, but also fit with the transition from a village to urban area.
 |
| Example on how Jogjakarta Provincial Government help village to keep preferable environment while transforming to urban area without relocating the locals |
Reference:
Lecture on Coping: territory, November 9, 2016
Humanscape, Chapter 8, Coping strategies: choice and control
