With nearly daily frequency I
experience a moderate level of anxiety that we human beings have no idea how to
live on our planet, how to eat, clothe ourselves, shelter ourselves, reproduce,
communicate, or really do anything. We don’t even know what’s in the ocean. We
try to combat this debilitating ignorance, of course. The Athens Charter was
one attempt to encourage us to organize human life in a manner seen by many as rational,
efficient, productive, just, and modern. But changing ideologies, lack of
resources, and on-the-ground human behavior and desires revealed the weaknesses of the
design for New Belgrade.
What influences and processes shape
our desire to live the way we do? What ideology is revealed in the possibility of desire shaping
how we live at all? The Athens Charter implies that infrastructure could shape
human occupants into modern citizens. Is it desirable or possible to trust the
city to all its inhabitants?
Rather than dwell on my own
unsolvable anxieties, I decided to look for an outside source about Indonesia
to provide a counterpoint to Designing Tito’s
Capital. Jakarta was the obvious choice; the colonial and post-colonial capital
of Indonesia grew from 115,000 souls in 1900 to more than 28 million in 2010
and suffers acutely from housing and infrastructure issues. A google search led
me to a fascinating blog by Deden Rukana dealing with “advancement
of urban development in Indonesia.” The post “The Megacity of Jakarta:
Problems, Challenges and Planning Efforts” describes a history not dissimilar from that
of Belgrade and New Belgrade, but with different ideological undercurrents.
Unlike in Belgrade, the government of
Indonesia actively divorced itself from socialist ideology beginning with
Suharto’s New Order government in the mid-1960s, and availability of modern
housing for all was not a specified goal in Indonesia until recently. The
New Order energetically courted foreign investment, according to Rukmana, which
meant that new infrastructure was overwhelmingly in the property sector,
especially “offices, commercial buildings, new town development, and highrise
apartments and hotels” (Rukmana). State-sponsored infrastructure projects mirrored
the desire to attract investment; an arts center, industrial zones, and the fascinating Taman
Mini Indonesia Indah theme park were some of the government’s major
accomplishments. But, much like in Belgrade, economic crisis halted and altered
plans for development.
The reach of the economy into
infrastructure is not the only similarity. As in New Belgrade, “rogue” building
and settlement is considered an issue in Jakarta to the extent that rogue
communities have maintained and created suburban areas within the city. Rukana writes, “to
understand the suburbanization in the megacity of Jakarta, it
is essential to recognize the socio-economic dualism pervading Indonesian urban
society. The manifestations of this dualism are the presence of the modern city
and the kampung city in urban areas. The kampung, ‘village’ in
Indonesian, is associated with informality, poverty, and the retention of rural
traditions within an urban setting. Firman (1999) argues the existence of kampungs and
modern cities reflect spatial segregation and socio-economic disparities” (Rukmana).
While a special body has been brought together to deal with development in
Jakarta and relieve the inequality of space, the local governments retain
authority over development and political tensions prevent cooperation.
From my superficial understanding of
Jakarta urban design (based on limited experience, an article, and a blog post)
compared with Designing Tito’s Capital,
I suspect that neither socialism nor capitalism has a premium on declaring
certain types of building and development undesirable, wild, or illegal. Nor do
either exclusively draw people into a city only to find housing shortages.
Ideology, in these two cases, differs vastly, but produces many of the same housing
problems. The self-determination at the root of the problem was, according to Le Normand, part of the solution in Belgrade. Will it work in the long term? Will we ever know how to live?
Rukmana’s truly excellent blog post:
http://indonesiaurbanstudies.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-megacity-of-jakarta-problems.html
A youtube video of Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, one of the Indonesian government's favorite accomplishments from the era of modernization:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Ses9OTyXo
Oh that's interesting to consider how the kampung areas are also directly affected by urban planning, especially when it comes to being used as defining the "opposite" of modernity.
ReplyDeleteGreat post - can you add citations so we can read further. Thanks!
ReplyDelete