Resilience of Historical Urban Multi-ethnic Settlement: Entrepreneurship and Religiosity Concept of Gresik City

Abstract

Important aspects in continual development include economic and social developments, as well as environment protection. Social development aspect should concern political aspiration and local socio-culture as resilience of their local wisdom features. A review on urban resilience is more focused on economic and physical concepts, without developing the social concept. Objective of the study was to find out the resilience concept of Gresik City, which was the earliest description of a big trade port city in Indonesia, for example, Jakarta, Surabaya, and Semarang. The study applied morphology approach on spatial settings at historical urban multi-ethnic settlement through physical and non-physical observations, as well as validation through historical records and archives. The descriptive analysis of morphological pattern relates to activities on social, economic, and cultural aspects in order to obtain basic concept of social life. Morphological pattern of Gresik, which is dominated by multi-ethnic settlements, such as Arabs, Chinese, ex-Dutch-colonial, and the natives of Javanese and Madurese, has attracted traders from various nations and ethnics. History of the city as the center of Islamic learning and dissemination has formed the public of Gresik to have basic religious life, which is reflected on Islamic rituals. Settlement domination, which functions as household industries, craftsmanship, and small-scale trading, shows that entrepreneurship activities as socio-economy activities have highly supported daily religious ritual activities. Entrepreneurship and religiosity concept, which is formed and developed through long history of Gresik, represent the resilience of multi-ethnic societies at cities along the North Coast of Java.