Contested Riverscapes in Indonesia

MSEI Seed funding 2017

Major Indonesian cities are laced with rivers that have become key sites of contestation over urban development. These rivers are lined in part with informal settlements, often subject to flooding, and also the focus of formal development to meet the tourist market, attract global capital and transform the image of the city. These rivers have become subject to conflicting desires to upgrade existing informal settlements, to invest in flood control, and to replace such settlements with sites of middle-class consumption that are seen to attract global capital and tourism. This project investigates these conflicting forces and documents the key interconnections between informal settlement, formal redevelopment, and flood control. Bukit Duri/Kampung Pulo is a riverbank community along the Ciliwung River in Jakarta where the strip of informal settlement lining the river was demolished in 2015. Despite considerable resistance, these residents were forcibly evicted to various other forms of replacement housing. These communities flooded again in early 2018. The informal settlements of Tongkol and Kerapu remain threatened with eviction. In this case a community-based organization has mounted a campaign that includes rebranding the settlement as the ‘clean and green guardians’ of the river as well as a negotiated form of partial self-demolition.

Dovey, K., Cook, B. & Achmadi, A. (2019) ‘Contested Riverscapes in Jakarta: Flooding, forced eviction and urban image’, Space and Polity.