Abstract
Indonesia has committed to accomplish “cities without slum” target in 2019 through the national program of Action Planning for Preventing and Improving the Quality of Urban Slum Settlements (RP2KPKP) launched in 2015. Nanga Bulik town in Kabupaten (Regency) Lamandau of Central Kalimantan Province is among those included in the program; the RP2KPKP of which has been completed in 2016. This paper focuses on how participatory approach has been applied in the planning process. The planning has employed mostly qualitative approach with documents study, field observation, and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) involving all stakeholders, complemented with quantitative one especially in the aspects of urban and architectural design. The findings have suggested that the community participation in Nanga Bulik case has gone beyond the requirement commanded by the Indonesian laws on development planning and spatial management to ensure the target achievement in 2019. It is crucial because a higher level of the plan implementability would ensure more sustainability of the slum improvement. Essential lessons can be learned from this real participatory planning, which could be the beginning of the third generation of planning in Indonesia.
Highlights
An important problem in housing considered typical to developing countries is the slum
It was noted that only around 6% of the population of the developed world lived in slums, but there is no such information in the most recent Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) data [1]
From the planning theory perspectives, it may go beyond participatory in the sense that people are willing to sacrifice for the benefits of the whole community, a construct that has its root in the Indonesian tradition of gotong-royong
Summary
An important problem in housing considered typical to developing countries is the slum. A similar main lesson can be learned, that participatory slum upgrading, especially in the community with heterogeneous nature of problems, is more appropriate than a simple relocation through the social housing Focusing on another slum upgrading in Recife, Brazil, de Vries [20] highlights the dualism in urban planning traditions, i.e., on the one hand the bottom-up and participatory planning, which is able to deal with the informal nature of many cities, and on the other the top-down, “technocratic”, and “neo-liberal” one that is considered as aiming at realizing the formal city. Through an informal planning studio, the communities have been empowered to map problems, challenges, and possible solutions, which could be accommodated in the development plans This slum upgrading, to a significant extent, is in parallel with the case of co-management between the municipal government and the slum dwellers in Porto Allegre mentioned previously [19]. A proposition can be formulated, that if people are aware of their slum problems and given every opportunity to utilize their knowledge, they will make efforts, to a maximum extent, to resolve them and participate enthusiastically in the planning and implementation alike
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