Conflicting images of kampung and kota in Jakarta

Jakarta is a complex city, a city of conflicts and a city of differences: the traditional and modern, the informal and formal, the unplanned and planned, the rich and poor, and the sacred and the worldly, often standing side by side. It presents as a complex of kampungs and, at the same time, a kota. This research responds to the question: Why do people want to continue living in kampungs despite the tensions and conflicts they experience, seemingly caused by excessive and ever-encroaching development of kit"? The question will be addressed through exploring the lived experiences of people in kampungs. It also looks at what kampung and kota are in Indonesian cities, particularly in Jakarta, through reviewing the literature and debates about kampungs (such as forms of community, social relationship and conflict) and kota (dealing with phenomena such as power and the role of government and elites in urban planning and development), and also through conducting fieldwork in Jakarta's kampungs. The thesis will expressly address ambiguities in these two terms, which complicate the discourse concerning their meanings in current Indonesia. Jakarta has, consciously or unconsciously, adopted the idea of kota-negara-separation between central government (power) and people, or between kit" and kampung. This separation has been retained through contemporary processes of modernization, even though it is no longer achieved by physical walls but rather by metaphorical walls, with the centralization of government arid the privatization of many strategic areas of kota, supported by government regulations including master plans. However kampungs, the traditional, spontaneous and diverse form of indigenous urban development in Indonesia, have grown organically and incrementally with the broader development of Jakarta over many years without planning guidance or regulations, building codes or centralized, coordinated provision of services. Kampungs traditionally practise the concept of mutual self-help, known as rukun (social harmony) and gotong royong (mutual self-help). However, the ideas of rukun and gotong royong have gradually become less prominent and are even being lost from the everyday life of people in kampungs, and it increasingly seems that these old forms of cooperative living could be swamped by social conflicts occurring between one kampung and another, and between kampungs and kota - by the apparent pressures of modern life in Jakarta. This research also examines the relationship and separation between kota and kampung resulting from different and conflicting images or concepts that arise in many aspects of urban lives-social, cultural, economic and political. Kota appears as a formal, regulated, exclusive and modern space and place, while kampung appears as informal, unregulated, inclusive and traditional. The political and economic power of kota over kampung has often resulted in social conflicts in Jakarta between kota and kampungs, government and people, formal and informal settlements, and even between one kampung and another. One of the most striking effects is the sharpness of the boundaries between kampungs and kota, which suggest dichotomies such as informal versus formal, unplanned versus planned, unregulated versus regulated, traditional versus modern, local versus global, inclusive versus exclusive, and communal versus urban. This research explores not only the differences or even conflicts between kampung and kota, but also the interdependency between them. It is essential to take account of the differences and conflicts and, of course, the symbiotic links between kampungs and kota in Jakarta's city planning, design and development. Governments, elites, urban planners and designers cannot ignore kampungs as they have in past: it is a two-way street, and kota in the long run cannot develop without recognizing the contribution, strengths and needs of knmpungs