Page 11 - FMH7

Sarah Kendzior writes: The problems that existed in the neigh- borhood - poverty, lack of opportunity, struggling populations denied city services - did not go away. They were simply priced out to a new location.” – is this what is happening in Jakarta? Poorer people are now forced to move to Bekasi/Boogor/Depok, but there is little government policy to help them economically?
A: The peri-urban area of Jakarta has indeed been absorbing people who have troubled finding a place in Jakarta, but such development is also due to the availability of jobs in those areas. When an industrial zone was created there for instance, lower class workers would move to the area instead of moving to Jakar- ta. They were largely accommodated by nearby kampung . When factories closed down or scaled down, for instance, during the monetary crisis in the late 1990s, many workers who were laid off re-entered Jakarta and worked in the informal sectors. The central government then allowed “unused” spaces in the city (such as under elevated highways) to be used as (temporary) shelters for these informal workers. This is the way the govern- ment assisted the poor that is by allowing temporary occupa- tion of state land. Jakarta continues to attract migrants who are undocumented (by statistic) and they move between the city and the peri-urban areas. I believe the dissolution of informal land market due to land certification (which as I said earlier is a form of gentrification) has made Jakarta more unaffordable and this has made or will make the peri-urban areas an alternative place for living.
ral and the urban have a strong linkage. Indonesians (less today than before) recognize seasonal migration – where farmers would go the city to work instead of waiting in the village for the harvest season. Historically villagers and urban working class would diversify their livelihood in order to maximize chances of survival. They occasionally worked in both the city and the countryside. The rural and the urban are better seen as a continuum.
Most of the articles I have read only talk about Jakarta. Is gentrification happening in a similar or different way in other cities: Surabaya, Semerang, Yogyakarta? Is it happening much slower in those cities?
A: If we are talking about large projects, we can say other cit- ies are slower but they follow similar pattern of development not less because major developers (-developing new towns and superblocks) are largely from Jakarta as their businesses expand. The local developers are more timid but they contin- ue to emulate the style of the big players from the capital city. A Note on difference: The government’s Kampung Improve- ment Project mentioned earlier is considered most successful in Surabaya; Semarang has a reputation of gentrifying (or better revitalizing) its colonial town; Solo (under Jokowi) is considered successful in relocating vendors from streets to market places.
“Trisakti university urban and spatial planning expert Yayat Supriyatna said the pathology of gentrification and urban renewal was that they created ethnic divisions that sowed the seeds of conflicts. Poor city planning contributed to the targeting of ethnic Chinese in the May 1998 bloody riots, he added.” Could you elaborate on this at all?
A: Jakarta (and some other cities) was historically established according to “ethnic” quarters. It was a slave town during
the VOC era (17-19th C). Slaves were brought in from dif- ferent places, and the Chinese and the European too were “quartered.” On this historical basis alone, we can’t say that recent urban renewal has created ethnic division. The early 20th C Dutch colonial planning project (or should we call it gentrification project) was to move from ethnically or racially based spatial organization to that based on class, so you would have well-off European living together with Chinese and other ethnic groups. This class-based planning strategy however was not followed by colonial census category which still retained ethnic categories under three major groups: the European, the Oriental (basically refer to Chinese) and the indigenous. The impact of this census category is deep and it continues until today. The category was nurtured by Suharto regime to both assimilate and discriminate ethnic Chinese. It is true that the Chinese is economically powerful (many major developers are ethnic Chinese) but they are politically pariah so they can easy serve as scapegoat should the economy went wrong (such as the 1998 financial crisis etc). Ethnic Chinese has been a favorite target of social unrest since colonial time (massacre of this ethnic group already took place in Batavia/ Jakarta in 1744). What is troubling is how the postcolonial political regime (such as that of Suharto) continued to replay this violence. This little historical background may be useful to understand issues around class, ethnicity and space.
Of course rising property prices does benefit those who own their houses, but only on the condition that they want to sell. Other- wise, rising property taxes also creates problems for them. And for those that rent, increasing prices force them to move to other areas. Because of the high level of people renting in Melbourne/ Berlin/NY, rising prices has caused a relatively quick change
of the population of certain suburbs. Do you know whether the rate of people who live in family homes in gentrifying areas in Indonesia is higher? Does this change how the process of gentrifi- cation occurs?
A: For sure large proposition of people in Jakarta are tenants of informal settlements like kampung. The government however has never taken up rental housing sector seriously. The rent
I think would increase with formalization of kampung’s land,
(I don’t have the statistics) but I believe tenants /workers still prefer to stay close to where they work which would include gentrified areas. One can have a walk behind any shopping mall to find kampung neighborhood which offers rooms for rent.
It is completely unregulated. I am not sure if I understand the question about developers... but developers would prefer to buy land still under informal land market as this would be much less expensive and (as holder of Location Permit) they can sell the land off according to the formal market price (presumably after it is developed into a housing estate).
To what extent are the changes of Indonesiam cities also due to large numbers of people moving away from the countryside/ villages to seek urban employment opportunities/education/ lifestyle?
A: To a large extent though I don’t know the statistic. Villages today have become more urban with de-ruralization, but the