(Capital) Cities for People:
Future Of Indonesian Cities?
Originally published on September 7th, 2019 on toposcope.id
The relocation of Indonesia’s capital city seems to become a concrete plan already. The initial plan and design criteria have been made public, broadcasted by the Department of National Development and Planning of Indonesia (Bappenas) along with the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing (PUPR) on August 1st, 2019. The government mentioned three criteria, i.e., the new capital has to reflect the national identity; ensure social, economic, and environmental sustainability; and create a city that is smart, modern, and following an international standard. Nothing wrong with these criteria. In fact, these criteria have to be reflected in every urban project.
What’s interesting about this new capital initial plan is the (very tangible) interpretation of the design criteria to the urban design. Many urban design buzzwords are mentioned, e.g., people-oriented city, city morphology and function, blue and green infrastructure integration, a city in the forest, public and community spaces, new urbanism, green building, compact and inclusive city, integrated public transport, smart city, and so on. As an urban designer, it is intriguing to find terms that are very familiar to us in urban design practice to be used in such a public forum.
Two topics that piqued my interest the most because I have explored these topics for almost six years are people-oriented city and new town masterplanning. In this short article, I will explore these two topics concerning the subject of Indonesia’s capital relocation plan.
“I sum up that in 50 years nobody has systematically looked after a good urban habitat for Homo sapiens. We have written very few books about it. There’s been very little research done. We definitely know more about good habitats for mountain gorillas, Siberian tigers, or panda bears than we do know about a good urban habitat for Homo sapiens. Nobody has taken an interest.” (Jan Gehl, in an interview with the American Society of Landscape Architects)
PEOPLE-ORIENTED CITY
As urbanites (more than half of the earth population), we instinctively understand what makes a good city. Why? Because we know what makes a bad city. If we hate the morning commuting traffic jam, then we know that a good city is a city without traffic jams that have reliable public transport. If we feel uncomfortable walking in the pedestrian because of the abnormal condition and unpleasant climate, then we know that a good city is a city with a comfortable pedestrian experience. If we feel that the city public spaces are not made for every kind of people (from kids to the elderly), then we know that a good city is a city that is made for every type of people. And so on, you get my point. In short, a people-oriented city is a city that is developed catering to all the people’s basic needs, as simple as that.
To understand how and why the topic of the people-oriented city first emerged, it is essential to refer to at least two points of view: Jane Jacobs’s and Jan Gehl’s. More than fifty years ago, they came up with the topic of people-oriented city concept, one in New York and one in Copenhagen (almost in the same period although they did not know each other at the time). This concept emerged as the opposition to the status quo at that time: massive redevelopment plan by the government (e.g., highways, high-density housing, and new towns). Does it sound similar to the condition in Indonesia right now? Well, although it happened in a different place and time, the situation is indeed quite similar. Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl contested the status quo for the people-first quality of the existing cities.
It is important to note that Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl are not typical urban designers, but first urban activists and observers. Hence, this people-oriented city concept emerged based on their observation of daily life in the city, not based on what they think is an ideal city. For instance, based on their observation, qualities that promote a people-oriented city are: functional public and community spaces; urban spaces where every kind of people are free to roam around; people know each other hence naturally protect each other; multi-functions (not only places to live) so that it is easy to find anything in proximity; a mix between old and new buildings; and with enough density of people. With these criteria, what kind of areas that you imagine in the city that you live in?
The question is if we know how would a people-oriented city look like, does it mean that we all know how to design it? Here’s the essence of an urban designer, as elaborated by Jane Jacobs (1961), “Instead of attempting to substitute art for [city] life, city designers should return to a strategy ennobling both to art and to [city] life: a strategy of illuminating and clarifying life and helping to explain to us its meanings and order — in this case helping to illuminate, clarify and explain the order of cities…”
In essence, as urban designer, we experience cities just like anyone do. The difference, is that we further analyse our experience in the city, observe what the public experience, investigate the interrelation between city form (the tangible and intangible qualities) and city life, understand what makes a good city, and of course designing urban spaces — along with the city life. The emphasis on city life as something interrelated to urban space is crucial because, without city life, urban spaces will be a no man’s land.
Unfortunately, the phenomena of a no man’s land city (usually referred to as a ghost town), happened in many cities in developing countries. Here’s one of the realities where every urban designer needs to be aware of.
“It used to be that the best architects did the biggest work while the smaller work was left to all the other ones. Now, it is the opposite. While Pritzker Prize-winning architects are designing vodka bottles and necklaces, unknown developer/architects are building entire cities from the ground-up in the Middle East and China. In the age of the ‘scratch-built metropolis’ the call for (good) architects to return to big design is more critical than ever.” (Visionary Cities: vol.1)
NEW TOWN MASTERPLANNING
When Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl were basing their arguments on the people-first quality of the existing cities that needs to be preserved, Le Corbusier, a French architect, were basing his arguments on the bad quality of the French cities at that time. Because of the rapid development during the Industrial Revolution, the quality of city life and spaces were drastically plummeting. Uncontrollable city development results in issues for the people living in the city concerning, e.g., health, sanitation, and security. These pressing issues demanded a revolution in the way of designing and developing the city. Does it sound similar to the situation in Indonesian cities too? Here’s where Le Corbusier manifested his concept of an ideal city, “I invented the word ‘La ville radieuse’ (Radiant City): architecture, urban design and urban planning are in fact one problem only. They demand one solution only, and this is the work of one profession only [architecture profession].” (Interview of Le Corbusier with BBC in 1958)
Le Corbusier imagined developing cities from scratch, where ideal city spaces are possible to be created. This pure imagination was designed to be implemented in many cities worldwide, including the city of Paris, France. Le Corbusier redesigned an old part of Paris with all its problems to be demolished, changed to a series of high-rises with proper distances between each other, resulting in a cleaner, more structured, and healthy city environment. Fortunately, this design was not realised, hence the quality of Paris old towns are preserved until today. However, the fact is that this idea of creating cities from scratch has since been adopted worldwide. The temptation of creating an ideal city from scratch became an irresistible choice for public and private city developers alike.
Then you might ask, “what is the relation between Le Corbusier’s idea of an ideal city and Indonesia’s new capital city?” Brasilia, Brazil’s new capital city that was developed from scratch in 1956, which is mentioned by the Head of Bappenas as one of the best practices of capital city relocation, was designed heavily based on Le Corbusier’s La ville radiuse idea (Holston, 1989). Brasilia example is crucial to understand the relation between the urban design of the new capital city to the successes and failures it brings. When the uniqueness of the design (this city is shaped like a humongous bird if you see it from the outer space) has successfully become a new symbol of Brazil (a criterion that is also referred to by the Indonesian government for its new capital), there are a lot of issues emerged from the same design. Some of the problems are the inhumane scale of the cities (it is almost impossible to walk around in this city because of its enormous city block sizes); the heavy car dependency (most city spaces are mono-functional hence private vehicle is needed to move around the city); and social segregation (the contrast between the heavily planned administrative centre with the favela surrounding the city is appalling) to name a view.
So, what’s wrong with Le Corbusier’s idea of designing cities from scratch? If eviction is unnecessary, the land is available, and environmental risk is minimum (a combination of situations that are very unlikely to happen in a project), isn’t it logical to build cities from scratch? From many discourses about a new town, the main issue in this kind of approach in developing cities is indeed not only in the initial idea or the design itself but more on the overall process of developing the city.
Hence the next question will be: what are the typical processes in developing a city? In general, the urban design process can be divided into four significant processes (Carmona, 2014): design process; development process; management process; and space in use. If we think of urban design as a culinary process, the time that you need from preparing/designing the food to consuming the food might take on average one to two hours. In comparison to constructing a building, the whole process might take on average one to two years. While for a new town masterplanning, the time you need until the new town is fully finished might take at least twenty to thirty years. The main issue with this lengthy process is that the design process, which might ‘only’ take six to twelve months, will substantially determine the succeeding three processes. Moreover, even without knowing what might happen in the future, a post-occupancy study is quite rare in the realm of urban design (Carmona, 2014).
For instance, Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) New Town in Tangerang, Indonesia started its development process in 1989 with an area of approximately 6,000 hectares (the first phase of the new capital city of Indonesia is planned to be 2,000 hectares). Thirty years since it started, this new town has been operational, although not yet reached its original target, e.g., today’s population is still one-third of the initial goal (Keeton, 2011). For the original designer (one of them is Doxiadis Associates, a Greek design consultant) who designed it in 1994 to know how their design is eventually built took a relatively long time. With this lengthy process, urban design processes become complex and often diluted from the original plan. What was designed in 1994 might not fit with the condition of twenty-five years after that, or even five years, or even one year after that. Hence, one of the keys in developing a sustainable new town is in the ability to adapt — not naturally adapt like living things but, consciously planned and designed adaptation as part of the whole urban design process.
“As cities are increasingly densifying, are the lessons of Western and Northern Europe still relevant?”, asked the interviewer.
“Yes, because I see no signs that homo sapiens will not be homo sapiens in the future”, Jan Gehl replied.
(Q&A: Jan Gehl on Making Cities Healthier and the Real Meaning of Architecture. Metropolis Magazine. August 11th, 2015. Mikki Brammer)
NEW (CAPITAL) CITY — FOR PEOPLE?
As mentioned earlier in this article, in the past six years, the topic of people-oriented city and new town masterplanning has been my ambition, and I have explored them through academic and professional works. From my exploration, I can conclude that in Asian cities, the implementation and interpretation of the people-oriented city concept are far from ideal. What I found while practising as an urban designer and master planner in many Asian cities are designing cities from scratch. The problem is, while new town projects with enormous impacts to the environment (average size of the new town is at least 300–500 hectares) are the main commodity for the private and public developer in many Asian cities, not many researchers and urban experts are tackling this issue, especially in Indonesia.
This exploration reached its turning point in the summer of 2017 when I went to Paris (France) and Tianducheng (China), where I incidentally found two Eiffel Towers, one trying to copy the other. This striking phenomenon depicts the very idea of this graduation project — to juxtapose the two topics: Gehl’s ‘cities for people’ (depicted by Paris old town and many other European old towns as the ideal ‘cities for people’) and Le Corbusier’s (1947) ‘the city of tomorrow’ (Tianducheng new town and many other new towns).
In short, the question explored through my research in TU Delft was, “how to create cities for people, from scratch?”
Back to the topic of Indonesia’s new capital city, I did not expect that this question will be relevant to the current situation. To answer this question, the two topics (people-oriented city and new town masterplanning) that have been briefly discussed in this article needed to be summarised concerning the subject of Indonesia’s new capital city. There are at least five summaries:
First, one of the main essences of the people-oriented city concept is the emphasis of the urban design based on basic human needs. People need to be the centre of the urban design, specifically for this new capital city of Indonesia: the people of Indonesia. This emphasis on Indonesia’s people is vital since our needs will be different from people from other countries. Even for Indonesian, with the diversity that we have, it is almost impossible to find one generalisation for all Indonesians. Only one thing that unites us all: we are all homo sapiens, with similar biological and sociological needs. This is the very principle of Jan Gehl’s people-oriented city concept.
For example, as a human being, regardless of your origin, we all have the basic need to move on foot, as it is to fulfil our social, recreational, or well-being needs (Gehl, 2013). Hence, cities ability to encourage their people to walk easily to reach their daily destinations are often considered as the indicator of their liveability and competitiveness. From this seemingly simple indicator, the impact on the urban design criteria is enormous: to promote the seamlessness of the walking experience, some of the preconditions are, e.g., integrated public transport, compact urban form and land use, properly designed public spaces, comfortable natural and artificial climate, enough green spaces, and so on.
Second, since the governmental function will be the primary function of this new capital city, the urban design has to reflect the understanding of how this governmental function performs. Not merely from the symbolic recognition of the hierarchy of the government, but more from the understanding of the daily function of the government. For example, the relationships between governmental institutions: what kind of city structure will encourage collaboration between institutions? Or the relationship between the civil servants and the institutions: how is the daily commuting pattern of the civil servant? What kind of city structure will improve the quality of life of the civil servants? These questions can be answered by first investigating how the current governmental functions perform in Jakarta.
Apart from governmental function, this new capital city will, in essence, be a self-sustaining township. Hence, primary city functions like a residential area, recreational areas, and workplaces need to be planned just like a typical city would be planned. The key is, to come back to the basic understanding of how Indonesian people perform their daily life. Taking inspirations from best practices are of course important, but when the interpretation of these best practices to the urban design is not suitable for the basic needs of the Indonesian people, the result to the city life might not be good. When one of the criteria of the new capital city is to reflect the national identity of Indonesia, these design criteria of daily living spaces are the ones that should reflect the national identity.
Third, when the problem of most new towns lies in their urban design processes, conscious adaptation is vital. This adaptation needs to be reflected in all four processes of urban design of the new capital city.
In the design process, a coherent urban design that considers the place-shaping continuum is needed. For sure, there is no timeless design in the realm of urban design. Hence a master plan is still required so that the process of adaptation (or commonly referred to as an amendment in the field of urban design) can be carried out. This periodic amendment can at least ensure that the design can be adapted, adjusting to future changes.
In the development and management process, planned flexibility is needed. While this new capital city will be initially developed by the public sector, along the way, the role of the private sector will be critically required for both processes. The planned flexibility is needed to balance this duality of function between the public and private sectors. The result of the role imbalance is the current condition of new towns in Indonesia, where private sectors heavily dominate both development and management processes.
In using the urban space, our behaviour as the city user will determine the success of this new capital city. Naturally, people will use urban spaces based on their instinct. Hence urban design is sometimes unable to predict this array of different behaviours, resulting in the improper use of the urban spaces. Here is where adaptations need to be appropriately managed both by the user and the manager (the government).
Fourth, developing a new capital city might take a relatively long time (at least twenty to thirty years). Therefore, a future-oriented visioning process of this new capital city will be relevant now first and foremost. The ‘what if’ questions are essential to be asked in this early phase of the urban design process when the development risk is relatively much lower in comparison to the other processes. The government’s decision to open this design process to the public by involving urban development experts (such as the Indonesian Urban Design Association (IARKI), the Indonesian Architect Association (IAI), and the Association of Planners (IAP) is worthy of appreciation. Next is to keep an eye on the progress of this process.
Lastly, the development of this new capital city should be reflected as the crucial momentum to change the ‘business as usual’ paradigm of city development in Indonesia. This paradigm shift will need first and foremost the young generation as the driving force. Why? Because the current young generations are the ones that will be the crucial figures of Indonesia’s future. With this reasoning, the contribution of the young generation from diverse expertise and parts of society will be essential. As explained earlier, as urbanites, we all know by heart what makes a good city. Therefore, whoever you are, whatever your occupation or background, let’s contribute to the development of this new capital city, with the hope of creating better and more humane Indonesian cities.
Source:
Carmona, M. (2014). The place-shaping continuum: A theory of urban design process. Journal of Urban Design, 19(1), 2–36.
Gehl, J. (2013). Cities for people: Island press.
Holston, J. (1989). The modernist city: An anthropological critique of Brasília. University of Chicago Press.
Jacobs, J. (1992). The death and life of great American cities. 1961. New York: Vintage.
Keeton, R. (2011). Rising in the East: Contemporary New Towns in Asia: International New Town Institute, SUN
Maas, W. S. A. and Waugh, E., 2009. Visionary Cities.
