Public Housing in Colonial Indonesia 1900–1940

Abstract

The Provision of housing for the urban poor has been a problem of long standing in the Third World. In some countries efforts at housing supply go beyond events which began forty years ago after World War II when large numbers of people began moving to the cities of Latin Amercia, Africa, and Asia giving rise to uncontrolled urban settlements and causing crowded living conditions in the already built-up areas. In Southeast Asia some colonial governments recognized the housing problem at the beginning of the twentieth century and began programs to ameliorate housing shortages and to improve living conditions for the urban masses. The investigative housing commissions in Singapore beginning in 1907 and the faltering efforts of the Singapore Improvement Trust perhaps are the best known examples. They were the precursors of the Housing and Development Board established in i960 in whose structures live some 85 percent of the Singapore population today. Urban officials in colonial Indonesia, the former Dutch East Indies, also had concerns for the housing of the masses. The Dutch colonial government eventually passed legislation which in a mild way supported housing and- was concerned to some extent with housing construction. For their part, the large cities on Java were more active.