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Has the speed of gentrification in Indonesia been increasing in the last five years, or has the financial crisis slowed it down significantly? In what way?
A: I think we need a working definition of gentrification as I don’t know what exactly you mean by the term and what kind of association you have in mind. Perhaps your definition is broad which is beyond a revival of an old neighborhood to attract investment? In Jakarta we have a whole section of old Batavia waiting for investors to gentrify, but no one seems to care except a tiny circle of conservationist, heritage society and Dutch archi- tects and behind them their government. If your notion of gen- trification refers to the building of a whole new neighborhood after clearing an area, then we have examples such as the 1000 towers project you have noted, and the upper middle class su- perblocks in the city which have proliferated after the monetary crisis. The 1000 towers is one example of how private sectors have gone into the business of building apartments for lower income population. It fails of course for most of the buyers are upper middle class. It is beyond the reach of the poor and it is not for workers in the informal sectors who now have to decide if the city has a space for them to live. If you stretch the practice of gentrification to include land certification (which follows the World Bank’s formalization of informal land market) then we can say that the speed of gentrification has been increasing.
According to Davidson, 2009, p. 305: Land clearing to make way for Jakarta’s large development projects has often been conducted by “gangs of thugs” who have “used disproportion- ate force, including rape and murder, to evict tens of thousands of squatters, renters and landowners”. The UN human rights Watch have also made reports about evictions in Jakarta. Any comments about this? Does this still happen often? Is there finan- cial compensation for these people if this happens? (and is the compensation money distributed fairly?)
A: I don’t know the source of Davidson. Gangs of thugs are part of Indonesian’s political culture. They are subcontractors. The brutality that Davidson described would need to be contextual- ized. When did that happen and under what context? It is true that forced evictions were less controversial during Suharto regime when the central government has the power to use (mili- tary) force which could mean mobilizing paramilitary force such as gangs of thugs. But as I said earlier, even then, forced land clearing was considered costly socially and financially. Major land clearing thus took place outside the city. Forced eviction
or forced land clearing is never so easily done, especially today. The last storms of eviction were during the first term of governor Sutiyoso who administered Jakarta for two terms from 1997- 2007. He was the last appointed governor. After that Jakarta governor is elected by voters. There were some evictions during the time of Fauzi Bowo, but they were relatively mild. Today we see negotiations and compensation deals of all kinds between the governor and the kampung folks. Eviction for instance is not allowed until a place is provided (often near the evicted area). There are evictions, but of a different manner.
Does government or private developers ever make any at- tempts to talk to and collaborate with people in an area about the things they want before development projects begin?
A: If you look at the recent governor (Jokowi – well he is now president), he is known for his capacity to talk to people,
so the answer to your question is yes, but that doesn’t mean that we are seeing the practices of participatory planning
as known in the West. We also heard that Jokowi likes the design proposal of a new kampung for people who need to be relocated to restore a water catchment area. The proposal came from the Urban Poor Consortium, but we don’t know if it will actually be built accordingly. There were also instances of collaboration between architects, business sectors and people to develop an area, for instance in 1989 (?) the Citra Niaga project in Samarinda which involved street vendors
in the whole processes of design and planning to revital-
ize a market place. There was also a case of gentrification
(in 1995?) of a kampung area in Bandarhardjo, Semarang, Central Java which was very much a product of collaboration between the kampung dwellers and the architect / planner. These two practices took place during the Suharto era, so we can’t say that everything is top-down.
Often the idea of Gentrification is sold on the idea of “Trickle- down-economics”, that is, if richer, middle class people are al- lowed to move into an area, the economic benefits will trickle down to everyone. (However, the theory of trickle-down economics does not usually play out like that in practice.) Is this how gentrification projects are promoted to the public in Indonesia?
A: The Indonesian development policy is indeed based on
the assumption of the trickle down economics, so yes I think gentrification follows that assumption. The design of earlier new housing estate (from the 1970s) in some parts of Ja- karta shows such intention. Their streets are narrower and the houses are modest so if one walks from kampung to that new neighborhood one gets a strong sense of mutual adap- tation between the two neighborhoods. There is a mutual acknowledgement and sense of dependency. The later new real estate housing is largely designed to accommodate cars and their houses are in stark contrast to kampung. In Hous- ing Expos which I attended almost every year for my research in the 1990s, I don’t remember hearing or seeing brochures for upper middle class housing as well as lower class apart- ments that register the idea of trickle-down economics in new housing complex. Perhaps buyers are more attracted to new neighborhood with no kampung around them. Meanwhile de- velopers keep introducing design gated community concepts with 24-hour security system all of which have contributed to the sense of distance between the upper-middle class and the kampung. In short the gentrification projects are promoted as self-sufficient neighborhood even though in practice every- one know that it would rely on the supply of maids, drivers and vendors who live at nearby kampung.