Abstract
It has been argued that a livable and sustainable city can only be achieved if the community is directly involved and participates in the creation and management of the city’s environment.3 It is unfortunate, however, that often little information is available on a community’s potential and problems in this area. This chapter will describe the way in which an Indonesian kampung, i.e., an urban village (or “squatter settlement” to some biased eyes), with limited support from external sources — the state, the private sectors, and the professionals — has successfully managed public places to create a livable and vibrant environment. Based on the traditional Javanese ideas of rukun (social harmony, communality) and gotong royong (sharing burdens, mutual cooperation), the kampung, supported by a strong community organization, has been able to create public places with limited environmental and economic resources. External support and efforts toward strengthening the community, however, are needed to face the rapid and unprecedented urbanization, modernization, and globalization that are putting more pressure on the kampung.
Instead of the spelling “kampong” in many English dictionaries, “kampung” is the standard spelling used in Indonesia.
This study was funded by the Department of Architecture and the Environmental Studies Center, both at the Gajah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
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Notes
Bakti Setiawan, “Local Dynamics in Informal Settlement Development: Case Study Yogyakata, Indonesia,” unpublished dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1998; Dwita Hadi Rahmi and Bakti Setiawan, “Perancangan Kota Ekologi,” PP-PSL, Dir. Jen Pendidikan Tinggi, Dept. PandK, Jakarta, 1999.
See his interesting book on The Social History of an Indonesian Town (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995).
Seitawan.
Based on his intensive observation of one kampung in Yogyakarta, Guinness interestingly described how kampung people practice the Javanese traditional ideas of rukun and gotong royong. He argued that it is through these two values that the kampung community has been able to cope with such unprecedented pressures. See further in his book Harmony and Hierarchy in a Javanese Kampung (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986).
More information on KIP can be found in Taylor, “Evaluation of the Jakarta Kampung Improvement Program,” in Reinhard J. Skinner et al. (eds.), Shelter Upgrading for the Urban Poor: Evaluation of Third World Experiences (Manila: Island Publishing House, 1987).
More information and a discussion on the concepts of rukun and gotong royong can be found in R.M. Koentjaraningrat, Javanese Culture (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989), Robert R. Jay, Javanese Villagers: Social Relations in Rural Modjokuto (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1969), and Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Discussions on the concept and practice of the RT and RW in Indonesia’s kampungs are presented by Patrick Guinness and John Sullivan, Local Government and Community in Java: An Urban Case-Study (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Amos Rapoport argued that cultural background has an important role in influencing an individual’s perception of environmental pressure; see his book The Meaning of Built Environment: A Non-Verbal Communication Approach ( Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publication Inc., 1982 ).
This approach has been used by Haryadi. He found that the more stable the residences in the kampung, the more people depend on kampung facilities; see his publication “Residents’ Strategies for Coping with Environmental Press: Relation to House-Settlement System in a Yogyakarta Kampung, Indonesia,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1989.
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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Rahmi, D.H., Wibisono, B.H., Setiawan, B. (2001). Rukun and Gotong Royong: Managing Public Places in an Indonesian Kampung . In: Miao, P. (eds) Public Places in Asia Pacific Cities. The GeoJournal Library, vol 60. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2815-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2815-7_6
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