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Abdoumaliq, S.- Water, Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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Transcript of Abdoumaliq, S.- Water, Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 115
Section Slug245
246
WATERPOLITICS
AND DESIGNIN JAKARTA
A
CONVERSATIONWITH
ABDOUMALIQSIMONE
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AbdouMaliq Simone is Proessor o Urban Studiesat Goldsmiths College in London His work has been aprovocative in1047298uence on urban research and a key orthinkers engaging the contemporary assemblage othe megacity He has written City Life from Jakarta
to Dakar Movements at the Crossroads (New YorkRoutledge 983090983088983089983088) For the City Yet to Come Chang-ing African Life in Four Cities(Durham Duke Uni-
versity Press 983090983088983088983092) and edited with AbouhaniAbdelghani the collection Urban Africa ChangingContours of Survival in the City (London 983162983141983140 Books983090983088983088983093) During our work in Jakarta Research Coordi-nator Farid Rakun organized a meeting with Pro-essor Simone who joined Pros Adam Bobbetteand Meredith Miller researcher Etienne urpin andthe students o the Designing for Hypercomplexity
Jakarta workshop or a conversation about urban re-search in the city an edited transcript o the conver-sation appears below A special thanks to ProessorSimone or his generosity and provocation duringthe workshop and to Farid Rakun or his help inpreparing this text
ABDOUMALIQ SIMONE What do you hope to do here
GEOFF SALVATORE
Our time on the ground in Jakarta is shortand I donrsquot think our goal here is to pretend we can understand
everything As we have learned rom your work it is a verycomplex situation Our charge rom the three aculty mem-bers is to look at hypercomplexity and architecturersquos agency inJakarta speci1047297cally concerning the issue o 1047298ooding and whatwe might be able to do as architects to change the situation Itis an activist project but the intention is not that our work isgoing to ldquosolverdquo all the problems o Jakarta
Feature 248
ADAM BOBBETTE Te theme driving all the research here is
water When we were composing the studio we began with the
shoreline as a site in itsel It is highly mobile and highly 1047298ex-ible subject to climatological geological and human orcesWe looked at the changing morphology o the shoreline anddiscovered that it goes deep into the city through canals andchannelized rivers It is also corrugated in the north by in-dustrialization conditions along the shoreline differ greatlymdashrom industrial areas to gated communities to amusementparks to slumsmdashand each o these different conditions relatesto the shoreline in its own way So as the research unolds weare using water as a way to unold the hypercomplexity o thecity this necessarily includes the unequal distribution o en-
vironmental r isks and ben e1047297ts the un equal dist ribution o ac-
ETIENNE TURPIN In City Life from Jakarta to Dakar you dis-
cuss the signi1047297cance o anticipatory urban politics especiallyin relation to your reading o Jakarta983089 How long have you been
studying Jakarta and how have you seen the city change inrelation to a ldquopolitics o ant icipationrdquo How long have you been
tracking this research and how has the city changed in rela-tion to neoliberal investment more recently
AS I started working here completely by accident about six
years ago It was at the tail end o a period where the comport-ment o the urban poor was still something that had a political
valence within the cit y I t hink that ti me has passed No onecares what happens to the urban poor today But when I began
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249 Scapegoat
working in Jakarta there was a kind o schism in the politicsaround representing the interests o the urban poor in Jakarta
I was mostly aligned with an organization that still believed ina kind o sel-valorization o poor communities with a sensethat essentially being poor in this city represented a kind oongoing warare and that the poorer communities could takematters into their own hands and discover their own resource-ulness using it as a platorm to persistently become a pain inthe ass to official institutions But this movement the UrbanPoor Consortium (983157983152983139) didnrsquot really know what it was Teydidnrsquot want to call themselves a social movement but theywerenrsquot an 983150983143983151
Te 983157983152983139 stood in contrast to a more traditional approachwhere local organizations were partnering with national or
international 983150983143983151s as a way to make service delivery moreefficient and judicious But there was a kind o schism in ap-proach and organizations on either side o the divide had a
very hard time worki ng with each otherTe idea was to work in North Jakarta or about two years
with eight different areas basically along the coast and insteado having poor communities simply become preoccupied withtheir own conditions complaints and hardships we would
get them involved in trying to understand the larger politicaldynamics o the kampungs and larger districts o which theywere a part983090 Afer all these districts are very heterogeneous intheir composition I you look at Jakarta areas that are clas-sically and clearly ldquoslumsrdquo are ew and ar between Tere are
large areas dominated by the urban poor but they are alwaysin some sense in intense proximity to areas o other kinds oeconomic capacity
It was an interesting experiment having residents becomeresearchers I was working with about 983089983088983088 residents who werebeing paid to conduct research on the districts in which theylived Tis was not to have them look so much at themselvesbut rather to have them examine larger-scale dynamics anduse that work as a kind o ticket to come to the tablemdashat thetime there was an opening at the table o Jakarta politics (at
the district level) or a kind o deliberation on and rethinkingo what a democratic local governance system might become
Te problem was that this opening closed or a lot o differentreasons In terms o trying to develop a process where resi-dents themselves are the repository o real k nowledge aboutwhatrsquos going on and then use that process as an interlocutoramong different kinds o institutions and organizations work-ing with the urban poormdashwell in some ways it worked and inothers it didnrsquot In a way it set up a competition among differ-ent organizations about who was going to get these residents
250 Water Politics and Design
and about who would be able to appropriate their capacity to
ET here is the side o the organizational disjunctions and
approaches which is one thing But regarding the closure othis opening or the urban poor at the table o Jakarta politicswhat characterized that Why donrsquot you see this as a possibilityanymore
AS Because in Jakarta the urban governance system is pretty
ucked up Tere has only been one elected governor Tere isan election or governor coming up in July 983090983088983089983090 and this is on lythe second time that the governor has been chosen through anelectoral process983091 And in act there is a strong move even toget rid o this there are many in the national government whosee this kind o process as a waste o time and money that thecity cannot afford
Tere has been a constant effort because everyone recog-nizes that the way the city is ru n undamentally doesnrsquot work
So trial balloons have been sent out to see i it is possible toinstitute reorms or new orms o local government that in
some way are democratically elected But the city always hasto conront its own peculiar history in this regard because ora long time the way in which Jakarta has been run is that thosewith ultimate authoritymdashspeci1047297cally in terms o a hierarchy opowermdashsubcontract out the running o things to a wide rangeo both offi cial and u noffi cial actors Tere is a k ind o subsid-iarity at work through an incessant subcontracting o the realmanagement o things
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251
Even with the Orde Baru983092 where one had the impressionthat the city was very tightly run rom the top the adminis-
tration o the population was in reality conducted through aplurality o highly localized surveillance and organizationsthat were in competition with each other So the control o thepopulation unctioned through the competition between a loto different local organizations that each had the responsibil-ity or a certain kind o surveillance a certain kind o cata-loguing and classi1047297cation and a certain kind o intimidationBut based on the history o subcontracting decisions at thetop are very weak because they can never anticipate the impli-cations o the decisions being made they donrsquot know exactlywhatrsquos going to happen by virtue o what it is that they decideIt is a problem around a lot o different issuesmdashtransportation
housing uel subsidiesmdashand there is an inherent avoidance oconrontation Te society generally doesnrsquot like conrontationand the authorities at the top donrsquot like it in part because theydonrsquot know exactly what will happen as a result Tey have al-ways run the city through a kind o subcontracting to a lot odifferent kinds o players who in the end they really canrsquot con-trol So the government basically said that they are going tocontrol this city by giving out a certain amount o authority toextra-parliamentary players or them to make their own dealsessentially allowing them to be both political bosses and gang-stersmdashnot that the difference is at all clear However when youattempt to rationalize the system o governance everyone gets
very a raid o what will happen because t hey donrsquot know how
to anticipate the results It ends up like traffic you have a grid-lock situation where no one wants to take the risk o makingany kind o de1047297nitive decisions about the problem
ET What about the question o master planning and the role
o inormal components Many people have spoken about theinability to respond to problems because o a lack o ldquopoliti-cal willrdquo but others such as our research coordinator FaridRakun suggest that we might need another approach to poli-tics or that it is precisely not a problem o political will at all
FARID RAKUN I have been hearing this song or years and the
government always says they have a grand plan that is goingto work but that someone in particular in the government isthe problem So it always depends on who is president who ismayor and so onmdashthis is just a list o excuses For me since Iwas a student here beore 983090983088983088983093 I have been hearing about thisproblem o ldquopolitical willrdquo I have come to the conclusion thatit is the time in Jakarta or anarchy For residents to take mat-ters into their own hands especially since this is what the resi-
Currency 252
dents o Jakarta have been doing or a long time anyway Butis it good to ldquooffi cializerdquo t hese things Would a ormal hierar-
chy o power do the agents at the bottom any good or wouldit just allow someone to attack them more easily ake street
vendors or exa mple Architects are asci nated with inormalstreet vendors and they want to map their locations but theyreally end up making these maps or the government because
ET We have seen projects about mapping the street vendors
and more broadly questions o how to ldquoormalizerdquo the inor-mal through representation So we really have two questionsthe question o ldquopolitical willrdquo as an excuse and the questiono the ldquoormalizationrdquo o inormal struggles
AS Te reality is in terms o cities like Jakarta and others o
a similar size that no one particular sector has any compre-hensive idea o what is going on Tey all o course have to
act as i they do which can be very effective whether it be inthe elaboration o good policy good spatial planning good
urban development policy or policy in terms o planningor service provision Tere are a lot o examples o interest-ing projects that are up-scaled at the level o metropolitainpolicy But when all o these cities are very complex assem-blages o particular histories materialities political situationsand inrastructuremdashas well as different kinds o sectors with
various economic prac tices social compositions etcmdashi or-malization means some way in which the interrelationships o
in Jakarta
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253
these different acets o the urban assemblage are either pre-dictable or consistent then this is simply never going to be
the case Formalization doesnrsquot entail stability It may be oneelement within the assemblage that in some ways is necessaryor people to recognize one way or another that they are inthe same boat
I have a very ambivalent relationship to the Right to theCity movement Where I am most sympathetic is in terms oa kind o ormalization o rights it is a kind o instrumentthrough which people rom different ways o lie and in di-erent kinds o positions might be able to recognize how theyare in the same boat But the kind o economic practices inwhich people have to engage in so they can put ood on thetable are not easily subsumable under a kind o codi1047297ed sys-
tem o rights Tese kinds o practices are labeled ldquoinormalrdquosimply because they do not easily correspond to the devicesused or the ormal speci1047297cation o things Still to group themall under the rubric o inormality doesnrsquot really make sense
CATHY PYENSON When you started your work using research-
ers rom the neighbourhoods in North Jakar ta how did youeven connect with the people How did you go about bringingthem all together
AS Tey were all members o the 983157983152983139 Officially the consor-
tium brought together 9830951048632 local bodies that were supposedlysel-organized mostly across North Jakarta but also through-
out the city But in reality it was the 983157983152983139 itsel that providedthe incentive and the means or residents rom these differentareas to organize in this particular way So it was a kind ocomplex congealment in some ways the different organiza-tions were the product o the larger group but the consortiumalways viewed itsel as simply bringing together the smallergroups
JOSHUA KEHL With respect to sel-organizing in the city Irsquom
wondering how the mosques come to 1047297t into the urban assem-
blage Tey are being built even i there is not a lot o moneyor them and they can become like an exchange programmdashas
you have written about with respect to Warakasmdashkey sites oinormation exchange How would you characterize the roleo religion and the mosques in particular as an attractor orthese other actors within the city
AS o a large extent this ongoing tendency to construct small
mosques is in some way or the majority o districts in Jakar-ta connected to the premise that most o these districts are
Scapegoat 254
airly intense places o opportunistic angling among residentswhich produces a kind o exigency o needing to do somethingmore than they are doing at the moment Within Jakarta thereis a very strong sense that whatever works now whatever youare doing now isnrsquot going to work or very long that you cannever really trust the particular way that you have ound sta-bility at any given moment
Tis goes back to a sense that historically even when peo-ple had civil service or actory jobs their income was nevergoing to be enough to really do anything more than try to stay
in place Also t here are uncertainties around labour marketsand trying to organize labour as well as whole histories o or-ganizing in traditional ways were ofen heavily repressed bythe Dutch and in the early postcolonial period particularlyin Jakarta So you are dealing with areas where people alwayshave the sense o having to do something more even i theyhave a job or a kind o livelihood they all are trying to thinko something else to do
But i I want to act I can never go rom point A to pointB to point C directly because I operate in a crowded 1047297eld o
actors who all have their own ideas about what to do So all othese initiatives that are being undertaken will con1047298ict and
there is no straight line that allows anyone to ollow an agendaSo I always have to work around whatever you are doing andthat means I either try to 1047297t it into what you are doing and wemake things complimentary or we try to operate under theradar so the potential competitive dimensions donrsquot stand outtoo much You are dealing with districts where there is an in-tense pursuit o opportunism Likewise with people lookingout or other peoplersquos vulnerabilities as well as their strengths
Water Politics and Design
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255 Currency
because I know that in some sense I canrsquot go it alone So whodo I go with Who do I work with I want to work with people
who arenrsquot necessarily like me As you know a lot o the citywas settled according to ethnic ties and especially under thecolonial period ethnicity was linked to the kind o job that youwould do So i you are a Batak you are a teacher a lawyer ora bus driver or i you are rom Madura you hustle hardwarei you are rom Padang you do textiles Tese are the con1047298u-ences o regional sensitivities and colonial privilege that getreproduced continuously But i I want to be opportunistic iI stay with people like me then I owe them something Irsquom ob-ligated and this is the price I pay or a sense o belonging and asense o secu rity But I donrsquot want that all the t ime I donrsquot wantto be indebted and I donrsquot want to be obligated I already have
enough obligations So I am always looking or more provi-sional short-term opportunistic relationships with people whoare not like me You have this con1047297guration always going onPeople project a very clear identity o who they are When youwork in the neighbourhood there are no secrets I know whereyou come rom I know whom you are married to I know whatyour kids are doing I know what yoursquore doing at three in themorning we can always place each other so you are alwaystrying to get around that to 1047297nd more provisional ways odealing with each other Tis makes districts very complica-ted and ofen very treacherous manipulative and generousbeyond anything you can explain
In this kind o 1047297eld o agency developing a sense o com-
mon space public space shared space or even neutral spacemdashthese spaces are very difficult or these areas to generate ontheir own And certainly the government has never been veryinterested in providing them So religion or a kind o com-mon religious affiliation becomes a conduit through whichthese types o spaces can be built such as a mosque It is muchmore than a place or people to say their prayers or or peopleto give money to construct it so they will go to heaven Be-yond that mosques have become a way o con1047297guring a com-mon space or districts a kind o neutral space an outlet evenwhen they are tied to speci1047297c or larger organizations that maybe competing with each other It is not that they are politi-
cally neutral because to be a mosque you have to exist withinthe whole network o mosques you get your money rom someplace you get your imam rom some place and i the mosqueis going to unction it is also a kind o machine that enables itsmembers to have a connection with the larger city It usuallyaligns itsel with some other kind o larger network o me itseems that one o the predominant reasons that mosques con-tinue to be built is that they allow or common spaces within
256 in Jakarta
districts which are very dynamic but ofen problematically soNow religion has other space-shaping orces as well For
instance in Jakarta a lot o what people did was keep a senseo eligibility at bay which Irsquove written about elsewhere983094 Whatthis means is that it didnrsquot matter who you were everyone hadan identity and a status and relationship to each other andas you know the Javanese have an authoritarian culture andthere is the right way o saying things and the right way o be-ing deerential to people who are above you At the level o thestreet there is a whole other way o speaking that is ull o the
anarchy that Farid is talking about where all o those hierar-chies are upended Tere is a whole language that tears all othose conventions apart and people learn how to speak botho these languages
In some way part o the relative success o many o theauto-constructed districts in Jakarta is based on keeping thisnotion o traditional eligibility at bay People can get in eachotherrsquos aces and say things to each other without necessar-ily worrying about who they are and who you are Tey cancontribute put things out there and not be araid o otherpeople saying they are stupid crazy disrespectul or trans-gressive Tere is a sense that things get put on the table in
this context that otherwise wouldnrsquot be there at all I I went toan astrophysics convention I am not going start running mymouth off because I donrsquot eel eligible to do so I donrsquot have thetraining I donrsquot have the background and I would look stupidso the question o eligibility is operating there in a large wayBut there is a signi1047297cant amount o anti-eligibility sentimentin Jakarta I work in a place called Kampung Rawa which isone o the densest districts in Jakarta Yoursquove got kids there a
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257
network o youth and they use social media to 1047297nd out what ishappening in the city Tey go by motorcycle convoy and they
show up at these places and meetings they have no idea whatis going on they have no idea what the agenda is and theytry to see whatrsquos going on But they are committed to sayingsomething they are always committed to saying somethingAnd what they may say could be completely out o context andhave nothing to do with the situation but they will speak Teyare present and they speak and make their presence eltmdashandthey donrsquot care Tis is a commitment that they have
So you see in Jakarta like many other Muslim cities othe world there is the emergence o a new middle class whoseascendancy is very much tied to Islamic devotion and an ethoso doing the right thing In a way the aspirations o this class
have been expressed through reormist Islam basically Su-harto paid them off and gave them a lot o opportunities oraccumulation Still there is a sensibility that is not unlike whatgoes on or example in Istanbul where people who are nothistorically middle-class and who have come up through verydifficult circumstances to gain proessional livelihoods nowhave to try to conigure a orm o household that matchestheir new occupational status One sees a very strong notiono eligibility here I know young couples who live in these veryheterogeneous working-class and lower-middle-class neighbour-hoods and they have the sense that they are going to leave orEast Jakarta to the newer Islamic areas o the city What makesthem the ldquonewrdquo Islamic areas Te money involved the hege-
mony o certain religious institutions etc but what counts isthe abric o the particular neighbourhood Even though theylive in an area where they are really embeddedmdashi they needchildcare i someone is sick i they need help i they need ex-tra income they all have access to these thingsmdashbut they aregoing to leave Why Tey are very clear i they go to a more
ldquomoralrdquo area a more righteous area o the city they will beeligible or success Tey are going to go into a lot o debt inorder to move to the ldquonewrdquo area they may be in debt or mosto their lives and they also wonrsquot have the services and socialsupport they had because they will be very much on their ownwhether or not they will be able to cope with that situation re-
mains to be seen but they are adamant about leavingSo there is a religious sentiment at work the individuat-
ing power o reormist Islam even among working-class andlower-middle-class residents which says you have to shapethe morality o your own individual existence and that is thepriority Donrsquot be so concerned with how you manage the so-cial lie you are embedded in all the different networks andobligations you have instead you have to think about stylizing
Scapegoat 258
yoursel as a moral individual and i you do that you will besuccessul When this imperative is combined with the rapid
prousion o mega-complexes throughout the cit y many peopleend up thinking to themselves that their current way o lie inthe city is over or coming to an end and that they should actnow and leave or new areas983095
In a way this is the same kind o urgency that property de- velopers eel Tey have t his sense in Jakar ta t hat t he pro1047297t-ability o a given project doesnrsquot matter but i they donrsquot actnowmdashbecause most o the big developments you see are 1047297rstand oremost a claim on space whether or not it is pro1047297table atthe momentmdashyou wonrsquot get there beore others have claimedit Te mentality is that you have to decide now because i youdonrsquot itrsquos going to be too late It is that same psychologica l sense
o urgency that pervades much o the rest o Jakarta a kind ospeculative behavior that requires urgent decisions Tere hasalways been this type o urgency but historically it has been
JOHN EWANOWSKI In one o your texts you say that the resi-
dents have an ambivalence to the preman because unlike mostresidents they donrsquot have to play the game in the same wayTis was reiterated at the university yesterday when we weretold that preman are generally bad or the city In a city wherethe government canrsquot do very much or the reasons wersquove dis-
Water Politics and Design
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259
cussed among others how is the preman as an extra-govern-mental official a bene1047297t Do we have to see them as negative
agents because they signal a kind o corruption in the city
AS It is a kind o conusing term preman Part o the conu-
sion historically in Jakarta is because the preman wouldalways assume a kind o powerul and ambivalent positionin the sense that preman means ldquoree manrdquo and in this sense
it means they are not necessarily connected anywhere or em-bedded in a particular kind o community occupation or po-litical perspective But then who are they How can they belocated I they cannot be located anywhere they are capableo doing things that canrsquot be predicted Tis generates anxietybut it also generates potential Because the premanrsquos power his-
torically came rom the ability to negotiate through very di-erent kinds o stories very different kinds o eventsmdashand thewillingness to use violence in order to do itmdashthis meant a kindo determination it meant you could count on the preman be-cause they werenrsquot reluctant to 1047297ght their way through But ithis is possible because the preman donrsquot have any particularloyalties they also donrsquot necessarily have any particular loyal-ties to those whom they are supposed to be 1047297ghting or I thinkthat this ambivalent position tends to cause characterizationso the preman as necessarily bad
In some ways a more traditional orm o the premanmdashthatis someone willing to attempt to translate between differentways o seeing things in a neighbourhood different ways o do-
ing things and actively mediating relationships among peo-plemdashis a role that is being abdicated to a large extent with therise o organizations like 983142983138983154 and Forkabi1048632 Tese organiza-tions take the approach o saying we will 1047297ght or you and weare networked as an organization across the city So with therise o new orms o protection deense and advocacy the rolethat the preman played is shifing hands and that contributesto the problem o what they can do Te preman then begin toimpose themselves say at any 983095-983089983089 and begin to ldquomanage theparkingrdquo by directing traffic You either collaborate with themor you pay some kind o price Tere has been a transitionunderway over the last ten years that is changing the complex
character o the preman and shifing this role into more con- ventional orms o gangsterism rather than operating as a kindo ldquohingerdquo within the neighbourhoods themselves
JK How identi1047297able are they within the social network Are
they just known through word o mouth
AS Identi1047297cation occurs in terms o a complicity where neigh-
Currency 260
bourhoods were made to recognize that they needed securityand so these guys appeared to provide it So in some ways
they are associated with the kind o job that they do the waythey occupy the day and the night the way they are strategi-cally located at the places where you transitionmdashtransporta-tion depots markets public spaces commercial spacesmdashandthey are the ones who make things happen
Te classic case is at anah Abang Southeast Asiarsquos largest
traditional textile market Te city o Jakarta subcontracts themanagement o the market out to the cityrsquos in1047298uential propertydevelopers and the market is their single largest earner Teseinclude the Podomoro group the largest developer in the citywho owns Jakartarsquos biggest mega-complexes Tey subcontractthe work out to 983089983094 different holding companies one or the
carters one or the cleaning one or the maintenance one orthe rents etc And who does it Tere is a chain o amous pre-man who are the coordinators and the power o the market istheirs For example there was a very amous preman Herculeswho ran anah Abang or many years So in some ways ianything needs to be done you go to these people Tey arethe 1047297gures in neighbourhoods in the markets and other areaswho manage the interstices Tey are accountable to everyoneand accountable to no one at the same time In some ways theydeer any kind o con1047298ict or example among the 983089983094 differentholding companies within the market they obscure the powerrelationship but at the same time their power rests on howgood o a job they can do in terms o being able to appease
the different interests that are involved Tis was also theirpower at the neighbourhood level as well to listen to hear totake it into all into consideration regardless o who was speak-ing However as I said this kind o role is increasingly beingreplaced by a kind o game that says alright the city is becom-ing more insecure and we are helping it become more insecureso we can guarantee that it becomes more secure Tis is a kindo conventional game that extra-parliamentary groups haveplayed in cities or a long long time
LUCAS BARTOSIEWICZ You call the preman the ldquohingerdquo and
you call these people players it seems like the livelihood o
the city the ldquocitynessrdquo o the city happens in the interactionamong more ormal and more inormal sectors o the cityand the government seems more o a reeree1048633 Now we haveheard about the city being separated between ormal and in-ormal sectors and the city government appears to supportthis division What do you think the result o this rigid divi-sion will be
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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261
AS Te most powerul actors in this city are the property devel-
opers Tey by ar have the greatest scope o autonomy which isnot dissimilar to a lot o other cities because part o the motiva-tion o being in politics o being in government is being ableto steal Once you have stolen the money what do you do withit You have to put it somewhere and the property developersoffer a kind o venue where you can invest stolen money Tisis the best way to clean dirty money Tere is a complicity there
But in some ways the state allows this and there is a kind ogreater separation I you look at the way that mega-complexes
are marketed developers are largely saying that i you movehere yoursquoll be a part o the world Tis is the essence o it Weoffer you a platorm through which you can be in conversationwith the world How is this possible I you look at these com-plexes yoursquoll notice that they try to be as sel-contained as pos-sible Each one has a shopping mall that offers the same thingas all the others so there is nothing really to differentiate themrom each othermdashthey have the same restaurants coffee shopsetc but there is still a notion o being sel-contained You onlyhave to leave i you go to work otherwise it is a sel-containeduniverse withdrawn rom the rest o the city so you donrsquot haveto pay attention to the messiness o Jakarta I you look at the
central urban corridor it is one big complex afer another anda 1047298y-over is being built to take traffi c above the complexeswhich will cost the city an enormous amount o money Tis isbeing done at the urging o the developers who want to lessentraffi c congestion or residents w ithin the complex st rip Teproperty developers contribute o course but only to the gov-ernorrsquos reelection campaign not the inrastructure itsel Inmany ways the city can sit back because property developers
Scapegoat 262
are creating a kind o constituency to be addressed politicallywhile the separation between the rest o the city and the com-
plexes only grows A colleague o mine has done a thoroughstudy o the new developments and has shown the devastatingeffects in terms o how many people are actually housed inrelation to hidden costs environmental costs etc that thesecomplexes exert on the city Tey impose a greater biurcation
Meanwhile one o the major considerations is the provisiono rental accommodations So i you have a property eveni you are very poor you try to rent some o what you haveI would estimate that 983095983088-1048632983088 o the residential units withinthe city have some rental space at least one room Tere isa great demand or accommodation and even i statistics saythe central part o the city is losing population which mightbe true offi cially you have all kinds o temporary residentsmoving around who are not counted in surveys So I thinkin many areas there is an intense densi1047297cation taking placepartly in response to the way the mega-complexes are takingup more and more space What the result will be I donrsquot know
One thing to remember is that the older complexes were de-signed as two-bedroom units or young proessional amiliesmdashhusband wie two kidsmdashbut once you sell them off you canrsquotcontrol who lives there So i you look at some o these newresidential complexes they can be shared by up to ten peoplewho go in on them together because it is a good location andthey like the idea o living above a shopping mall but who ac-tually lives there is ofen not who the developers imagine
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263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
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265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
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267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
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269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
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271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
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247
AbdouMaliq Simone is Proessor o Urban Studiesat Goldsmiths College in London His work has been aprovocative in1047298uence on urban research and a key orthinkers engaging the contemporary assemblage othe megacity He has written City Life from Jakarta
to Dakar Movements at the Crossroads (New YorkRoutledge 983090983088983089983088) For the City Yet to Come Chang-ing African Life in Four Cities(Durham Duke Uni-
versity Press 983090983088983088983092) and edited with AbouhaniAbdelghani the collection Urban Africa ChangingContours of Survival in the City (London 983162983141983140 Books983090983088983088983093) During our work in Jakarta Research Coordi-nator Farid Rakun organized a meeting with Pro-essor Simone who joined Pros Adam Bobbetteand Meredith Miller researcher Etienne urpin andthe students o the Designing for Hypercomplexity
Jakarta workshop or a conversation about urban re-search in the city an edited transcript o the conver-sation appears below A special thanks to ProessorSimone or his generosity and provocation duringthe workshop and to Farid Rakun or his help inpreparing this text
ABDOUMALIQ SIMONE What do you hope to do here
GEOFF SALVATORE
Our time on the ground in Jakarta is shortand I donrsquot think our goal here is to pretend we can understand
everything As we have learned rom your work it is a verycomplex situation Our charge rom the three aculty mem-bers is to look at hypercomplexity and architecturersquos agency inJakarta speci1047297cally concerning the issue o 1047298ooding and whatwe might be able to do as architects to change the situation Itis an activist project but the intention is not that our work isgoing to ldquosolverdquo all the problems o Jakarta
Feature 248
ADAM BOBBETTE Te theme driving all the research here is
water When we were composing the studio we began with the
shoreline as a site in itsel It is highly mobile and highly 1047298ex-ible subject to climatological geological and human orcesWe looked at the changing morphology o the shoreline anddiscovered that it goes deep into the city through canals andchannelized rivers It is also corrugated in the north by in-dustrialization conditions along the shoreline differ greatlymdashrom industrial areas to gated communities to amusementparks to slumsmdashand each o these different conditions relatesto the shoreline in its own way So as the research unolds weare using water as a way to unold the hypercomplexity o thecity this necessarily includes the unequal distribution o en-
vironmental r isks and ben e1047297ts the un equal dist ribution o ac-
ETIENNE TURPIN In City Life from Jakarta to Dakar you dis-
cuss the signi1047297cance o anticipatory urban politics especiallyin relation to your reading o Jakarta983089 How long have you been
studying Jakarta and how have you seen the city change inrelation to a ldquopolitics o ant icipationrdquo How long have you been
tracking this research and how has the city changed in rela-tion to neoliberal investment more recently
AS I started working here completely by accident about six
years ago It was at the tail end o a period where the comport-ment o the urban poor was still something that had a political
valence within the cit y I t hink that ti me has passed No onecares what happens to the urban poor today But when I began
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249 Scapegoat
working in Jakarta there was a kind o schism in the politicsaround representing the interests o the urban poor in Jakarta
I was mostly aligned with an organization that still believed ina kind o sel-valorization o poor communities with a sensethat essentially being poor in this city represented a kind oongoing warare and that the poorer communities could takematters into their own hands and discover their own resource-ulness using it as a platorm to persistently become a pain inthe ass to official institutions But this movement the UrbanPoor Consortium (983157983152983139) didnrsquot really know what it was Teydidnrsquot want to call themselves a social movement but theywerenrsquot an 983150983143983151
Te 983157983152983139 stood in contrast to a more traditional approachwhere local organizations were partnering with national or
international 983150983143983151s as a way to make service delivery moreefficient and judicious But there was a kind o schism in ap-proach and organizations on either side o the divide had a
very hard time worki ng with each otherTe idea was to work in North Jakarta or about two years
with eight different areas basically along the coast and insteado having poor communities simply become preoccupied withtheir own conditions complaints and hardships we would
get them involved in trying to understand the larger politicaldynamics o the kampungs and larger districts o which theywere a part983090 Afer all these districts are very heterogeneous intheir composition I you look at Jakarta areas that are clas-sically and clearly ldquoslumsrdquo are ew and ar between Tere are
large areas dominated by the urban poor but they are alwaysin some sense in intense proximity to areas o other kinds oeconomic capacity
It was an interesting experiment having residents becomeresearchers I was working with about 983089983088983088 residents who werebeing paid to conduct research on the districts in which theylived Tis was not to have them look so much at themselvesbut rather to have them examine larger-scale dynamics anduse that work as a kind o ticket to come to the tablemdashat thetime there was an opening at the table o Jakarta politics (at
the district level) or a kind o deliberation on and rethinkingo what a democratic local governance system might become
Te problem was that this opening closed or a lot o differentreasons In terms o trying to develop a process where resi-dents themselves are the repository o real k nowledge aboutwhatrsquos going on and then use that process as an interlocutoramong different kinds o institutions and organizations work-ing with the urban poormdashwell in some ways it worked and inothers it didnrsquot In a way it set up a competition among differ-ent organizations about who was going to get these residents
250 Water Politics and Design
and about who would be able to appropriate their capacity to
ET here is the side o the organizational disjunctions and
approaches which is one thing But regarding the closure othis opening or the urban poor at the table o Jakarta politicswhat characterized that Why donrsquot you see this as a possibilityanymore
AS Because in Jakarta the urban governance system is pretty
ucked up Tere has only been one elected governor Tere isan election or governor coming up in July 983090983088983089983090 and this is on lythe second time that the governor has been chosen through anelectoral process983091 And in act there is a strong move even toget rid o this there are many in the national government whosee this kind o process as a waste o time and money that thecity cannot afford
Tere has been a constant effort because everyone recog-nizes that the way the city is ru n undamentally doesnrsquot work
So trial balloons have been sent out to see i it is possible toinstitute reorms or new orms o local government that in
some way are democratically elected But the city always hasto conront its own peculiar history in this regard because ora long time the way in which Jakarta has been run is that thosewith ultimate authoritymdashspeci1047297cally in terms o a hierarchy opowermdashsubcontract out the running o things to a wide rangeo both offi cial and u noffi cial actors Tere is a k ind o subsid-iarity at work through an incessant subcontracting o the realmanagement o things
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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251
Even with the Orde Baru983092 where one had the impressionthat the city was very tightly run rom the top the adminis-
tration o the population was in reality conducted through aplurality o highly localized surveillance and organizationsthat were in competition with each other So the control o thepopulation unctioned through the competition between a loto different local organizations that each had the responsibil-ity or a certain kind o surveillance a certain kind o cata-loguing and classi1047297cation and a certain kind o intimidationBut based on the history o subcontracting decisions at thetop are very weak because they can never anticipate the impli-cations o the decisions being made they donrsquot know exactlywhatrsquos going to happen by virtue o what it is that they decideIt is a problem around a lot o different issuesmdashtransportation
housing uel subsidiesmdashand there is an inherent avoidance oconrontation Te society generally doesnrsquot like conrontationand the authorities at the top donrsquot like it in part because theydonrsquot know exactly what will happen as a result Tey have al-ways run the city through a kind o subcontracting to a lot odifferent kinds o players who in the end they really canrsquot con-trol So the government basically said that they are going tocontrol this city by giving out a certain amount o authority toextra-parliamentary players or them to make their own dealsessentially allowing them to be both political bosses and gang-stersmdashnot that the difference is at all clear However when youattempt to rationalize the system o governance everyone gets
very a raid o what will happen because t hey donrsquot know how
to anticipate the results It ends up like traffic you have a grid-lock situation where no one wants to take the risk o makingany kind o de1047297nitive decisions about the problem
ET What about the question o master planning and the role
o inormal components Many people have spoken about theinability to respond to problems because o a lack o ldquopoliti-cal willrdquo but others such as our research coordinator FaridRakun suggest that we might need another approach to poli-tics or that it is precisely not a problem o political will at all
FARID RAKUN I have been hearing this song or years and the
government always says they have a grand plan that is goingto work but that someone in particular in the government isthe problem So it always depends on who is president who ismayor and so onmdashthis is just a list o excuses For me since Iwas a student here beore 983090983088983088983093 I have been hearing about thisproblem o ldquopolitical willrdquo I have come to the conclusion thatit is the time in Jakarta or anarchy For residents to take mat-ters into their own hands especially since this is what the resi-
Currency 252
dents o Jakarta have been doing or a long time anyway Butis it good to ldquooffi cializerdquo t hese things Would a ormal hierar-
chy o power do the agents at the bottom any good or wouldit just allow someone to attack them more easily ake street
vendors or exa mple Architects are asci nated with inormalstreet vendors and they want to map their locations but theyreally end up making these maps or the government because
ET We have seen projects about mapping the street vendors
and more broadly questions o how to ldquoormalizerdquo the inor-mal through representation So we really have two questionsthe question o ldquopolitical willrdquo as an excuse and the questiono the ldquoormalizationrdquo o inormal struggles
AS Te reality is in terms o cities like Jakarta and others o
a similar size that no one particular sector has any compre-hensive idea o what is going on Tey all o course have to
act as i they do which can be very effective whether it be inthe elaboration o good policy good spatial planning good
urban development policy or policy in terms o planningor service provision Tere are a lot o examples o interest-ing projects that are up-scaled at the level o metropolitainpolicy But when all o these cities are very complex assem-blages o particular histories materialities political situationsand inrastructuremdashas well as different kinds o sectors with
various economic prac tices social compositions etcmdashi or-malization means some way in which the interrelationships o
in Jakarta
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253
these different acets o the urban assemblage are either pre-dictable or consistent then this is simply never going to be
the case Formalization doesnrsquot entail stability It may be oneelement within the assemblage that in some ways is necessaryor people to recognize one way or another that they are inthe same boat
I have a very ambivalent relationship to the Right to theCity movement Where I am most sympathetic is in terms oa kind o ormalization o rights it is a kind o instrumentthrough which people rom different ways o lie and in di-erent kinds o positions might be able to recognize how theyare in the same boat But the kind o economic practices inwhich people have to engage in so they can put ood on thetable are not easily subsumable under a kind o codi1047297ed sys-
tem o rights Tese kinds o practices are labeled ldquoinormalrdquosimply because they do not easily correspond to the devicesused or the ormal speci1047297cation o things Still to group themall under the rubric o inormality doesnrsquot really make sense
CATHY PYENSON When you started your work using research-
ers rom the neighbourhoods in North Jakar ta how did youeven connect with the people How did you go about bringingthem all together
AS Tey were all members o the 983157983152983139 Officially the consor-
tium brought together 9830951048632 local bodies that were supposedlysel-organized mostly across North Jakarta but also through-
out the city But in reality it was the 983157983152983139 itsel that providedthe incentive and the means or residents rom these differentareas to organize in this particular way So it was a kind ocomplex congealment in some ways the different organiza-tions were the product o the larger group but the consortiumalways viewed itsel as simply bringing together the smallergroups
JOSHUA KEHL With respect to sel-organizing in the city Irsquom
wondering how the mosques come to 1047297t into the urban assem-
blage Tey are being built even i there is not a lot o moneyor them and they can become like an exchange programmdashas
you have written about with respect to Warakasmdashkey sites oinormation exchange How would you characterize the roleo religion and the mosques in particular as an attractor orthese other actors within the city
AS o a large extent this ongoing tendency to construct small
mosques is in some way or the majority o districts in Jakar-ta connected to the premise that most o these districts are
Scapegoat 254
airly intense places o opportunistic angling among residentswhich produces a kind o exigency o needing to do somethingmore than they are doing at the moment Within Jakarta thereis a very strong sense that whatever works now whatever youare doing now isnrsquot going to work or very long that you cannever really trust the particular way that you have ound sta-bility at any given moment
Tis goes back to a sense that historically even when peo-ple had civil service or actory jobs their income was nevergoing to be enough to really do anything more than try to stay
in place Also t here are uncertainties around labour marketsand trying to organize labour as well as whole histories o or-ganizing in traditional ways were ofen heavily repressed bythe Dutch and in the early postcolonial period particularlyin Jakarta So you are dealing with areas where people alwayshave the sense o having to do something more even i theyhave a job or a kind o livelihood they all are trying to thinko something else to do
But i I want to act I can never go rom point A to pointB to point C directly because I operate in a crowded 1047297eld o
actors who all have their own ideas about what to do So all othese initiatives that are being undertaken will con1047298ict and
there is no straight line that allows anyone to ollow an agendaSo I always have to work around whatever you are doing andthat means I either try to 1047297t it into what you are doing and wemake things complimentary or we try to operate under theradar so the potential competitive dimensions donrsquot stand outtoo much You are dealing with districts where there is an in-tense pursuit o opportunism Likewise with people lookingout or other peoplersquos vulnerabilities as well as their strengths
Water Politics and Design
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255 Currency
because I know that in some sense I canrsquot go it alone So whodo I go with Who do I work with I want to work with people
who arenrsquot necessarily like me As you know a lot o the citywas settled according to ethnic ties and especially under thecolonial period ethnicity was linked to the kind o job that youwould do So i you are a Batak you are a teacher a lawyer ora bus driver or i you are rom Madura you hustle hardwarei you are rom Padang you do textiles Tese are the con1047298u-ences o regional sensitivities and colonial privilege that getreproduced continuously But i I want to be opportunistic iI stay with people like me then I owe them something Irsquom ob-ligated and this is the price I pay or a sense o belonging and asense o secu rity But I donrsquot want that all the t ime I donrsquot wantto be indebted and I donrsquot want to be obligated I already have
enough obligations So I am always looking or more provi-sional short-term opportunistic relationships with people whoare not like me You have this con1047297guration always going onPeople project a very clear identity o who they are When youwork in the neighbourhood there are no secrets I know whereyou come rom I know whom you are married to I know whatyour kids are doing I know what yoursquore doing at three in themorning we can always place each other so you are alwaystrying to get around that to 1047297nd more provisional ways odealing with each other Tis makes districts very complica-ted and ofen very treacherous manipulative and generousbeyond anything you can explain
In this kind o 1047297eld o agency developing a sense o com-
mon space public space shared space or even neutral spacemdashthese spaces are very difficult or these areas to generate ontheir own And certainly the government has never been veryinterested in providing them So religion or a kind o com-mon religious affiliation becomes a conduit through whichthese types o spaces can be built such as a mosque It is muchmore than a place or people to say their prayers or or peopleto give money to construct it so they will go to heaven Be-yond that mosques have become a way o con1047297guring a com-mon space or districts a kind o neutral space an outlet evenwhen they are tied to speci1047297c or larger organizations that maybe competing with each other It is not that they are politi-
cally neutral because to be a mosque you have to exist withinthe whole network o mosques you get your money rom someplace you get your imam rom some place and i the mosqueis going to unction it is also a kind o machine that enables itsmembers to have a connection with the larger city It usuallyaligns itsel with some other kind o larger network o me itseems that one o the predominant reasons that mosques con-tinue to be built is that they allow or common spaces within
256 in Jakarta
districts which are very dynamic but ofen problematically soNow religion has other space-shaping orces as well For
instance in Jakarta a lot o what people did was keep a senseo eligibility at bay which Irsquove written about elsewhere983094 Whatthis means is that it didnrsquot matter who you were everyone hadan identity and a status and relationship to each other andas you know the Javanese have an authoritarian culture andthere is the right way o saying things and the right way o be-ing deerential to people who are above you At the level o thestreet there is a whole other way o speaking that is ull o the
anarchy that Farid is talking about where all o those hierar-chies are upended Tere is a whole language that tears all othose conventions apart and people learn how to speak botho these languages
In some way part o the relative success o many o theauto-constructed districts in Jakarta is based on keeping thisnotion o traditional eligibility at bay People can get in eachotherrsquos aces and say things to each other without necessar-ily worrying about who they are and who you are Tey cancontribute put things out there and not be araid o otherpeople saying they are stupid crazy disrespectul or trans-gressive Tere is a sense that things get put on the table in
this context that otherwise wouldnrsquot be there at all I I went toan astrophysics convention I am not going start running mymouth off because I donrsquot eel eligible to do so I donrsquot have thetraining I donrsquot have the background and I would look stupidso the question o eligibility is operating there in a large wayBut there is a signi1047297cant amount o anti-eligibility sentimentin Jakarta I work in a place called Kampung Rawa which isone o the densest districts in Jakarta Yoursquove got kids there a
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257
network o youth and they use social media to 1047297nd out what ishappening in the city Tey go by motorcycle convoy and they
show up at these places and meetings they have no idea whatis going on they have no idea what the agenda is and theytry to see whatrsquos going on But they are committed to sayingsomething they are always committed to saying somethingAnd what they may say could be completely out o context andhave nothing to do with the situation but they will speak Teyare present and they speak and make their presence eltmdashandthey donrsquot care Tis is a commitment that they have
So you see in Jakarta like many other Muslim cities othe world there is the emergence o a new middle class whoseascendancy is very much tied to Islamic devotion and an ethoso doing the right thing In a way the aspirations o this class
have been expressed through reormist Islam basically Su-harto paid them off and gave them a lot o opportunities oraccumulation Still there is a sensibility that is not unlike whatgoes on or example in Istanbul where people who are nothistorically middle-class and who have come up through verydifficult circumstances to gain proessional livelihoods nowhave to try to conigure a orm o household that matchestheir new occupational status One sees a very strong notiono eligibility here I know young couples who live in these veryheterogeneous working-class and lower-middle-class neighbour-hoods and they have the sense that they are going to leave orEast Jakarta to the newer Islamic areas o the city What makesthem the ldquonewrdquo Islamic areas Te money involved the hege-
mony o certain religious institutions etc but what counts isthe abric o the particular neighbourhood Even though theylive in an area where they are really embeddedmdashi they needchildcare i someone is sick i they need help i they need ex-tra income they all have access to these thingsmdashbut they aregoing to leave Why Tey are very clear i they go to a more
ldquomoralrdquo area a more righteous area o the city they will beeligible or success Tey are going to go into a lot o debt inorder to move to the ldquonewrdquo area they may be in debt or mosto their lives and they also wonrsquot have the services and socialsupport they had because they will be very much on their ownwhether or not they will be able to cope with that situation re-
mains to be seen but they are adamant about leavingSo there is a religious sentiment at work the individuat-
ing power o reormist Islam even among working-class andlower-middle-class residents which says you have to shapethe morality o your own individual existence and that is thepriority Donrsquot be so concerned with how you manage the so-cial lie you are embedded in all the different networks andobligations you have instead you have to think about stylizing
Scapegoat 258
yoursel as a moral individual and i you do that you will besuccessul When this imperative is combined with the rapid
prousion o mega-complexes throughout the cit y many peopleend up thinking to themselves that their current way o lie inthe city is over or coming to an end and that they should actnow and leave or new areas983095
In a way this is the same kind o urgency that property de- velopers eel Tey have t his sense in Jakar ta t hat t he pro1047297t-ability o a given project doesnrsquot matter but i they donrsquot actnowmdashbecause most o the big developments you see are 1047297rstand oremost a claim on space whether or not it is pro1047297table atthe momentmdashyou wonrsquot get there beore others have claimedit Te mentality is that you have to decide now because i youdonrsquot itrsquos going to be too late It is that same psychologica l sense
o urgency that pervades much o the rest o Jakarta a kind ospeculative behavior that requires urgent decisions Tere hasalways been this type o urgency but historically it has been
JOHN EWANOWSKI In one o your texts you say that the resi-
dents have an ambivalence to the preman because unlike mostresidents they donrsquot have to play the game in the same wayTis was reiterated at the university yesterday when we weretold that preman are generally bad or the city In a city wherethe government canrsquot do very much or the reasons wersquove dis-
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259
cussed among others how is the preman as an extra-govern-mental official a bene1047297t Do we have to see them as negative
agents because they signal a kind o corruption in the city
AS It is a kind o conusing term preman Part o the conu-
sion historically in Jakarta is because the preman wouldalways assume a kind o powerul and ambivalent positionin the sense that preman means ldquoree manrdquo and in this sense
it means they are not necessarily connected anywhere or em-bedded in a particular kind o community occupation or po-litical perspective But then who are they How can they belocated I they cannot be located anywhere they are capableo doing things that canrsquot be predicted Tis generates anxietybut it also generates potential Because the premanrsquos power his-
torically came rom the ability to negotiate through very di-erent kinds o stories very different kinds o eventsmdashand thewillingness to use violence in order to do itmdashthis meant a kindo determination it meant you could count on the preman be-cause they werenrsquot reluctant to 1047297ght their way through But ithis is possible because the preman donrsquot have any particularloyalties they also donrsquot necessarily have any particular loyal-ties to those whom they are supposed to be 1047297ghting or I thinkthat this ambivalent position tends to cause characterizationso the preman as necessarily bad
In some ways a more traditional orm o the premanmdashthatis someone willing to attempt to translate between differentways o seeing things in a neighbourhood different ways o do-
ing things and actively mediating relationships among peo-plemdashis a role that is being abdicated to a large extent with therise o organizations like 983142983138983154 and Forkabi1048632 Tese organiza-tions take the approach o saying we will 1047297ght or you and weare networked as an organization across the city So with therise o new orms o protection deense and advocacy the rolethat the preman played is shifing hands and that contributesto the problem o what they can do Te preman then begin toimpose themselves say at any 983095-983089983089 and begin to ldquomanage theparkingrdquo by directing traffic You either collaborate with themor you pay some kind o price Tere has been a transitionunderway over the last ten years that is changing the complex
character o the preman and shifing this role into more con- ventional orms o gangsterism rather than operating as a kindo ldquohingerdquo within the neighbourhoods themselves
JK How identi1047297able are they within the social network Are
they just known through word o mouth
AS Identi1047297cation occurs in terms o a complicity where neigh-
Currency 260
bourhoods were made to recognize that they needed securityand so these guys appeared to provide it So in some ways
they are associated with the kind o job that they do the waythey occupy the day and the night the way they are strategi-cally located at the places where you transitionmdashtransporta-tion depots markets public spaces commercial spacesmdashandthey are the ones who make things happen
Te classic case is at anah Abang Southeast Asiarsquos largest
traditional textile market Te city o Jakarta subcontracts themanagement o the market out to the cityrsquos in1047298uential propertydevelopers and the market is their single largest earner Teseinclude the Podomoro group the largest developer in the citywho owns Jakartarsquos biggest mega-complexes Tey subcontractthe work out to 983089983094 different holding companies one or the
carters one or the cleaning one or the maintenance one orthe rents etc And who does it Tere is a chain o amous pre-man who are the coordinators and the power o the market istheirs For example there was a very amous preman Herculeswho ran anah Abang or many years So in some ways ianything needs to be done you go to these people Tey arethe 1047297gures in neighbourhoods in the markets and other areaswho manage the interstices Tey are accountable to everyoneand accountable to no one at the same time In some ways theydeer any kind o con1047298ict or example among the 983089983094 differentholding companies within the market they obscure the powerrelationship but at the same time their power rests on howgood o a job they can do in terms o being able to appease
the different interests that are involved Tis was also theirpower at the neighbourhood level as well to listen to hear totake it into all into consideration regardless o who was speak-ing However as I said this kind o role is increasingly beingreplaced by a kind o game that says alright the city is becom-ing more insecure and we are helping it become more insecureso we can guarantee that it becomes more secure Tis is a kindo conventional game that extra-parliamentary groups haveplayed in cities or a long long time
LUCAS BARTOSIEWICZ You call the preman the ldquohingerdquo and
you call these people players it seems like the livelihood o
the city the ldquocitynessrdquo o the city happens in the interactionamong more ormal and more inormal sectors o the cityand the government seems more o a reeree1048633 Now we haveheard about the city being separated between ormal and in-ormal sectors and the city government appears to supportthis division What do you think the result o this rigid divi-sion will be
in Jakarta
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261
AS Te most powerul actors in this city are the property devel-
opers Tey by ar have the greatest scope o autonomy which isnot dissimilar to a lot o other cities because part o the motiva-tion o being in politics o being in government is being ableto steal Once you have stolen the money what do you do withit You have to put it somewhere and the property developersoffer a kind o venue where you can invest stolen money Tisis the best way to clean dirty money Tere is a complicity there
But in some ways the state allows this and there is a kind ogreater separation I you look at the way that mega-complexes
are marketed developers are largely saying that i you movehere yoursquoll be a part o the world Tis is the essence o it Weoffer you a platorm through which you can be in conversationwith the world How is this possible I you look at these com-plexes yoursquoll notice that they try to be as sel-contained as pos-sible Each one has a shopping mall that offers the same thingas all the others so there is nothing really to differentiate themrom each othermdashthey have the same restaurants coffee shopsetc but there is still a notion o being sel-contained You onlyhave to leave i you go to work otherwise it is a sel-containeduniverse withdrawn rom the rest o the city so you donrsquot haveto pay attention to the messiness o Jakarta I you look at the
central urban corridor it is one big complex afer another anda 1047298y-over is being built to take traffi c above the complexeswhich will cost the city an enormous amount o money Tis isbeing done at the urging o the developers who want to lessentraffi c congestion or residents w ithin the complex st rip Teproperty developers contribute o course but only to the gov-ernorrsquos reelection campaign not the inrastructure itsel Inmany ways the city can sit back because property developers
Scapegoat 262
are creating a kind o constituency to be addressed politicallywhile the separation between the rest o the city and the com-
plexes only grows A colleague o mine has done a thoroughstudy o the new developments and has shown the devastatingeffects in terms o how many people are actually housed inrelation to hidden costs environmental costs etc that thesecomplexes exert on the city Tey impose a greater biurcation
Meanwhile one o the major considerations is the provisiono rental accommodations So i you have a property eveni you are very poor you try to rent some o what you haveI would estimate that 983095983088-1048632983088 o the residential units withinthe city have some rental space at least one room Tere isa great demand or accommodation and even i statistics saythe central part o the city is losing population which mightbe true offi cially you have all kinds o temporary residentsmoving around who are not counted in surveys So I thinkin many areas there is an intense densi1047297cation taking placepartly in response to the way the mega-complexes are takingup more and more space What the result will be I donrsquot know
One thing to remember is that the older complexes were de-signed as two-bedroom units or young proessional amiliesmdashhusband wie two kidsmdashbut once you sell them off you canrsquotcontrol who lives there So i you look at some o these newresidential complexes they can be shared by up to ten peoplewho go in on them together because it is a good location andthey like the idea o living above a shopping mall but who ac-tually lives there is ofen not who the developers imagine
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263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
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265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
Water Politics and Design
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267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
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269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
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271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
in Jakarta
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design
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249 Scapegoat
working in Jakarta there was a kind o schism in the politicsaround representing the interests o the urban poor in Jakarta
I was mostly aligned with an organization that still believed ina kind o sel-valorization o poor communities with a sensethat essentially being poor in this city represented a kind oongoing warare and that the poorer communities could takematters into their own hands and discover their own resource-ulness using it as a platorm to persistently become a pain inthe ass to official institutions But this movement the UrbanPoor Consortium (983157983152983139) didnrsquot really know what it was Teydidnrsquot want to call themselves a social movement but theywerenrsquot an 983150983143983151
Te 983157983152983139 stood in contrast to a more traditional approachwhere local organizations were partnering with national or
international 983150983143983151s as a way to make service delivery moreefficient and judicious But there was a kind o schism in ap-proach and organizations on either side o the divide had a
very hard time worki ng with each otherTe idea was to work in North Jakarta or about two years
with eight different areas basically along the coast and insteado having poor communities simply become preoccupied withtheir own conditions complaints and hardships we would
get them involved in trying to understand the larger politicaldynamics o the kampungs and larger districts o which theywere a part983090 Afer all these districts are very heterogeneous intheir composition I you look at Jakarta areas that are clas-sically and clearly ldquoslumsrdquo are ew and ar between Tere are
large areas dominated by the urban poor but they are alwaysin some sense in intense proximity to areas o other kinds oeconomic capacity
It was an interesting experiment having residents becomeresearchers I was working with about 983089983088983088 residents who werebeing paid to conduct research on the districts in which theylived Tis was not to have them look so much at themselvesbut rather to have them examine larger-scale dynamics anduse that work as a kind o ticket to come to the tablemdashat thetime there was an opening at the table o Jakarta politics (at
the district level) or a kind o deliberation on and rethinkingo what a democratic local governance system might become
Te problem was that this opening closed or a lot o differentreasons In terms o trying to develop a process where resi-dents themselves are the repository o real k nowledge aboutwhatrsquos going on and then use that process as an interlocutoramong different kinds o institutions and organizations work-ing with the urban poormdashwell in some ways it worked and inothers it didnrsquot In a way it set up a competition among differ-ent organizations about who was going to get these residents
250 Water Politics and Design
and about who would be able to appropriate their capacity to
ET here is the side o the organizational disjunctions and
approaches which is one thing But regarding the closure othis opening or the urban poor at the table o Jakarta politicswhat characterized that Why donrsquot you see this as a possibilityanymore
AS Because in Jakarta the urban governance system is pretty
ucked up Tere has only been one elected governor Tere isan election or governor coming up in July 983090983088983089983090 and this is on lythe second time that the governor has been chosen through anelectoral process983091 And in act there is a strong move even toget rid o this there are many in the national government whosee this kind o process as a waste o time and money that thecity cannot afford
Tere has been a constant effort because everyone recog-nizes that the way the city is ru n undamentally doesnrsquot work
So trial balloons have been sent out to see i it is possible toinstitute reorms or new orms o local government that in
some way are democratically elected But the city always hasto conront its own peculiar history in this regard because ora long time the way in which Jakarta has been run is that thosewith ultimate authoritymdashspeci1047297cally in terms o a hierarchy opowermdashsubcontract out the running o things to a wide rangeo both offi cial and u noffi cial actors Tere is a k ind o subsid-iarity at work through an incessant subcontracting o the realmanagement o things
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251
Even with the Orde Baru983092 where one had the impressionthat the city was very tightly run rom the top the adminis-
tration o the population was in reality conducted through aplurality o highly localized surveillance and organizationsthat were in competition with each other So the control o thepopulation unctioned through the competition between a loto different local organizations that each had the responsibil-ity or a certain kind o surveillance a certain kind o cata-loguing and classi1047297cation and a certain kind o intimidationBut based on the history o subcontracting decisions at thetop are very weak because they can never anticipate the impli-cations o the decisions being made they donrsquot know exactlywhatrsquos going to happen by virtue o what it is that they decideIt is a problem around a lot o different issuesmdashtransportation
housing uel subsidiesmdashand there is an inherent avoidance oconrontation Te society generally doesnrsquot like conrontationand the authorities at the top donrsquot like it in part because theydonrsquot know exactly what will happen as a result Tey have al-ways run the city through a kind o subcontracting to a lot odifferent kinds o players who in the end they really canrsquot con-trol So the government basically said that they are going tocontrol this city by giving out a certain amount o authority toextra-parliamentary players or them to make their own dealsessentially allowing them to be both political bosses and gang-stersmdashnot that the difference is at all clear However when youattempt to rationalize the system o governance everyone gets
very a raid o what will happen because t hey donrsquot know how
to anticipate the results It ends up like traffic you have a grid-lock situation where no one wants to take the risk o makingany kind o de1047297nitive decisions about the problem
ET What about the question o master planning and the role
o inormal components Many people have spoken about theinability to respond to problems because o a lack o ldquopoliti-cal willrdquo but others such as our research coordinator FaridRakun suggest that we might need another approach to poli-tics or that it is precisely not a problem o political will at all
FARID RAKUN I have been hearing this song or years and the
government always says they have a grand plan that is goingto work but that someone in particular in the government isthe problem So it always depends on who is president who ismayor and so onmdashthis is just a list o excuses For me since Iwas a student here beore 983090983088983088983093 I have been hearing about thisproblem o ldquopolitical willrdquo I have come to the conclusion thatit is the time in Jakarta or anarchy For residents to take mat-ters into their own hands especially since this is what the resi-
Currency 252
dents o Jakarta have been doing or a long time anyway Butis it good to ldquooffi cializerdquo t hese things Would a ormal hierar-
chy o power do the agents at the bottom any good or wouldit just allow someone to attack them more easily ake street
vendors or exa mple Architects are asci nated with inormalstreet vendors and they want to map their locations but theyreally end up making these maps or the government because
ET We have seen projects about mapping the street vendors
and more broadly questions o how to ldquoormalizerdquo the inor-mal through representation So we really have two questionsthe question o ldquopolitical willrdquo as an excuse and the questiono the ldquoormalizationrdquo o inormal struggles
AS Te reality is in terms o cities like Jakarta and others o
a similar size that no one particular sector has any compre-hensive idea o what is going on Tey all o course have to
act as i they do which can be very effective whether it be inthe elaboration o good policy good spatial planning good
urban development policy or policy in terms o planningor service provision Tere are a lot o examples o interest-ing projects that are up-scaled at the level o metropolitainpolicy But when all o these cities are very complex assem-blages o particular histories materialities political situationsand inrastructuremdashas well as different kinds o sectors with
various economic prac tices social compositions etcmdashi or-malization means some way in which the interrelationships o
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253
these different acets o the urban assemblage are either pre-dictable or consistent then this is simply never going to be
the case Formalization doesnrsquot entail stability It may be oneelement within the assemblage that in some ways is necessaryor people to recognize one way or another that they are inthe same boat
I have a very ambivalent relationship to the Right to theCity movement Where I am most sympathetic is in terms oa kind o ormalization o rights it is a kind o instrumentthrough which people rom different ways o lie and in di-erent kinds o positions might be able to recognize how theyare in the same boat But the kind o economic practices inwhich people have to engage in so they can put ood on thetable are not easily subsumable under a kind o codi1047297ed sys-
tem o rights Tese kinds o practices are labeled ldquoinormalrdquosimply because they do not easily correspond to the devicesused or the ormal speci1047297cation o things Still to group themall under the rubric o inormality doesnrsquot really make sense
CATHY PYENSON When you started your work using research-
ers rom the neighbourhoods in North Jakar ta how did youeven connect with the people How did you go about bringingthem all together
AS Tey were all members o the 983157983152983139 Officially the consor-
tium brought together 9830951048632 local bodies that were supposedlysel-organized mostly across North Jakarta but also through-
out the city But in reality it was the 983157983152983139 itsel that providedthe incentive and the means or residents rom these differentareas to organize in this particular way So it was a kind ocomplex congealment in some ways the different organiza-tions were the product o the larger group but the consortiumalways viewed itsel as simply bringing together the smallergroups
JOSHUA KEHL With respect to sel-organizing in the city Irsquom
wondering how the mosques come to 1047297t into the urban assem-
blage Tey are being built even i there is not a lot o moneyor them and they can become like an exchange programmdashas
you have written about with respect to Warakasmdashkey sites oinormation exchange How would you characterize the roleo religion and the mosques in particular as an attractor orthese other actors within the city
AS o a large extent this ongoing tendency to construct small
mosques is in some way or the majority o districts in Jakar-ta connected to the premise that most o these districts are
Scapegoat 254
airly intense places o opportunistic angling among residentswhich produces a kind o exigency o needing to do somethingmore than they are doing at the moment Within Jakarta thereis a very strong sense that whatever works now whatever youare doing now isnrsquot going to work or very long that you cannever really trust the particular way that you have ound sta-bility at any given moment
Tis goes back to a sense that historically even when peo-ple had civil service or actory jobs their income was nevergoing to be enough to really do anything more than try to stay
in place Also t here are uncertainties around labour marketsand trying to organize labour as well as whole histories o or-ganizing in traditional ways were ofen heavily repressed bythe Dutch and in the early postcolonial period particularlyin Jakarta So you are dealing with areas where people alwayshave the sense o having to do something more even i theyhave a job or a kind o livelihood they all are trying to thinko something else to do
But i I want to act I can never go rom point A to pointB to point C directly because I operate in a crowded 1047297eld o
actors who all have their own ideas about what to do So all othese initiatives that are being undertaken will con1047298ict and
there is no straight line that allows anyone to ollow an agendaSo I always have to work around whatever you are doing andthat means I either try to 1047297t it into what you are doing and wemake things complimentary or we try to operate under theradar so the potential competitive dimensions donrsquot stand outtoo much You are dealing with districts where there is an in-tense pursuit o opportunism Likewise with people lookingout or other peoplersquos vulnerabilities as well as their strengths
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255 Currency
because I know that in some sense I canrsquot go it alone So whodo I go with Who do I work with I want to work with people
who arenrsquot necessarily like me As you know a lot o the citywas settled according to ethnic ties and especially under thecolonial period ethnicity was linked to the kind o job that youwould do So i you are a Batak you are a teacher a lawyer ora bus driver or i you are rom Madura you hustle hardwarei you are rom Padang you do textiles Tese are the con1047298u-ences o regional sensitivities and colonial privilege that getreproduced continuously But i I want to be opportunistic iI stay with people like me then I owe them something Irsquom ob-ligated and this is the price I pay or a sense o belonging and asense o secu rity But I donrsquot want that all the t ime I donrsquot wantto be indebted and I donrsquot want to be obligated I already have
enough obligations So I am always looking or more provi-sional short-term opportunistic relationships with people whoare not like me You have this con1047297guration always going onPeople project a very clear identity o who they are When youwork in the neighbourhood there are no secrets I know whereyou come rom I know whom you are married to I know whatyour kids are doing I know what yoursquore doing at three in themorning we can always place each other so you are alwaystrying to get around that to 1047297nd more provisional ways odealing with each other Tis makes districts very complica-ted and ofen very treacherous manipulative and generousbeyond anything you can explain
In this kind o 1047297eld o agency developing a sense o com-
mon space public space shared space or even neutral spacemdashthese spaces are very difficult or these areas to generate ontheir own And certainly the government has never been veryinterested in providing them So religion or a kind o com-mon religious affiliation becomes a conduit through whichthese types o spaces can be built such as a mosque It is muchmore than a place or people to say their prayers or or peopleto give money to construct it so they will go to heaven Be-yond that mosques have become a way o con1047297guring a com-mon space or districts a kind o neutral space an outlet evenwhen they are tied to speci1047297c or larger organizations that maybe competing with each other It is not that they are politi-
cally neutral because to be a mosque you have to exist withinthe whole network o mosques you get your money rom someplace you get your imam rom some place and i the mosqueis going to unction it is also a kind o machine that enables itsmembers to have a connection with the larger city It usuallyaligns itsel with some other kind o larger network o me itseems that one o the predominant reasons that mosques con-tinue to be built is that they allow or common spaces within
256 in Jakarta
districts which are very dynamic but ofen problematically soNow religion has other space-shaping orces as well For
instance in Jakarta a lot o what people did was keep a senseo eligibility at bay which Irsquove written about elsewhere983094 Whatthis means is that it didnrsquot matter who you were everyone hadan identity and a status and relationship to each other andas you know the Javanese have an authoritarian culture andthere is the right way o saying things and the right way o be-ing deerential to people who are above you At the level o thestreet there is a whole other way o speaking that is ull o the
anarchy that Farid is talking about where all o those hierar-chies are upended Tere is a whole language that tears all othose conventions apart and people learn how to speak botho these languages
In some way part o the relative success o many o theauto-constructed districts in Jakarta is based on keeping thisnotion o traditional eligibility at bay People can get in eachotherrsquos aces and say things to each other without necessar-ily worrying about who they are and who you are Tey cancontribute put things out there and not be araid o otherpeople saying they are stupid crazy disrespectul or trans-gressive Tere is a sense that things get put on the table in
this context that otherwise wouldnrsquot be there at all I I went toan astrophysics convention I am not going start running mymouth off because I donrsquot eel eligible to do so I donrsquot have thetraining I donrsquot have the background and I would look stupidso the question o eligibility is operating there in a large wayBut there is a signi1047297cant amount o anti-eligibility sentimentin Jakarta I work in a place called Kampung Rawa which isone o the densest districts in Jakarta Yoursquove got kids there a
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257
network o youth and they use social media to 1047297nd out what ishappening in the city Tey go by motorcycle convoy and they
show up at these places and meetings they have no idea whatis going on they have no idea what the agenda is and theytry to see whatrsquos going on But they are committed to sayingsomething they are always committed to saying somethingAnd what they may say could be completely out o context andhave nothing to do with the situation but they will speak Teyare present and they speak and make their presence eltmdashandthey donrsquot care Tis is a commitment that they have
So you see in Jakarta like many other Muslim cities othe world there is the emergence o a new middle class whoseascendancy is very much tied to Islamic devotion and an ethoso doing the right thing In a way the aspirations o this class
have been expressed through reormist Islam basically Su-harto paid them off and gave them a lot o opportunities oraccumulation Still there is a sensibility that is not unlike whatgoes on or example in Istanbul where people who are nothistorically middle-class and who have come up through verydifficult circumstances to gain proessional livelihoods nowhave to try to conigure a orm o household that matchestheir new occupational status One sees a very strong notiono eligibility here I know young couples who live in these veryheterogeneous working-class and lower-middle-class neighbour-hoods and they have the sense that they are going to leave orEast Jakarta to the newer Islamic areas o the city What makesthem the ldquonewrdquo Islamic areas Te money involved the hege-
mony o certain religious institutions etc but what counts isthe abric o the particular neighbourhood Even though theylive in an area where they are really embeddedmdashi they needchildcare i someone is sick i they need help i they need ex-tra income they all have access to these thingsmdashbut they aregoing to leave Why Tey are very clear i they go to a more
ldquomoralrdquo area a more righteous area o the city they will beeligible or success Tey are going to go into a lot o debt inorder to move to the ldquonewrdquo area they may be in debt or mosto their lives and they also wonrsquot have the services and socialsupport they had because they will be very much on their ownwhether or not they will be able to cope with that situation re-
mains to be seen but they are adamant about leavingSo there is a religious sentiment at work the individuat-
ing power o reormist Islam even among working-class andlower-middle-class residents which says you have to shapethe morality o your own individual existence and that is thepriority Donrsquot be so concerned with how you manage the so-cial lie you are embedded in all the different networks andobligations you have instead you have to think about stylizing
Scapegoat 258
yoursel as a moral individual and i you do that you will besuccessul When this imperative is combined with the rapid
prousion o mega-complexes throughout the cit y many peopleend up thinking to themselves that their current way o lie inthe city is over or coming to an end and that they should actnow and leave or new areas983095
In a way this is the same kind o urgency that property de- velopers eel Tey have t his sense in Jakar ta t hat t he pro1047297t-ability o a given project doesnrsquot matter but i they donrsquot actnowmdashbecause most o the big developments you see are 1047297rstand oremost a claim on space whether or not it is pro1047297table atthe momentmdashyou wonrsquot get there beore others have claimedit Te mentality is that you have to decide now because i youdonrsquot itrsquos going to be too late It is that same psychologica l sense
o urgency that pervades much o the rest o Jakarta a kind ospeculative behavior that requires urgent decisions Tere hasalways been this type o urgency but historically it has been
JOHN EWANOWSKI In one o your texts you say that the resi-
dents have an ambivalence to the preman because unlike mostresidents they donrsquot have to play the game in the same wayTis was reiterated at the university yesterday when we weretold that preman are generally bad or the city In a city wherethe government canrsquot do very much or the reasons wersquove dis-
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259
cussed among others how is the preman as an extra-govern-mental official a bene1047297t Do we have to see them as negative
agents because they signal a kind o corruption in the city
AS It is a kind o conusing term preman Part o the conu-
sion historically in Jakarta is because the preman wouldalways assume a kind o powerul and ambivalent positionin the sense that preman means ldquoree manrdquo and in this sense
it means they are not necessarily connected anywhere or em-bedded in a particular kind o community occupation or po-litical perspective But then who are they How can they belocated I they cannot be located anywhere they are capableo doing things that canrsquot be predicted Tis generates anxietybut it also generates potential Because the premanrsquos power his-
torically came rom the ability to negotiate through very di-erent kinds o stories very different kinds o eventsmdashand thewillingness to use violence in order to do itmdashthis meant a kindo determination it meant you could count on the preman be-cause they werenrsquot reluctant to 1047297ght their way through But ithis is possible because the preman donrsquot have any particularloyalties they also donrsquot necessarily have any particular loyal-ties to those whom they are supposed to be 1047297ghting or I thinkthat this ambivalent position tends to cause characterizationso the preman as necessarily bad
In some ways a more traditional orm o the premanmdashthatis someone willing to attempt to translate between differentways o seeing things in a neighbourhood different ways o do-
ing things and actively mediating relationships among peo-plemdashis a role that is being abdicated to a large extent with therise o organizations like 983142983138983154 and Forkabi1048632 Tese organiza-tions take the approach o saying we will 1047297ght or you and weare networked as an organization across the city So with therise o new orms o protection deense and advocacy the rolethat the preman played is shifing hands and that contributesto the problem o what they can do Te preman then begin toimpose themselves say at any 983095-983089983089 and begin to ldquomanage theparkingrdquo by directing traffic You either collaborate with themor you pay some kind o price Tere has been a transitionunderway over the last ten years that is changing the complex
character o the preman and shifing this role into more con- ventional orms o gangsterism rather than operating as a kindo ldquohingerdquo within the neighbourhoods themselves
JK How identi1047297able are they within the social network Are
they just known through word o mouth
AS Identi1047297cation occurs in terms o a complicity where neigh-
Currency 260
bourhoods were made to recognize that they needed securityand so these guys appeared to provide it So in some ways
they are associated with the kind o job that they do the waythey occupy the day and the night the way they are strategi-cally located at the places where you transitionmdashtransporta-tion depots markets public spaces commercial spacesmdashandthey are the ones who make things happen
Te classic case is at anah Abang Southeast Asiarsquos largest
traditional textile market Te city o Jakarta subcontracts themanagement o the market out to the cityrsquos in1047298uential propertydevelopers and the market is their single largest earner Teseinclude the Podomoro group the largest developer in the citywho owns Jakartarsquos biggest mega-complexes Tey subcontractthe work out to 983089983094 different holding companies one or the
carters one or the cleaning one or the maintenance one orthe rents etc And who does it Tere is a chain o amous pre-man who are the coordinators and the power o the market istheirs For example there was a very amous preman Herculeswho ran anah Abang or many years So in some ways ianything needs to be done you go to these people Tey arethe 1047297gures in neighbourhoods in the markets and other areaswho manage the interstices Tey are accountable to everyoneand accountable to no one at the same time In some ways theydeer any kind o con1047298ict or example among the 983089983094 differentholding companies within the market they obscure the powerrelationship but at the same time their power rests on howgood o a job they can do in terms o being able to appease
the different interests that are involved Tis was also theirpower at the neighbourhood level as well to listen to hear totake it into all into consideration regardless o who was speak-ing However as I said this kind o role is increasingly beingreplaced by a kind o game that says alright the city is becom-ing more insecure and we are helping it become more insecureso we can guarantee that it becomes more secure Tis is a kindo conventional game that extra-parliamentary groups haveplayed in cities or a long long time
LUCAS BARTOSIEWICZ You call the preman the ldquohingerdquo and
you call these people players it seems like the livelihood o
the city the ldquocitynessrdquo o the city happens in the interactionamong more ormal and more inormal sectors o the cityand the government seems more o a reeree1048633 Now we haveheard about the city being separated between ormal and in-ormal sectors and the city government appears to supportthis division What do you think the result o this rigid divi-sion will be
in Jakarta
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261
AS Te most powerul actors in this city are the property devel-
opers Tey by ar have the greatest scope o autonomy which isnot dissimilar to a lot o other cities because part o the motiva-tion o being in politics o being in government is being ableto steal Once you have stolen the money what do you do withit You have to put it somewhere and the property developersoffer a kind o venue where you can invest stolen money Tisis the best way to clean dirty money Tere is a complicity there
But in some ways the state allows this and there is a kind ogreater separation I you look at the way that mega-complexes
are marketed developers are largely saying that i you movehere yoursquoll be a part o the world Tis is the essence o it Weoffer you a platorm through which you can be in conversationwith the world How is this possible I you look at these com-plexes yoursquoll notice that they try to be as sel-contained as pos-sible Each one has a shopping mall that offers the same thingas all the others so there is nothing really to differentiate themrom each othermdashthey have the same restaurants coffee shopsetc but there is still a notion o being sel-contained You onlyhave to leave i you go to work otherwise it is a sel-containeduniverse withdrawn rom the rest o the city so you donrsquot haveto pay attention to the messiness o Jakarta I you look at the
central urban corridor it is one big complex afer another anda 1047298y-over is being built to take traffi c above the complexeswhich will cost the city an enormous amount o money Tis isbeing done at the urging o the developers who want to lessentraffi c congestion or residents w ithin the complex st rip Teproperty developers contribute o course but only to the gov-ernorrsquos reelection campaign not the inrastructure itsel Inmany ways the city can sit back because property developers
Scapegoat 262
are creating a kind o constituency to be addressed politicallywhile the separation between the rest o the city and the com-
plexes only grows A colleague o mine has done a thoroughstudy o the new developments and has shown the devastatingeffects in terms o how many people are actually housed inrelation to hidden costs environmental costs etc that thesecomplexes exert on the city Tey impose a greater biurcation
Meanwhile one o the major considerations is the provisiono rental accommodations So i you have a property eveni you are very poor you try to rent some o what you haveI would estimate that 983095983088-1048632983088 o the residential units withinthe city have some rental space at least one room Tere isa great demand or accommodation and even i statistics saythe central part o the city is losing population which mightbe true offi cially you have all kinds o temporary residentsmoving around who are not counted in surveys So I thinkin many areas there is an intense densi1047297cation taking placepartly in response to the way the mega-complexes are takingup more and more space What the result will be I donrsquot know
One thing to remember is that the older complexes were de-signed as two-bedroom units or young proessional amiliesmdashhusband wie two kidsmdashbut once you sell them off you canrsquotcontrol who lives there So i you look at some o these newresidential complexes they can be shared by up to ten peoplewho go in on them together because it is a good location andthey like the idea o living above a shopping mall but who ac-tually lives there is ofen not who the developers imagine
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263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
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265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
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267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
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269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
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271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
in Jakarta
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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251
Even with the Orde Baru983092 where one had the impressionthat the city was very tightly run rom the top the adminis-
tration o the population was in reality conducted through aplurality o highly localized surveillance and organizationsthat were in competition with each other So the control o thepopulation unctioned through the competition between a loto different local organizations that each had the responsibil-ity or a certain kind o surveillance a certain kind o cata-loguing and classi1047297cation and a certain kind o intimidationBut based on the history o subcontracting decisions at thetop are very weak because they can never anticipate the impli-cations o the decisions being made they donrsquot know exactlywhatrsquos going to happen by virtue o what it is that they decideIt is a problem around a lot o different issuesmdashtransportation
housing uel subsidiesmdashand there is an inherent avoidance oconrontation Te society generally doesnrsquot like conrontationand the authorities at the top donrsquot like it in part because theydonrsquot know exactly what will happen as a result Tey have al-ways run the city through a kind o subcontracting to a lot odifferent kinds o players who in the end they really canrsquot con-trol So the government basically said that they are going tocontrol this city by giving out a certain amount o authority toextra-parliamentary players or them to make their own dealsessentially allowing them to be both political bosses and gang-stersmdashnot that the difference is at all clear However when youattempt to rationalize the system o governance everyone gets
very a raid o what will happen because t hey donrsquot know how
to anticipate the results It ends up like traffic you have a grid-lock situation where no one wants to take the risk o makingany kind o de1047297nitive decisions about the problem
ET What about the question o master planning and the role
o inormal components Many people have spoken about theinability to respond to problems because o a lack o ldquopoliti-cal willrdquo but others such as our research coordinator FaridRakun suggest that we might need another approach to poli-tics or that it is precisely not a problem o political will at all
FARID RAKUN I have been hearing this song or years and the
government always says they have a grand plan that is goingto work but that someone in particular in the government isthe problem So it always depends on who is president who ismayor and so onmdashthis is just a list o excuses For me since Iwas a student here beore 983090983088983088983093 I have been hearing about thisproblem o ldquopolitical willrdquo I have come to the conclusion thatit is the time in Jakarta or anarchy For residents to take mat-ters into their own hands especially since this is what the resi-
Currency 252
dents o Jakarta have been doing or a long time anyway Butis it good to ldquooffi cializerdquo t hese things Would a ormal hierar-
chy o power do the agents at the bottom any good or wouldit just allow someone to attack them more easily ake street
vendors or exa mple Architects are asci nated with inormalstreet vendors and they want to map their locations but theyreally end up making these maps or the government because
ET We have seen projects about mapping the street vendors
and more broadly questions o how to ldquoormalizerdquo the inor-mal through representation So we really have two questionsthe question o ldquopolitical willrdquo as an excuse and the questiono the ldquoormalizationrdquo o inormal struggles
AS Te reality is in terms o cities like Jakarta and others o
a similar size that no one particular sector has any compre-hensive idea o what is going on Tey all o course have to
act as i they do which can be very effective whether it be inthe elaboration o good policy good spatial planning good
urban development policy or policy in terms o planningor service provision Tere are a lot o examples o interest-ing projects that are up-scaled at the level o metropolitainpolicy But when all o these cities are very complex assem-blages o particular histories materialities political situationsand inrastructuremdashas well as different kinds o sectors with
various economic prac tices social compositions etcmdashi or-malization means some way in which the interrelationships o
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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253
these different acets o the urban assemblage are either pre-dictable or consistent then this is simply never going to be
the case Formalization doesnrsquot entail stability It may be oneelement within the assemblage that in some ways is necessaryor people to recognize one way or another that they are inthe same boat
I have a very ambivalent relationship to the Right to theCity movement Where I am most sympathetic is in terms oa kind o ormalization o rights it is a kind o instrumentthrough which people rom different ways o lie and in di-erent kinds o positions might be able to recognize how theyare in the same boat But the kind o economic practices inwhich people have to engage in so they can put ood on thetable are not easily subsumable under a kind o codi1047297ed sys-
tem o rights Tese kinds o practices are labeled ldquoinormalrdquosimply because they do not easily correspond to the devicesused or the ormal speci1047297cation o things Still to group themall under the rubric o inormality doesnrsquot really make sense
CATHY PYENSON When you started your work using research-
ers rom the neighbourhoods in North Jakar ta how did youeven connect with the people How did you go about bringingthem all together
AS Tey were all members o the 983157983152983139 Officially the consor-
tium brought together 9830951048632 local bodies that were supposedlysel-organized mostly across North Jakarta but also through-
out the city But in reality it was the 983157983152983139 itsel that providedthe incentive and the means or residents rom these differentareas to organize in this particular way So it was a kind ocomplex congealment in some ways the different organiza-tions were the product o the larger group but the consortiumalways viewed itsel as simply bringing together the smallergroups
JOSHUA KEHL With respect to sel-organizing in the city Irsquom
wondering how the mosques come to 1047297t into the urban assem-
blage Tey are being built even i there is not a lot o moneyor them and they can become like an exchange programmdashas
you have written about with respect to Warakasmdashkey sites oinormation exchange How would you characterize the roleo religion and the mosques in particular as an attractor orthese other actors within the city
AS o a large extent this ongoing tendency to construct small
mosques is in some way or the majority o districts in Jakar-ta connected to the premise that most o these districts are
Scapegoat 254
airly intense places o opportunistic angling among residentswhich produces a kind o exigency o needing to do somethingmore than they are doing at the moment Within Jakarta thereis a very strong sense that whatever works now whatever youare doing now isnrsquot going to work or very long that you cannever really trust the particular way that you have ound sta-bility at any given moment
Tis goes back to a sense that historically even when peo-ple had civil service or actory jobs their income was nevergoing to be enough to really do anything more than try to stay
in place Also t here are uncertainties around labour marketsand trying to organize labour as well as whole histories o or-ganizing in traditional ways were ofen heavily repressed bythe Dutch and in the early postcolonial period particularlyin Jakarta So you are dealing with areas where people alwayshave the sense o having to do something more even i theyhave a job or a kind o livelihood they all are trying to thinko something else to do
But i I want to act I can never go rom point A to pointB to point C directly because I operate in a crowded 1047297eld o
actors who all have their own ideas about what to do So all othese initiatives that are being undertaken will con1047298ict and
there is no straight line that allows anyone to ollow an agendaSo I always have to work around whatever you are doing andthat means I either try to 1047297t it into what you are doing and wemake things complimentary or we try to operate under theradar so the potential competitive dimensions donrsquot stand outtoo much You are dealing with districts where there is an in-tense pursuit o opportunism Likewise with people lookingout or other peoplersquos vulnerabilities as well as their strengths
Water Politics and Design
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255 Currency
because I know that in some sense I canrsquot go it alone So whodo I go with Who do I work with I want to work with people
who arenrsquot necessarily like me As you know a lot o the citywas settled according to ethnic ties and especially under thecolonial period ethnicity was linked to the kind o job that youwould do So i you are a Batak you are a teacher a lawyer ora bus driver or i you are rom Madura you hustle hardwarei you are rom Padang you do textiles Tese are the con1047298u-ences o regional sensitivities and colonial privilege that getreproduced continuously But i I want to be opportunistic iI stay with people like me then I owe them something Irsquom ob-ligated and this is the price I pay or a sense o belonging and asense o secu rity But I donrsquot want that all the t ime I donrsquot wantto be indebted and I donrsquot want to be obligated I already have
enough obligations So I am always looking or more provi-sional short-term opportunistic relationships with people whoare not like me You have this con1047297guration always going onPeople project a very clear identity o who they are When youwork in the neighbourhood there are no secrets I know whereyou come rom I know whom you are married to I know whatyour kids are doing I know what yoursquore doing at three in themorning we can always place each other so you are alwaystrying to get around that to 1047297nd more provisional ways odealing with each other Tis makes districts very complica-ted and ofen very treacherous manipulative and generousbeyond anything you can explain
In this kind o 1047297eld o agency developing a sense o com-
mon space public space shared space or even neutral spacemdashthese spaces are very difficult or these areas to generate ontheir own And certainly the government has never been veryinterested in providing them So religion or a kind o com-mon religious affiliation becomes a conduit through whichthese types o spaces can be built such as a mosque It is muchmore than a place or people to say their prayers or or peopleto give money to construct it so they will go to heaven Be-yond that mosques have become a way o con1047297guring a com-mon space or districts a kind o neutral space an outlet evenwhen they are tied to speci1047297c or larger organizations that maybe competing with each other It is not that they are politi-
cally neutral because to be a mosque you have to exist withinthe whole network o mosques you get your money rom someplace you get your imam rom some place and i the mosqueis going to unction it is also a kind o machine that enables itsmembers to have a connection with the larger city It usuallyaligns itsel with some other kind o larger network o me itseems that one o the predominant reasons that mosques con-tinue to be built is that they allow or common spaces within
256 in Jakarta
districts which are very dynamic but ofen problematically soNow religion has other space-shaping orces as well For
instance in Jakarta a lot o what people did was keep a senseo eligibility at bay which Irsquove written about elsewhere983094 Whatthis means is that it didnrsquot matter who you were everyone hadan identity and a status and relationship to each other andas you know the Javanese have an authoritarian culture andthere is the right way o saying things and the right way o be-ing deerential to people who are above you At the level o thestreet there is a whole other way o speaking that is ull o the
anarchy that Farid is talking about where all o those hierar-chies are upended Tere is a whole language that tears all othose conventions apart and people learn how to speak botho these languages
In some way part o the relative success o many o theauto-constructed districts in Jakarta is based on keeping thisnotion o traditional eligibility at bay People can get in eachotherrsquos aces and say things to each other without necessar-ily worrying about who they are and who you are Tey cancontribute put things out there and not be araid o otherpeople saying they are stupid crazy disrespectul or trans-gressive Tere is a sense that things get put on the table in
this context that otherwise wouldnrsquot be there at all I I went toan astrophysics convention I am not going start running mymouth off because I donrsquot eel eligible to do so I donrsquot have thetraining I donrsquot have the background and I would look stupidso the question o eligibility is operating there in a large wayBut there is a signi1047297cant amount o anti-eligibility sentimentin Jakarta I work in a place called Kampung Rawa which isone o the densest districts in Jakarta Yoursquove got kids there a
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257
network o youth and they use social media to 1047297nd out what ishappening in the city Tey go by motorcycle convoy and they
show up at these places and meetings they have no idea whatis going on they have no idea what the agenda is and theytry to see whatrsquos going on But they are committed to sayingsomething they are always committed to saying somethingAnd what they may say could be completely out o context andhave nothing to do with the situation but they will speak Teyare present and they speak and make their presence eltmdashandthey donrsquot care Tis is a commitment that they have
So you see in Jakarta like many other Muslim cities othe world there is the emergence o a new middle class whoseascendancy is very much tied to Islamic devotion and an ethoso doing the right thing In a way the aspirations o this class
have been expressed through reormist Islam basically Su-harto paid them off and gave them a lot o opportunities oraccumulation Still there is a sensibility that is not unlike whatgoes on or example in Istanbul where people who are nothistorically middle-class and who have come up through verydifficult circumstances to gain proessional livelihoods nowhave to try to conigure a orm o household that matchestheir new occupational status One sees a very strong notiono eligibility here I know young couples who live in these veryheterogeneous working-class and lower-middle-class neighbour-hoods and they have the sense that they are going to leave orEast Jakarta to the newer Islamic areas o the city What makesthem the ldquonewrdquo Islamic areas Te money involved the hege-
mony o certain religious institutions etc but what counts isthe abric o the particular neighbourhood Even though theylive in an area where they are really embeddedmdashi they needchildcare i someone is sick i they need help i they need ex-tra income they all have access to these thingsmdashbut they aregoing to leave Why Tey are very clear i they go to a more
ldquomoralrdquo area a more righteous area o the city they will beeligible or success Tey are going to go into a lot o debt inorder to move to the ldquonewrdquo area they may be in debt or mosto their lives and they also wonrsquot have the services and socialsupport they had because they will be very much on their ownwhether or not they will be able to cope with that situation re-
mains to be seen but they are adamant about leavingSo there is a religious sentiment at work the individuat-
ing power o reormist Islam even among working-class andlower-middle-class residents which says you have to shapethe morality o your own individual existence and that is thepriority Donrsquot be so concerned with how you manage the so-cial lie you are embedded in all the different networks andobligations you have instead you have to think about stylizing
Scapegoat 258
yoursel as a moral individual and i you do that you will besuccessul When this imperative is combined with the rapid
prousion o mega-complexes throughout the cit y many peopleend up thinking to themselves that their current way o lie inthe city is over or coming to an end and that they should actnow and leave or new areas983095
In a way this is the same kind o urgency that property de- velopers eel Tey have t his sense in Jakar ta t hat t he pro1047297t-ability o a given project doesnrsquot matter but i they donrsquot actnowmdashbecause most o the big developments you see are 1047297rstand oremost a claim on space whether or not it is pro1047297table atthe momentmdashyou wonrsquot get there beore others have claimedit Te mentality is that you have to decide now because i youdonrsquot itrsquos going to be too late It is that same psychologica l sense
o urgency that pervades much o the rest o Jakarta a kind ospeculative behavior that requires urgent decisions Tere hasalways been this type o urgency but historically it has been
JOHN EWANOWSKI In one o your texts you say that the resi-
dents have an ambivalence to the preman because unlike mostresidents they donrsquot have to play the game in the same wayTis was reiterated at the university yesterday when we weretold that preman are generally bad or the city In a city wherethe government canrsquot do very much or the reasons wersquove dis-
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259
cussed among others how is the preman as an extra-govern-mental official a bene1047297t Do we have to see them as negative
agents because they signal a kind o corruption in the city
AS It is a kind o conusing term preman Part o the conu-
sion historically in Jakarta is because the preman wouldalways assume a kind o powerul and ambivalent positionin the sense that preman means ldquoree manrdquo and in this sense
it means they are not necessarily connected anywhere or em-bedded in a particular kind o community occupation or po-litical perspective But then who are they How can they belocated I they cannot be located anywhere they are capableo doing things that canrsquot be predicted Tis generates anxietybut it also generates potential Because the premanrsquos power his-
torically came rom the ability to negotiate through very di-erent kinds o stories very different kinds o eventsmdashand thewillingness to use violence in order to do itmdashthis meant a kindo determination it meant you could count on the preman be-cause they werenrsquot reluctant to 1047297ght their way through But ithis is possible because the preman donrsquot have any particularloyalties they also donrsquot necessarily have any particular loyal-ties to those whom they are supposed to be 1047297ghting or I thinkthat this ambivalent position tends to cause characterizationso the preman as necessarily bad
In some ways a more traditional orm o the premanmdashthatis someone willing to attempt to translate between differentways o seeing things in a neighbourhood different ways o do-
ing things and actively mediating relationships among peo-plemdashis a role that is being abdicated to a large extent with therise o organizations like 983142983138983154 and Forkabi1048632 Tese organiza-tions take the approach o saying we will 1047297ght or you and weare networked as an organization across the city So with therise o new orms o protection deense and advocacy the rolethat the preman played is shifing hands and that contributesto the problem o what they can do Te preman then begin toimpose themselves say at any 983095-983089983089 and begin to ldquomanage theparkingrdquo by directing traffic You either collaborate with themor you pay some kind o price Tere has been a transitionunderway over the last ten years that is changing the complex
character o the preman and shifing this role into more con- ventional orms o gangsterism rather than operating as a kindo ldquohingerdquo within the neighbourhoods themselves
JK How identi1047297able are they within the social network Are
they just known through word o mouth
AS Identi1047297cation occurs in terms o a complicity where neigh-
Currency 260
bourhoods were made to recognize that they needed securityand so these guys appeared to provide it So in some ways
they are associated with the kind o job that they do the waythey occupy the day and the night the way they are strategi-cally located at the places where you transitionmdashtransporta-tion depots markets public spaces commercial spacesmdashandthey are the ones who make things happen
Te classic case is at anah Abang Southeast Asiarsquos largest
traditional textile market Te city o Jakarta subcontracts themanagement o the market out to the cityrsquos in1047298uential propertydevelopers and the market is their single largest earner Teseinclude the Podomoro group the largest developer in the citywho owns Jakartarsquos biggest mega-complexes Tey subcontractthe work out to 983089983094 different holding companies one or the
carters one or the cleaning one or the maintenance one orthe rents etc And who does it Tere is a chain o amous pre-man who are the coordinators and the power o the market istheirs For example there was a very amous preman Herculeswho ran anah Abang or many years So in some ways ianything needs to be done you go to these people Tey arethe 1047297gures in neighbourhoods in the markets and other areaswho manage the interstices Tey are accountable to everyoneand accountable to no one at the same time In some ways theydeer any kind o con1047298ict or example among the 983089983094 differentholding companies within the market they obscure the powerrelationship but at the same time their power rests on howgood o a job they can do in terms o being able to appease
the different interests that are involved Tis was also theirpower at the neighbourhood level as well to listen to hear totake it into all into consideration regardless o who was speak-ing However as I said this kind o role is increasingly beingreplaced by a kind o game that says alright the city is becom-ing more insecure and we are helping it become more insecureso we can guarantee that it becomes more secure Tis is a kindo conventional game that extra-parliamentary groups haveplayed in cities or a long long time
LUCAS BARTOSIEWICZ You call the preman the ldquohingerdquo and
you call these people players it seems like the livelihood o
the city the ldquocitynessrdquo o the city happens in the interactionamong more ormal and more inormal sectors o the cityand the government seems more o a reeree1048633 Now we haveheard about the city being separated between ormal and in-ormal sectors and the city government appears to supportthis division What do you think the result o this rigid divi-sion will be
in Jakarta
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261
AS Te most powerul actors in this city are the property devel-
opers Tey by ar have the greatest scope o autonomy which isnot dissimilar to a lot o other cities because part o the motiva-tion o being in politics o being in government is being ableto steal Once you have stolen the money what do you do withit You have to put it somewhere and the property developersoffer a kind o venue where you can invest stolen money Tisis the best way to clean dirty money Tere is a complicity there
But in some ways the state allows this and there is a kind ogreater separation I you look at the way that mega-complexes
are marketed developers are largely saying that i you movehere yoursquoll be a part o the world Tis is the essence o it Weoffer you a platorm through which you can be in conversationwith the world How is this possible I you look at these com-plexes yoursquoll notice that they try to be as sel-contained as pos-sible Each one has a shopping mall that offers the same thingas all the others so there is nothing really to differentiate themrom each othermdashthey have the same restaurants coffee shopsetc but there is still a notion o being sel-contained You onlyhave to leave i you go to work otherwise it is a sel-containeduniverse withdrawn rom the rest o the city so you donrsquot haveto pay attention to the messiness o Jakarta I you look at the
central urban corridor it is one big complex afer another anda 1047298y-over is being built to take traffi c above the complexeswhich will cost the city an enormous amount o money Tis isbeing done at the urging o the developers who want to lessentraffi c congestion or residents w ithin the complex st rip Teproperty developers contribute o course but only to the gov-ernorrsquos reelection campaign not the inrastructure itsel Inmany ways the city can sit back because property developers
Scapegoat 262
are creating a kind o constituency to be addressed politicallywhile the separation between the rest o the city and the com-
plexes only grows A colleague o mine has done a thoroughstudy o the new developments and has shown the devastatingeffects in terms o how many people are actually housed inrelation to hidden costs environmental costs etc that thesecomplexes exert on the city Tey impose a greater biurcation
Meanwhile one o the major considerations is the provisiono rental accommodations So i you have a property eveni you are very poor you try to rent some o what you haveI would estimate that 983095983088-1048632983088 o the residential units withinthe city have some rental space at least one room Tere isa great demand or accommodation and even i statistics saythe central part o the city is losing population which mightbe true offi cially you have all kinds o temporary residentsmoving around who are not counted in surveys So I thinkin many areas there is an intense densi1047297cation taking placepartly in response to the way the mega-complexes are takingup more and more space What the result will be I donrsquot know
One thing to remember is that the older complexes were de-signed as two-bedroom units or young proessional amiliesmdashhusband wie two kidsmdashbut once you sell them off you canrsquotcontrol who lives there So i you look at some o these newresidential complexes they can be shared by up to ten peoplewho go in on them together because it is a good location andthey like the idea o living above a shopping mall but who ac-tually lives there is ofen not who the developers imagine
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263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
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265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
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267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
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269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
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271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
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253
these different acets o the urban assemblage are either pre-dictable or consistent then this is simply never going to be
the case Formalization doesnrsquot entail stability It may be oneelement within the assemblage that in some ways is necessaryor people to recognize one way or another that they are inthe same boat
I have a very ambivalent relationship to the Right to theCity movement Where I am most sympathetic is in terms oa kind o ormalization o rights it is a kind o instrumentthrough which people rom different ways o lie and in di-erent kinds o positions might be able to recognize how theyare in the same boat But the kind o economic practices inwhich people have to engage in so they can put ood on thetable are not easily subsumable under a kind o codi1047297ed sys-
tem o rights Tese kinds o practices are labeled ldquoinormalrdquosimply because they do not easily correspond to the devicesused or the ormal speci1047297cation o things Still to group themall under the rubric o inormality doesnrsquot really make sense
CATHY PYENSON When you started your work using research-
ers rom the neighbourhoods in North Jakar ta how did youeven connect with the people How did you go about bringingthem all together
AS Tey were all members o the 983157983152983139 Officially the consor-
tium brought together 9830951048632 local bodies that were supposedlysel-organized mostly across North Jakarta but also through-
out the city But in reality it was the 983157983152983139 itsel that providedthe incentive and the means or residents rom these differentareas to organize in this particular way So it was a kind ocomplex congealment in some ways the different organiza-tions were the product o the larger group but the consortiumalways viewed itsel as simply bringing together the smallergroups
JOSHUA KEHL With respect to sel-organizing in the city Irsquom
wondering how the mosques come to 1047297t into the urban assem-
blage Tey are being built even i there is not a lot o moneyor them and they can become like an exchange programmdashas
you have written about with respect to Warakasmdashkey sites oinormation exchange How would you characterize the roleo religion and the mosques in particular as an attractor orthese other actors within the city
AS o a large extent this ongoing tendency to construct small
mosques is in some way or the majority o districts in Jakar-ta connected to the premise that most o these districts are
Scapegoat 254
airly intense places o opportunistic angling among residentswhich produces a kind o exigency o needing to do somethingmore than they are doing at the moment Within Jakarta thereis a very strong sense that whatever works now whatever youare doing now isnrsquot going to work or very long that you cannever really trust the particular way that you have ound sta-bility at any given moment
Tis goes back to a sense that historically even when peo-ple had civil service or actory jobs their income was nevergoing to be enough to really do anything more than try to stay
in place Also t here are uncertainties around labour marketsand trying to organize labour as well as whole histories o or-ganizing in traditional ways were ofen heavily repressed bythe Dutch and in the early postcolonial period particularlyin Jakarta So you are dealing with areas where people alwayshave the sense o having to do something more even i theyhave a job or a kind o livelihood they all are trying to thinko something else to do
But i I want to act I can never go rom point A to pointB to point C directly because I operate in a crowded 1047297eld o
actors who all have their own ideas about what to do So all othese initiatives that are being undertaken will con1047298ict and
there is no straight line that allows anyone to ollow an agendaSo I always have to work around whatever you are doing andthat means I either try to 1047297t it into what you are doing and wemake things complimentary or we try to operate under theradar so the potential competitive dimensions donrsquot stand outtoo much You are dealing with districts where there is an in-tense pursuit o opportunism Likewise with people lookingout or other peoplersquos vulnerabilities as well as their strengths
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255 Currency
because I know that in some sense I canrsquot go it alone So whodo I go with Who do I work with I want to work with people
who arenrsquot necessarily like me As you know a lot o the citywas settled according to ethnic ties and especially under thecolonial period ethnicity was linked to the kind o job that youwould do So i you are a Batak you are a teacher a lawyer ora bus driver or i you are rom Madura you hustle hardwarei you are rom Padang you do textiles Tese are the con1047298u-ences o regional sensitivities and colonial privilege that getreproduced continuously But i I want to be opportunistic iI stay with people like me then I owe them something Irsquom ob-ligated and this is the price I pay or a sense o belonging and asense o secu rity But I donrsquot want that all the t ime I donrsquot wantto be indebted and I donrsquot want to be obligated I already have
enough obligations So I am always looking or more provi-sional short-term opportunistic relationships with people whoare not like me You have this con1047297guration always going onPeople project a very clear identity o who they are When youwork in the neighbourhood there are no secrets I know whereyou come rom I know whom you are married to I know whatyour kids are doing I know what yoursquore doing at three in themorning we can always place each other so you are alwaystrying to get around that to 1047297nd more provisional ways odealing with each other Tis makes districts very complica-ted and ofen very treacherous manipulative and generousbeyond anything you can explain
In this kind o 1047297eld o agency developing a sense o com-
mon space public space shared space or even neutral spacemdashthese spaces are very difficult or these areas to generate ontheir own And certainly the government has never been veryinterested in providing them So religion or a kind o com-mon religious affiliation becomes a conduit through whichthese types o spaces can be built such as a mosque It is muchmore than a place or people to say their prayers or or peopleto give money to construct it so they will go to heaven Be-yond that mosques have become a way o con1047297guring a com-mon space or districts a kind o neutral space an outlet evenwhen they are tied to speci1047297c or larger organizations that maybe competing with each other It is not that they are politi-
cally neutral because to be a mosque you have to exist withinthe whole network o mosques you get your money rom someplace you get your imam rom some place and i the mosqueis going to unction it is also a kind o machine that enables itsmembers to have a connection with the larger city It usuallyaligns itsel with some other kind o larger network o me itseems that one o the predominant reasons that mosques con-tinue to be built is that they allow or common spaces within
256 in Jakarta
districts which are very dynamic but ofen problematically soNow religion has other space-shaping orces as well For
instance in Jakarta a lot o what people did was keep a senseo eligibility at bay which Irsquove written about elsewhere983094 Whatthis means is that it didnrsquot matter who you were everyone hadan identity and a status and relationship to each other andas you know the Javanese have an authoritarian culture andthere is the right way o saying things and the right way o be-ing deerential to people who are above you At the level o thestreet there is a whole other way o speaking that is ull o the
anarchy that Farid is talking about where all o those hierar-chies are upended Tere is a whole language that tears all othose conventions apart and people learn how to speak botho these languages
In some way part o the relative success o many o theauto-constructed districts in Jakarta is based on keeping thisnotion o traditional eligibility at bay People can get in eachotherrsquos aces and say things to each other without necessar-ily worrying about who they are and who you are Tey cancontribute put things out there and not be araid o otherpeople saying they are stupid crazy disrespectul or trans-gressive Tere is a sense that things get put on the table in
this context that otherwise wouldnrsquot be there at all I I went toan astrophysics convention I am not going start running mymouth off because I donrsquot eel eligible to do so I donrsquot have thetraining I donrsquot have the background and I would look stupidso the question o eligibility is operating there in a large wayBut there is a signi1047297cant amount o anti-eligibility sentimentin Jakarta I work in a place called Kampung Rawa which isone o the densest districts in Jakarta Yoursquove got kids there a
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257
network o youth and they use social media to 1047297nd out what ishappening in the city Tey go by motorcycle convoy and they
show up at these places and meetings they have no idea whatis going on they have no idea what the agenda is and theytry to see whatrsquos going on But they are committed to sayingsomething they are always committed to saying somethingAnd what they may say could be completely out o context andhave nothing to do with the situation but they will speak Teyare present and they speak and make their presence eltmdashandthey donrsquot care Tis is a commitment that they have
So you see in Jakarta like many other Muslim cities othe world there is the emergence o a new middle class whoseascendancy is very much tied to Islamic devotion and an ethoso doing the right thing In a way the aspirations o this class
have been expressed through reormist Islam basically Su-harto paid them off and gave them a lot o opportunities oraccumulation Still there is a sensibility that is not unlike whatgoes on or example in Istanbul where people who are nothistorically middle-class and who have come up through verydifficult circumstances to gain proessional livelihoods nowhave to try to conigure a orm o household that matchestheir new occupational status One sees a very strong notiono eligibility here I know young couples who live in these veryheterogeneous working-class and lower-middle-class neighbour-hoods and they have the sense that they are going to leave orEast Jakarta to the newer Islamic areas o the city What makesthem the ldquonewrdquo Islamic areas Te money involved the hege-
mony o certain religious institutions etc but what counts isthe abric o the particular neighbourhood Even though theylive in an area where they are really embeddedmdashi they needchildcare i someone is sick i they need help i they need ex-tra income they all have access to these thingsmdashbut they aregoing to leave Why Tey are very clear i they go to a more
ldquomoralrdquo area a more righteous area o the city they will beeligible or success Tey are going to go into a lot o debt inorder to move to the ldquonewrdquo area they may be in debt or mosto their lives and they also wonrsquot have the services and socialsupport they had because they will be very much on their ownwhether or not they will be able to cope with that situation re-
mains to be seen but they are adamant about leavingSo there is a religious sentiment at work the individuat-
ing power o reormist Islam even among working-class andlower-middle-class residents which says you have to shapethe morality o your own individual existence and that is thepriority Donrsquot be so concerned with how you manage the so-cial lie you are embedded in all the different networks andobligations you have instead you have to think about stylizing
Scapegoat 258
yoursel as a moral individual and i you do that you will besuccessul When this imperative is combined with the rapid
prousion o mega-complexes throughout the cit y many peopleend up thinking to themselves that their current way o lie inthe city is over or coming to an end and that they should actnow and leave or new areas983095
In a way this is the same kind o urgency that property de- velopers eel Tey have t his sense in Jakar ta t hat t he pro1047297t-ability o a given project doesnrsquot matter but i they donrsquot actnowmdashbecause most o the big developments you see are 1047297rstand oremost a claim on space whether or not it is pro1047297table atthe momentmdashyou wonrsquot get there beore others have claimedit Te mentality is that you have to decide now because i youdonrsquot itrsquos going to be too late It is that same psychologica l sense
o urgency that pervades much o the rest o Jakarta a kind ospeculative behavior that requires urgent decisions Tere hasalways been this type o urgency but historically it has been
JOHN EWANOWSKI In one o your texts you say that the resi-
dents have an ambivalence to the preman because unlike mostresidents they donrsquot have to play the game in the same wayTis was reiterated at the university yesterday when we weretold that preman are generally bad or the city In a city wherethe government canrsquot do very much or the reasons wersquove dis-
Water Politics and Design
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259
cussed among others how is the preman as an extra-govern-mental official a bene1047297t Do we have to see them as negative
agents because they signal a kind o corruption in the city
AS It is a kind o conusing term preman Part o the conu-
sion historically in Jakarta is because the preman wouldalways assume a kind o powerul and ambivalent positionin the sense that preman means ldquoree manrdquo and in this sense
it means they are not necessarily connected anywhere or em-bedded in a particular kind o community occupation or po-litical perspective But then who are they How can they belocated I they cannot be located anywhere they are capableo doing things that canrsquot be predicted Tis generates anxietybut it also generates potential Because the premanrsquos power his-
torically came rom the ability to negotiate through very di-erent kinds o stories very different kinds o eventsmdashand thewillingness to use violence in order to do itmdashthis meant a kindo determination it meant you could count on the preman be-cause they werenrsquot reluctant to 1047297ght their way through But ithis is possible because the preman donrsquot have any particularloyalties they also donrsquot necessarily have any particular loyal-ties to those whom they are supposed to be 1047297ghting or I thinkthat this ambivalent position tends to cause characterizationso the preman as necessarily bad
In some ways a more traditional orm o the premanmdashthatis someone willing to attempt to translate between differentways o seeing things in a neighbourhood different ways o do-
ing things and actively mediating relationships among peo-plemdashis a role that is being abdicated to a large extent with therise o organizations like 983142983138983154 and Forkabi1048632 Tese organiza-tions take the approach o saying we will 1047297ght or you and weare networked as an organization across the city So with therise o new orms o protection deense and advocacy the rolethat the preman played is shifing hands and that contributesto the problem o what they can do Te preman then begin toimpose themselves say at any 983095-983089983089 and begin to ldquomanage theparkingrdquo by directing traffic You either collaborate with themor you pay some kind o price Tere has been a transitionunderway over the last ten years that is changing the complex
character o the preman and shifing this role into more con- ventional orms o gangsterism rather than operating as a kindo ldquohingerdquo within the neighbourhoods themselves
JK How identi1047297able are they within the social network Are
they just known through word o mouth
AS Identi1047297cation occurs in terms o a complicity where neigh-
Currency 260
bourhoods were made to recognize that they needed securityand so these guys appeared to provide it So in some ways
they are associated with the kind o job that they do the waythey occupy the day and the night the way they are strategi-cally located at the places where you transitionmdashtransporta-tion depots markets public spaces commercial spacesmdashandthey are the ones who make things happen
Te classic case is at anah Abang Southeast Asiarsquos largest
traditional textile market Te city o Jakarta subcontracts themanagement o the market out to the cityrsquos in1047298uential propertydevelopers and the market is their single largest earner Teseinclude the Podomoro group the largest developer in the citywho owns Jakartarsquos biggest mega-complexes Tey subcontractthe work out to 983089983094 different holding companies one or the
carters one or the cleaning one or the maintenance one orthe rents etc And who does it Tere is a chain o amous pre-man who are the coordinators and the power o the market istheirs For example there was a very amous preman Herculeswho ran anah Abang or many years So in some ways ianything needs to be done you go to these people Tey arethe 1047297gures in neighbourhoods in the markets and other areaswho manage the interstices Tey are accountable to everyoneand accountable to no one at the same time In some ways theydeer any kind o con1047298ict or example among the 983089983094 differentholding companies within the market they obscure the powerrelationship but at the same time their power rests on howgood o a job they can do in terms o being able to appease
the different interests that are involved Tis was also theirpower at the neighbourhood level as well to listen to hear totake it into all into consideration regardless o who was speak-ing However as I said this kind o role is increasingly beingreplaced by a kind o game that says alright the city is becom-ing more insecure and we are helping it become more insecureso we can guarantee that it becomes more secure Tis is a kindo conventional game that extra-parliamentary groups haveplayed in cities or a long long time
LUCAS BARTOSIEWICZ You call the preman the ldquohingerdquo and
you call these people players it seems like the livelihood o
the city the ldquocitynessrdquo o the city happens in the interactionamong more ormal and more inormal sectors o the cityand the government seems more o a reeree1048633 Now we haveheard about the city being separated between ormal and in-ormal sectors and the city government appears to supportthis division What do you think the result o this rigid divi-sion will be
in Jakarta
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261
AS Te most powerul actors in this city are the property devel-
opers Tey by ar have the greatest scope o autonomy which isnot dissimilar to a lot o other cities because part o the motiva-tion o being in politics o being in government is being ableto steal Once you have stolen the money what do you do withit You have to put it somewhere and the property developersoffer a kind o venue where you can invest stolen money Tisis the best way to clean dirty money Tere is a complicity there
But in some ways the state allows this and there is a kind ogreater separation I you look at the way that mega-complexes
are marketed developers are largely saying that i you movehere yoursquoll be a part o the world Tis is the essence o it Weoffer you a platorm through which you can be in conversationwith the world How is this possible I you look at these com-plexes yoursquoll notice that they try to be as sel-contained as pos-sible Each one has a shopping mall that offers the same thingas all the others so there is nothing really to differentiate themrom each othermdashthey have the same restaurants coffee shopsetc but there is still a notion o being sel-contained You onlyhave to leave i you go to work otherwise it is a sel-containeduniverse withdrawn rom the rest o the city so you donrsquot haveto pay attention to the messiness o Jakarta I you look at the
central urban corridor it is one big complex afer another anda 1047298y-over is being built to take traffi c above the complexeswhich will cost the city an enormous amount o money Tis isbeing done at the urging o the developers who want to lessentraffi c congestion or residents w ithin the complex st rip Teproperty developers contribute o course but only to the gov-ernorrsquos reelection campaign not the inrastructure itsel Inmany ways the city can sit back because property developers
Scapegoat 262
are creating a kind o constituency to be addressed politicallywhile the separation between the rest o the city and the com-
plexes only grows A colleague o mine has done a thoroughstudy o the new developments and has shown the devastatingeffects in terms o how many people are actually housed inrelation to hidden costs environmental costs etc that thesecomplexes exert on the city Tey impose a greater biurcation
Meanwhile one o the major considerations is the provisiono rental accommodations So i you have a property eveni you are very poor you try to rent some o what you haveI would estimate that 983095983088-1048632983088 o the residential units withinthe city have some rental space at least one room Tere isa great demand or accommodation and even i statistics saythe central part o the city is losing population which mightbe true offi cially you have all kinds o temporary residentsmoving around who are not counted in surveys So I thinkin many areas there is an intense densi1047297cation taking placepartly in response to the way the mega-complexes are takingup more and more space What the result will be I donrsquot know
One thing to remember is that the older complexes were de-signed as two-bedroom units or young proessional amiliesmdashhusband wie two kidsmdashbut once you sell them off you canrsquotcontrol who lives there So i you look at some o these newresidential complexes they can be shared by up to ten peoplewho go in on them together because it is a good location andthey like the idea o living above a shopping mall but who ac-tually lives there is ofen not who the developers imagine
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263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
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265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
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267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
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269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
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271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
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255 Currency
because I know that in some sense I canrsquot go it alone So whodo I go with Who do I work with I want to work with people
who arenrsquot necessarily like me As you know a lot o the citywas settled according to ethnic ties and especially under thecolonial period ethnicity was linked to the kind o job that youwould do So i you are a Batak you are a teacher a lawyer ora bus driver or i you are rom Madura you hustle hardwarei you are rom Padang you do textiles Tese are the con1047298u-ences o regional sensitivities and colonial privilege that getreproduced continuously But i I want to be opportunistic iI stay with people like me then I owe them something Irsquom ob-ligated and this is the price I pay or a sense o belonging and asense o secu rity But I donrsquot want that all the t ime I donrsquot wantto be indebted and I donrsquot want to be obligated I already have
enough obligations So I am always looking or more provi-sional short-term opportunistic relationships with people whoare not like me You have this con1047297guration always going onPeople project a very clear identity o who they are When youwork in the neighbourhood there are no secrets I know whereyou come rom I know whom you are married to I know whatyour kids are doing I know what yoursquore doing at three in themorning we can always place each other so you are alwaystrying to get around that to 1047297nd more provisional ways odealing with each other Tis makes districts very complica-ted and ofen very treacherous manipulative and generousbeyond anything you can explain
In this kind o 1047297eld o agency developing a sense o com-
mon space public space shared space or even neutral spacemdashthese spaces are very difficult or these areas to generate ontheir own And certainly the government has never been veryinterested in providing them So religion or a kind o com-mon religious affiliation becomes a conduit through whichthese types o spaces can be built such as a mosque It is muchmore than a place or people to say their prayers or or peopleto give money to construct it so they will go to heaven Be-yond that mosques have become a way o con1047297guring a com-mon space or districts a kind o neutral space an outlet evenwhen they are tied to speci1047297c or larger organizations that maybe competing with each other It is not that they are politi-
cally neutral because to be a mosque you have to exist withinthe whole network o mosques you get your money rom someplace you get your imam rom some place and i the mosqueis going to unction it is also a kind o machine that enables itsmembers to have a connection with the larger city It usuallyaligns itsel with some other kind o larger network o me itseems that one o the predominant reasons that mosques con-tinue to be built is that they allow or common spaces within
256 in Jakarta
districts which are very dynamic but ofen problematically soNow religion has other space-shaping orces as well For
instance in Jakarta a lot o what people did was keep a senseo eligibility at bay which Irsquove written about elsewhere983094 Whatthis means is that it didnrsquot matter who you were everyone hadan identity and a status and relationship to each other andas you know the Javanese have an authoritarian culture andthere is the right way o saying things and the right way o be-ing deerential to people who are above you At the level o thestreet there is a whole other way o speaking that is ull o the
anarchy that Farid is talking about where all o those hierar-chies are upended Tere is a whole language that tears all othose conventions apart and people learn how to speak botho these languages
In some way part o the relative success o many o theauto-constructed districts in Jakarta is based on keeping thisnotion o traditional eligibility at bay People can get in eachotherrsquos aces and say things to each other without necessar-ily worrying about who they are and who you are Tey cancontribute put things out there and not be araid o otherpeople saying they are stupid crazy disrespectul or trans-gressive Tere is a sense that things get put on the table in
this context that otherwise wouldnrsquot be there at all I I went toan astrophysics convention I am not going start running mymouth off because I donrsquot eel eligible to do so I donrsquot have thetraining I donrsquot have the background and I would look stupidso the question o eligibility is operating there in a large wayBut there is a signi1047297cant amount o anti-eligibility sentimentin Jakarta I work in a place called Kampung Rawa which isone o the densest districts in Jakarta Yoursquove got kids there a
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257
network o youth and they use social media to 1047297nd out what ishappening in the city Tey go by motorcycle convoy and they
show up at these places and meetings they have no idea whatis going on they have no idea what the agenda is and theytry to see whatrsquos going on But they are committed to sayingsomething they are always committed to saying somethingAnd what they may say could be completely out o context andhave nothing to do with the situation but they will speak Teyare present and they speak and make their presence eltmdashandthey donrsquot care Tis is a commitment that they have
So you see in Jakarta like many other Muslim cities othe world there is the emergence o a new middle class whoseascendancy is very much tied to Islamic devotion and an ethoso doing the right thing In a way the aspirations o this class
have been expressed through reormist Islam basically Su-harto paid them off and gave them a lot o opportunities oraccumulation Still there is a sensibility that is not unlike whatgoes on or example in Istanbul where people who are nothistorically middle-class and who have come up through verydifficult circumstances to gain proessional livelihoods nowhave to try to conigure a orm o household that matchestheir new occupational status One sees a very strong notiono eligibility here I know young couples who live in these veryheterogeneous working-class and lower-middle-class neighbour-hoods and they have the sense that they are going to leave orEast Jakarta to the newer Islamic areas o the city What makesthem the ldquonewrdquo Islamic areas Te money involved the hege-
mony o certain religious institutions etc but what counts isthe abric o the particular neighbourhood Even though theylive in an area where they are really embeddedmdashi they needchildcare i someone is sick i they need help i they need ex-tra income they all have access to these thingsmdashbut they aregoing to leave Why Tey are very clear i they go to a more
ldquomoralrdquo area a more righteous area o the city they will beeligible or success Tey are going to go into a lot o debt inorder to move to the ldquonewrdquo area they may be in debt or mosto their lives and they also wonrsquot have the services and socialsupport they had because they will be very much on their ownwhether or not they will be able to cope with that situation re-
mains to be seen but they are adamant about leavingSo there is a religious sentiment at work the individuat-
ing power o reormist Islam even among working-class andlower-middle-class residents which says you have to shapethe morality o your own individual existence and that is thepriority Donrsquot be so concerned with how you manage the so-cial lie you are embedded in all the different networks andobligations you have instead you have to think about stylizing
Scapegoat 258
yoursel as a moral individual and i you do that you will besuccessul When this imperative is combined with the rapid
prousion o mega-complexes throughout the cit y many peopleend up thinking to themselves that their current way o lie inthe city is over or coming to an end and that they should actnow and leave or new areas983095
In a way this is the same kind o urgency that property de- velopers eel Tey have t his sense in Jakar ta t hat t he pro1047297t-ability o a given project doesnrsquot matter but i they donrsquot actnowmdashbecause most o the big developments you see are 1047297rstand oremost a claim on space whether or not it is pro1047297table atthe momentmdashyou wonrsquot get there beore others have claimedit Te mentality is that you have to decide now because i youdonrsquot itrsquos going to be too late It is that same psychologica l sense
o urgency that pervades much o the rest o Jakarta a kind ospeculative behavior that requires urgent decisions Tere hasalways been this type o urgency but historically it has been
JOHN EWANOWSKI In one o your texts you say that the resi-
dents have an ambivalence to the preman because unlike mostresidents they donrsquot have to play the game in the same wayTis was reiterated at the university yesterday when we weretold that preman are generally bad or the city In a city wherethe government canrsquot do very much or the reasons wersquove dis-
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259
cussed among others how is the preman as an extra-govern-mental official a bene1047297t Do we have to see them as negative
agents because they signal a kind o corruption in the city
AS It is a kind o conusing term preman Part o the conu-
sion historically in Jakarta is because the preman wouldalways assume a kind o powerul and ambivalent positionin the sense that preman means ldquoree manrdquo and in this sense
it means they are not necessarily connected anywhere or em-bedded in a particular kind o community occupation or po-litical perspective But then who are they How can they belocated I they cannot be located anywhere they are capableo doing things that canrsquot be predicted Tis generates anxietybut it also generates potential Because the premanrsquos power his-
torically came rom the ability to negotiate through very di-erent kinds o stories very different kinds o eventsmdashand thewillingness to use violence in order to do itmdashthis meant a kindo determination it meant you could count on the preman be-cause they werenrsquot reluctant to 1047297ght their way through But ithis is possible because the preman donrsquot have any particularloyalties they also donrsquot necessarily have any particular loyal-ties to those whom they are supposed to be 1047297ghting or I thinkthat this ambivalent position tends to cause characterizationso the preman as necessarily bad
In some ways a more traditional orm o the premanmdashthatis someone willing to attempt to translate between differentways o seeing things in a neighbourhood different ways o do-
ing things and actively mediating relationships among peo-plemdashis a role that is being abdicated to a large extent with therise o organizations like 983142983138983154 and Forkabi1048632 Tese organiza-tions take the approach o saying we will 1047297ght or you and weare networked as an organization across the city So with therise o new orms o protection deense and advocacy the rolethat the preman played is shifing hands and that contributesto the problem o what they can do Te preman then begin toimpose themselves say at any 983095-983089983089 and begin to ldquomanage theparkingrdquo by directing traffic You either collaborate with themor you pay some kind o price Tere has been a transitionunderway over the last ten years that is changing the complex
character o the preman and shifing this role into more con- ventional orms o gangsterism rather than operating as a kindo ldquohingerdquo within the neighbourhoods themselves
JK How identi1047297able are they within the social network Are
they just known through word o mouth
AS Identi1047297cation occurs in terms o a complicity where neigh-
Currency 260
bourhoods were made to recognize that they needed securityand so these guys appeared to provide it So in some ways
they are associated with the kind o job that they do the waythey occupy the day and the night the way they are strategi-cally located at the places where you transitionmdashtransporta-tion depots markets public spaces commercial spacesmdashandthey are the ones who make things happen
Te classic case is at anah Abang Southeast Asiarsquos largest
traditional textile market Te city o Jakarta subcontracts themanagement o the market out to the cityrsquos in1047298uential propertydevelopers and the market is their single largest earner Teseinclude the Podomoro group the largest developer in the citywho owns Jakartarsquos biggest mega-complexes Tey subcontractthe work out to 983089983094 different holding companies one or the
carters one or the cleaning one or the maintenance one orthe rents etc And who does it Tere is a chain o amous pre-man who are the coordinators and the power o the market istheirs For example there was a very amous preman Herculeswho ran anah Abang or many years So in some ways ianything needs to be done you go to these people Tey arethe 1047297gures in neighbourhoods in the markets and other areaswho manage the interstices Tey are accountable to everyoneand accountable to no one at the same time In some ways theydeer any kind o con1047298ict or example among the 983089983094 differentholding companies within the market they obscure the powerrelationship but at the same time their power rests on howgood o a job they can do in terms o being able to appease
the different interests that are involved Tis was also theirpower at the neighbourhood level as well to listen to hear totake it into all into consideration regardless o who was speak-ing However as I said this kind o role is increasingly beingreplaced by a kind o game that says alright the city is becom-ing more insecure and we are helping it become more insecureso we can guarantee that it becomes more secure Tis is a kindo conventional game that extra-parliamentary groups haveplayed in cities or a long long time
LUCAS BARTOSIEWICZ You call the preman the ldquohingerdquo and
you call these people players it seems like the livelihood o
the city the ldquocitynessrdquo o the city happens in the interactionamong more ormal and more inormal sectors o the cityand the government seems more o a reeree1048633 Now we haveheard about the city being separated between ormal and in-ormal sectors and the city government appears to supportthis division What do you think the result o this rigid divi-sion will be
in Jakarta
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261
AS Te most powerul actors in this city are the property devel-
opers Tey by ar have the greatest scope o autonomy which isnot dissimilar to a lot o other cities because part o the motiva-tion o being in politics o being in government is being ableto steal Once you have stolen the money what do you do withit You have to put it somewhere and the property developersoffer a kind o venue where you can invest stolen money Tisis the best way to clean dirty money Tere is a complicity there
But in some ways the state allows this and there is a kind ogreater separation I you look at the way that mega-complexes
are marketed developers are largely saying that i you movehere yoursquoll be a part o the world Tis is the essence o it Weoffer you a platorm through which you can be in conversationwith the world How is this possible I you look at these com-plexes yoursquoll notice that they try to be as sel-contained as pos-sible Each one has a shopping mall that offers the same thingas all the others so there is nothing really to differentiate themrom each othermdashthey have the same restaurants coffee shopsetc but there is still a notion o being sel-contained You onlyhave to leave i you go to work otherwise it is a sel-containeduniverse withdrawn rom the rest o the city so you donrsquot haveto pay attention to the messiness o Jakarta I you look at the
central urban corridor it is one big complex afer another anda 1047298y-over is being built to take traffi c above the complexeswhich will cost the city an enormous amount o money Tis isbeing done at the urging o the developers who want to lessentraffi c congestion or residents w ithin the complex st rip Teproperty developers contribute o course but only to the gov-ernorrsquos reelection campaign not the inrastructure itsel Inmany ways the city can sit back because property developers
Scapegoat 262
are creating a kind o constituency to be addressed politicallywhile the separation between the rest o the city and the com-
plexes only grows A colleague o mine has done a thoroughstudy o the new developments and has shown the devastatingeffects in terms o how many people are actually housed inrelation to hidden costs environmental costs etc that thesecomplexes exert on the city Tey impose a greater biurcation
Meanwhile one o the major considerations is the provisiono rental accommodations So i you have a property eveni you are very poor you try to rent some o what you haveI would estimate that 983095983088-1048632983088 o the residential units withinthe city have some rental space at least one room Tere isa great demand or accommodation and even i statistics saythe central part o the city is losing population which mightbe true offi cially you have all kinds o temporary residentsmoving around who are not counted in surveys So I thinkin many areas there is an intense densi1047297cation taking placepartly in response to the way the mega-complexes are takingup more and more space What the result will be I donrsquot know
One thing to remember is that the older complexes were de-signed as two-bedroom units or young proessional amiliesmdashhusband wie two kidsmdashbut once you sell them off you canrsquotcontrol who lives there So i you look at some o these newresidential complexes they can be shared by up to ten peoplewho go in on them together because it is a good location andthey like the idea o living above a shopping mall but who ac-tually lives there is ofen not who the developers imagine
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263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
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265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
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267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
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269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
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271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
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257
network o youth and they use social media to 1047297nd out what ishappening in the city Tey go by motorcycle convoy and they
show up at these places and meetings they have no idea whatis going on they have no idea what the agenda is and theytry to see whatrsquos going on But they are committed to sayingsomething they are always committed to saying somethingAnd what they may say could be completely out o context andhave nothing to do with the situation but they will speak Teyare present and they speak and make their presence eltmdashandthey donrsquot care Tis is a commitment that they have
So you see in Jakarta like many other Muslim cities othe world there is the emergence o a new middle class whoseascendancy is very much tied to Islamic devotion and an ethoso doing the right thing In a way the aspirations o this class
have been expressed through reormist Islam basically Su-harto paid them off and gave them a lot o opportunities oraccumulation Still there is a sensibility that is not unlike whatgoes on or example in Istanbul where people who are nothistorically middle-class and who have come up through verydifficult circumstances to gain proessional livelihoods nowhave to try to conigure a orm o household that matchestheir new occupational status One sees a very strong notiono eligibility here I know young couples who live in these veryheterogeneous working-class and lower-middle-class neighbour-hoods and they have the sense that they are going to leave orEast Jakarta to the newer Islamic areas o the city What makesthem the ldquonewrdquo Islamic areas Te money involved the hege-
mony o certain religious institutions etc but what counts isthe abric o the particular neighbourhood Even though theylive in an area where they are really embeddedmdashi they needchildcare i someone is sick i they need help i they need ex-tra income they all have access to these thingsmdashbut they aregoing to leave Why Tey are very clear i they go to a more
ldquomoralrdquo area a more righteous area o the city they will beeligible or success Tey are going to go into a lot o debt inorder to move to the ldquonewrdquo area they may be in debt or mosto their lives and they also wonrsquot have the services and socialsupport they had because they will be very much on their ownwhether or not they will be able to cope with that situation re-
mains to be seen but they are adamant about leavingSo there is a religious sentiment at work the individuat-
ing power o reormist Islam even among working-class andlower-middle-class residents which says you have to shapethe morality o your own individual existence and that is thepriority Donrsquot be so concerned with how you manage the so-cial lie you are embedded in all the different networks andobligations you have instead you have to think about stylizing
Scapegoat 258
yoursel as a moral individual and i you do that you will besuccessul When this imperative is combined with the rapid
prousion o mega-complexes throughout the cit y many peopleend up thinking to themselves that their current way o lie inthe city is over or coming to an end and that they should actnow and leave or new areas983095
In a way this is the same kind o urgency that property de- velopers eel Tey have t his sense in Jakar ta t hat t he pro1047297t-ability o a given project doesnrsquot matter but i they donrsquot actnowmdashbecause most o the big developments you see are 1047297rstand oremost a claim on space whether or not it is pro1047297table atthe momentmdashyou wonrsquot get there beore others have claimedit Te mentality is that you have to decide now because i youdonrsquot itrsquos going to be too late It is that same psychologica l sense
o urgency that pervades much o the rest o Jakarta a kind ospeculative behavior that requires urgent decisions Tere hasalways been this type o urgency but historically it has been
JOHN EWANOWSKI In one o your texts you say that the resi-
dents have an ambivalence to the preman because unlike mostresidents they donrsquot have to play the game in the same wayTis was reiterated at the university yesterday when we weretold that preman are generally bad or the city In a city wherethe government canrsquot do very much or the reasons wersquove dis-
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259
cussed among others how is the preman as an extra-govern-mental official a bene1047297t Do we have to see them as negative
agents because they signal a kind o corruption in the city
AS It is a kind o conusing term preman Part o the conu-
sion historically in Jakarta is because the preman wouldalways assume a kind o powerul and ambivalent positionin the sense that preman means ldquoree manrdquo and in this sense
it means they are not necessarily connected anywhere or em-bedded in a particular kind o community occupation or po-litical perspective But then who are they How can they belocated I they cannot be located anywhere they are capableo doing things that canrsquot be predicted Tis generates anxietybut it also generates potential Because the premanrsquos power his-
torically came rom the ability to negotiate through very di-erent kinds o stories very different kinds o eventsmdashand thewillingness to use violence in order to do itmdashthis meant a kindo determination it meant you could count on the preman be-cause they werenrsquot reluctant to 1047297ght their way through But ithis is possible because the preman donrsquot have any particularloyalties they also donrsquot necessarily have any particular loyal-ties to those whom they are supposed to be 1047297ghting or I thinkthat this ambivalent position tends to cause characterizationso the preman as necessarily bad
In some ways a more traditional orm o the premanmdashthatis someone willing to attempt to translate between differentways o seeing things in a neighbourhood different ways o do-
ing things and actively mediating relationships among peo-plemdashis a role that is being abdicated to a large extent with therise o organizations like 983142983138983154 and Forkabi1048632 Tese organiza-tions take the approach o saying we will 1047297ght or you and weare networked as an organization across the city So with therise o new orms o protection deense and advocacy the rolethat the preman played is shifing hands and that contributesto the problem o what they can do Te preman then begin toimpose themselves say at any 983095-983089983089 and begin to ldquomanage theparkingrdquo by directing traffic You either collaborate with themor you pay some kind o price Tere has been a transitionunderway over the last ten years that is changing the complex
character o the preman and shifing this role into more con- ventional orms o gangsterism rather than operating as a kindo ldquohingerdquo within the neighbourhoods themselves
JK How identi1047297able are they within the social network Are
they just known through word o mouth
AS Identi1047297cation occurs in terms o a complicity where neigh-
Currency 260
bourhoods were made to recognize that they needed securityand so these guys appeared to provide it So in some ways
they are associated with the kind o job that they do the waythey occupy the day and the night the way they are strategi-cally located at the places where you transitionmdashtransporta-tion depots markets public spaces commercial spacesmdashandthey are the ones who make things happen
Te classic case is at anah Abang Southeast Asiarsquos largest
traditional textile market Te city o Jakarta subcontracts themanagement o the market out to the cityrsquos in1047298uential propertydevelopers and the market is their single largest earner Teseinclude the Podomoro group the largest developer in the citywho owns Jakartarsquos biggest mega-complexes Tey subcontractthe work out to 983089983094 different holding companies one or the
carters one or the cleaning one or the maintenance one orthe rents etc And who does it Tere is a chain o amous pre-man who are the coordinators and the power o the market istheirs For example there was a very amous preman Herculeswho ran anah Abang or many years So in some ways ianything needs to be done you go to these people Tey arethe 1047297gures in neighbourhoods in the markets and other areaswho manage the interstices Tey are accountable to everyoneand accountable to no one at the same time In some ways theydeer any kind o con1047298ict or example among the 983089983094 differentholding companies within the market they obscure the powerrelationship but at the same time their power rests on howgood o a job they can do in terms o being able to appease
the different interests that are involved Tis was also theirpower at the neighbourhood level as well to listen to hear totake it into all into consideration regardless o who was speak-ing However as I said this kind o role is increasingly beingreplaced by a kind o game that says alright the city is becom-ing more insecure and we are helping it become more insecureso we can guarantee that it becomes more secure Tis is a kindo conventional game that extra-parliamentary groups haveplayed in cities or a long long time
LUCAS BARTOSIEWICZ You call the preman the ldquohingerdquo and
you call these people players it seems like the livelihood o
the city the ldquocitynessrdquo o the city happens in the interactionamong more ormal and more inormal sectors o the cityand the government seems more o a reeree1048633 Now we haveheard about the city being separated between ormal and in-ormal sectors and the city government appears to supportthis division What do you think the result o this rigid divi-sion will be
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261
AS Te most powerul actors in this city are the property devel-
opers Tey by ar have the greatest scope o autonomy which isnot dissimilar to a lot o other cities because part o the motiva-tion o being in politics o being in government is being ableto steal Once you have stolen the money what do you do withit You have to put it somewhere and the property developersoffer a kind o venue where you can invest stolen money Tisis the best way to clean dirty money Tere is a complicity there
But in some ways the state allows this and there is a kind ogreater separation I you look at the way that mega-complexes
are marketed developers are largely saying that i you movehere yoursquoll be a part o the world Tis is the essence o it Weoffer you a platorm through which you can be in conversationwith the world How is this possible I you look at these com-plexes yoursquoll notice that they try to be as sel-contained as pos-sible Each one has a shopping mall that offers the same thingas all the others so there is nothing really to differentiate themrom each othermdashthey have the same restaurants coffee shopsetc but there is still a notion o being sel-contained You onlyhave to leave i you go to work otherwise it is a sel-containeduniverse withdrawn rom the rest o the city so you donrsquot haveto pay attention to the messiness o Jakarta I you look at the
central urban corridor it is one big complex afer another anda 1047298y-over is being built to take traffi c above the complexeswhich will cost the city an enormous amount o money Tis isbeing done at the urging o the developers who want to lessentraffi c congestion or residents w ithin the complex st rip Teproperty developers contribute o course but only to the gov-ernorrsquos reelection campaign not the inrastructure itsel Inmany ways the city can sit back because property developers
Scapegoat 262
are creating a kind o constituency to be addressed politicallywhile the separation between the rest o the city and the com-
plexes only grows A colleague o mine has done a thoroughstudy o the new developments and has shown the devastatingeffects in terms o how many people are actually housed inrelation to hidden costs environmental costs etc that thesecomplexes exert on the city Tey impose a greater biurcation
Meanwhile one o the major considerations is the provisiono rental accommodations So i you have a property eveni you are very poor you try to rent some o what you haveI would estimate that 983095983088-1048632983088 o the residential units withinthe city have some rental space at least one room Tere isa great demand or accommodation and even i statistics saythe central part o the city is losing population which mightbe true offi cially you have all kinds o temporary residentsmoving around who are not counted in surveys So I thinkin many areas there is an intense densi1047297cation taking placepartly in response to the way the mega-complexes are takingup more and more space What the result will be I donrsquot know
One thing to remember is that the older complexes were de-signed as two-bedroom units or young proessional amiliesmdashhusband wie two kidsmdashbut once you sell them off you canrsquotcontrol who lives there So i you look at some o these newresidential complexes they can be shared by up to ten peoplewho go in on them together because it is a good location andthey like the idea o living above a shopping mall but who ac-tually lives there is ofen not who the developers imagine
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263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
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265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
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267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
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269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
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271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
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259
cussed among others how is the preman as an extra-govern-mental official a bene1047297t Do we have to see them as negative
agents because they signal a kind o corruption in the city
AS It is a kind o conusing term preman Part o the conu-
sion historically in Jakarta is because the preman wouldalways assume a kind o powerul and ambivalent positionin the sense that preman means ldquoree manrdquo and in this sense
it means they are not necessarily connected anywhere or em-bedded in a particular kind o community occupation or po-litical perspective But then who are they How can they belocated I they cannot be located anywhere they are capableo doing things that canrsquot be predicted Tis generates anxietybut it also generates potential Because the premanrsquos power his-
torically came rom the ability to negotiate through very di-erent kinds o stories very different kinds o eventsmdashand thewillingness to use violence in order to do itmdashthis meant a kindo determination it meant you could count on the preman be-cause they werenrsquot reluctant to 1047297ght their way through But ithis is possible because the preman donrsquot have any particularloyalties they also donrsquot necessarily have any particular loyal-ties to those whom they are supposed to be 1047297ghting or I thinkthat this ambivalent position tends to cause characterizationso the preman as necessarily bad
In some ways a more traditional orm o the premanmdashthatis someone willing to attempt to translate between differentways o seeing things in a neighbourhood different ways o do-
ing things and actively mediating relationships among peo-plemdashis a role that is being abdicated to a large extent with therise o organizations like 983142983138983154 and Forkabi1048632 Tese organiza-tions take the approach o saying we will 1047297ght or you and weare networked as an organization across the city So with therise o new orms o protection deense and advocacy the rolethat the preman played is shifing hands and that contributesto the problem o what they can do Te preman then begin toimpose themselves say at any 983095-983089983089 and begin to ldquomanage theparkingrdquo by directing traffic You either collaborate with themor you pay some kind o price Tere has been a transitionunderway over the last ten years that is changing the complex
character o the preman and shifing this role into more con- ventional orms o gangsterism rather than operating as a kindo ldquohingerdquo within the neighbourhoods themselves
JK How identi1047297able are they within the social network Are
they just known through word o mouth
AS Identi1047297cation occurs in terms o a complicity where neigh-
Currency 260
bourhoods were made to recognize that they needed securityand so these guys appeared to provide it So in some ways
they are associated with the kind o job that they do the waythey occupy the day and the night the way they are strategi-cally located at the places where you transitionmdashtransporta-tion depots markets public spaces commercial spacesmdashandthey are the ones who make things happen
Te classic case is at anah Abang Southeast Asiarsquos largest
traditional textile market Te city o Jakarta subcontracts themanagement o the market out to the cityrsquos in1047298uential propertydevelopers and the market is their single largest earner Teseinclude the Podomoro group the largest developer in the citywho owns Jakartarsquos biggest mega-complexes Tey subcontractthe work out to 983089983094 different holding companies one or the
carters one or the cleaning one or the maintenance one orthe rents etc And who does it Tere is a chain o amous pre-man who are the coordinators and the power o the market istheirs For example there was a very amous preman Herculeswho ran anah Abang or many years So in some ways ianything needs to be done you go to these people Tey arethe 1047297gures in neighbourhoods in the markets and other areaswho manage the interstices Tey are accountable to everyoneand accountable to no one at the same time In some ways theydeer any kind o con1047298ict or example among the 983089983094 differentholding companies within the market they obscure the powerrelationship but at the same time their power rests on howgood o a job they can do in terms o being able to appease
the different interests that are involved Tis was also theirpower at the neighbourhood level as well to listen to hear totake it into all into consideration regardless o who was speak-ing However as I said this kind o role is increasingly beingreplaced by a kind o game that says alright the city is becom-ing more insecure and we are helping it become more insecureso we can guarantee that it becomes more secure Tis is a kindo conventional game that extra-parliamentary groups haveplayed in cities or a long long time
LUCAS BARTOSIEWICZ You call the preman the ldquohingerdquo and
you call these people players it seems like the livelihood o
the city the ldquocitynessrdquo o the city happens in the interactionamong more ormal and more inormal sectors o the cityand the government seems more o a reeree1048633 Now we haveheard about the city being separated between ormal and in-ormal sectors and the city government appears to supportthis division What do you think the result o this rigid divi-sion will be
in Jakarta
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261
AS Te most powerul actors in this city are the property devel-
opers Tey by ar have the greatest scope o autonomy which isnot dissimilar to a lot o other cities because part o the motiva-tion o being in politics o being in government is being ableto steal Once you have stolen the money what do you do withit You have to put it somewhere and the property developersoffer a kind o venue where you can invest stolen money Tisis the best way to clean dirty money Tere is a complicity there
But in some ways the state allows this and there is a kind ogreater separation I you look at the way that mega-complexes
are marketed developers are largely saying that i you movehere yoursquoll be a part o the world Tis is the essence o it Weoffer you a platorm through which you can be in conversationwith the world How is this possible I you look at these com-plexes yoursquoll notice that they try to be as sel-contained as pos-sible Each one has a shopping mall that offers the same thingas all the others so there is nothing really to differentiate themrom each othermdashthey have the same restaurants coffee shopsetc but there is still a notion o being sel-contained You onlyhave to leave i you go to work otherwise it is a sel-containeduniverse withdrawn rom the rest o the city so you donrsquot haveto pay attention to the messiness o Jakarta I you look at the
central urban corridor it is one big complex afer another anda 1047298y-over is being built to take traffi c above the complexeswhich will cost the city an enormous amount o money Tis isbeing done at the urging o the developers who want to lessentraffi c congestion or residents w ithin the complex st rip Teproperty developers contribute o course but only to the gov-ernorrsquos reelection campaign not the inrastructure itsel Inmany ways the city can sit back because property developers
Scapegoat 262
are creating a kind o constituency to be addressed politicallywhile the separation between the rest o the city and the com-
plexes only grows A colleague o mine has done a thoroughstudy o the new developments and has shown the devastatingeffects in terms o how many people are actually housed inrelation to hidden costs environmental costs etc that thesecomplexes exert on the city Tey impose a greater biurcation
Meanwhile one o the major considerations is the provisiono rental accommodations So i you have a property eveni you are very poor you try to rent some o what you haveI would estimate that 983095983088-1048632983088 o the residential units withinthe city have some rental space at least one room Tere isa great demand or accommodation and even i statistics saythe central part o the city is losing population which mightbe true offi cially you have all kinds o temporary residentsmoving around who are not counted in surveys So I thinkin many areas there is an intense densi1047297cation taking placepartly in response to the way the mega-complexes are takingup more and more space What the result will be I donrsquot know
One thing to remember is that the older complexes were de-signed as two-bedroom units or young proessional amiliesmdashhusband wie two kidsmdashbut once you sell them off you canrsquotcontrol who lives there So i you look at some o these newresidential complexes they can be shared by up to ten peoplewho go in on them together because it is a good location andthey like the idea o living above a shopping mall but who ac-tually lives there is ofen not who the developers imagine
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263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
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265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
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267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
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269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
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271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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261
AS Te most powerul actors in this city are the property devel-
opers Tey by ar have the greatest scope o autonomy which isnot dissimilar to a lot o other cities because part o the motiva-tion o being in politics o being in government is being ableto steal Once you have stolen the money what do you do withit You have to put it somewhere and the property developersoffer a kind o venue where you can invest stolen money Tisis the best way to clean dirty money Tere is a complicity there
But in some ways the state allows this and there is a kind ogreater separation I you look at the way that mega-complexes
are marketed developers are largely saying that i you movehere yoursquoll be a part o the world Tis is the essence o it Weoffer you a platorm through which you can be in conversationwith the world How is this possible I you look at these com-plexes yoursquoll notice that they try to be as sel-contained as pos-sible Each one has a shopping mall that offers the same thingas all the others so there is nothing really to differentiate themrom each othermdashthey have the same restaurants coffee shopsetc but there is still a notion o being sel-contained You onlyhave to leave i you go to work otherwise it is a sel-containeduniverse withdrawn rom the rest o the city so you donrsquot haveto pay attention to the messiness o Jakarta I you look at the
central urban corridor it is one big complex afer another anda 1047298y-over is being built to take traffi c above the complexeswhich will cost the city an enormous amount o money Tis isbeing done at the urging o the developers who want to lessentraffi c congestion or residents w ithin the complex st rip Teproperty developers contribute o course but only to the gov-ernorrsquos reelection campaign not the inrastructure itsel Inmany ways the city can sit back because property developers
Scapegoat 262
are creating a kind o constituency to be addressed politicallywhile the separation between the rest o the city and the com-
plexes only grows A colleague o mine has done a thoroughstudy o the new developments and has shown the devastatingeffects in terms o how many people are actually housed inrelation to hidden costs environmental costs etc that thesecomplexes exert on the city Tey impose a greater biurcation
Meanwhile one o the major considerations is the provisiono rental accommodations So i you have a property eveni you are very poor you try to rent some o what you haveI would estimate that 983095983088-1048632983088 o the residential units withinthe city have some rental space at least one room Tere isa great demand or accommodation and even i statistics saythe central part o the city is losing population which mightbe true offi cially you have all kinds o temporary residentsmoving around who are not counted in surveys So I thinkin many areas there is an intense densi1047297cation taking placepartly in response to the way the mega-complexes are takingup more and more space What the result will be I donrsquot know
One thing to remember is that the older complexes were de-signed as two-bedroom units or young proessional amiliesmdashhusband wie two kidsmdashbut once you sell them off you canrsquotcontrol who lives there So i you look at some o these newresidential complexes they can be shared by up to ten peoplewho go in on them together because it is a good location andthey like the idea o living above a shopping mall but who ac-tually lives there is ofen not who the developers imagine
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
Water Politics and Design
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267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
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269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1415
271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
in Jakarta
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1015
263
AB Wersquod like to ask about corruption as an aspect o Jakarta
Your reading o the role o the preman whom we heard was very problemat ic 1047297gu re in some o our previou s meet ings issomewhat more sympathetic How do you de1047297ne corruptionin your work Is it different rom the normative assumptionso other urban theorists Do you see a clear distinction be-
tween corruption and non-corruption Does corruption regi-ster in the built orm o the citymdashnot in transactions but inthe physicality o the built environment
AS Te 1047297rst question is deliberated and ought over in all kinds
o post-colonial discussions What ofen gets called corruptionare rather hybrid and long-term institutionalized practices oaccumulation with their own moral sensibilit y and effi cacyand which guarantee and certain kind o distribution Teyare one way to speed up the circulation o money in light obureaucratic structures o governance which are no longereffective but still canrsquot be eliminated because the process oinventing new ones is too time-consuming complicated or ac-tively militated against by stronger multilateral powers Whatchanges is the display one afer another o various instanceso corruption It is also a way or people to account or their
relative powerlessness in ace o urban realitymdashyou canrsquot doanything you canrsquot count on anything because people arecorrupt so why bother Itrsquos a way o trying to read the politi-cal 1047297eld and excuse onersquos own ear onersquos own lethargy onersquosown reluctance to get involved People ofen complain thatthere is so much complicated creativity in inventing schemeso corruption but when it comes to the inept deployment ogovernance people wonder why they canrsquot transer some o the
Currency 264 in Jakarta
that inventiveness and skill to simply governing people It is acomplicated question Every time you leave a parking lot and
someone directs you out even i you could do it on your ownyou pay the preman without thinking Tere is a sense ldquowhy doitrdquo but you still eel obligated It is a kind o constant extra-legal obligation
AB What is the difference between paying the preman to turn
lef and paying a parking meter Couldnrsquot you also just leave
AS I you do anything in Jakarta you are probably violating
a law Most o the time it doesnrsquot matter but there is alwayssomeone around to make it visible that you are violating some-thing and that violation will cost you something In some
sense you live in a permanently illegal situation and i youdo anything you have to pay or it not to be prosecuted Insome sense then what that means is that the litigation systemwould be tied up or centuries to come i it were to actuallyprosecute all t he illegal activities which is nearly everythingSo the question o what is corrupt and not corrupt is all about
visibility sc ale and collusi onHow it is registered in the built environment is sometimes
very clear Tere are 983089983088983092 shopping malls in Jakarta an d at least
983092983088 o them were built and paid or with cash arumanagaraUniversity had a research program on shopping malls and theresearch methods included participating in the constructiono several o the new malls So we know that cash was used
and they took it Another way to tell are the things that getbuilt and are sold eight months later at 983094983088 o the construc-tion costmdashthese buildings were not built as sound investmentsbut rather as a way to ldquocleanrdquo money For this the guy to knowis someone named ommy Winata He is about to build the1047297fh largest tower in Jakarta You know the Freemasons Tereis an Indo-Chinese equivalent here in Jakarta a developerclique that is airly well-known or collusion with the mili-tary and the government One thing to remember about Jakar-ta and Indonesian history is that Suharto maintained himselin power by making sure his military had many opportunitiesor the massive accumulation o property and state assets
NATE OPPENHEIM I have another question about the urban en-
vironment oday we went on a walking tour o Warakas Tereyou have a close proximity o industrial spaces mansions smal lshacks etc Is this indicative o a neighbourhood in transitionWhat is the role o development within thekampung Is this theopposite o people leaving the neighbourhood Do neighbour-hoods make the transition rom inormal to ormal districts
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1115
265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1215
267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1315
269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
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273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1115
265
AS Tere are a lot o neighbourhoods with long trajectories o
transition within themmdashoscillating stories o accumulationand lossmdashand the heterogeneity o the built environment isclear in many o them In Jakarta in any given neighbourhoodthere are so many different materials used so many types oliving spaces so many proximities among different kinds o
residences and residents In part these are products o theeconomies o local districts and this is why you canrsquot talkabout these areas as communities o cooperation and equiva-lent reciprocities or judiciousness they are highly competitive
districts where some people make it and other people donrsquotIndeed the wealt hy are ofen able to provide work or others
living in the neighbourhood but quite oten these are notareas o great equality Income distribution can be highlyskewed Ofen times you will 1047297nd that some o the larger hous-ing construction in a neighbourhood comes rom people whohave lived in very modest circumstances or 1047297ve six or sevenyears who were once newcomers and took their time to seewhat was going on beore eventually making their movemdashperhaps to buy contiguous plots and consolidate them to al-low or a larger residence
Tese re1047298ect various kinds o calculations and choices For
example some households will decide to build big becausethey want to avoid inheritance problems An issue in Jakartais related to the ambiguities around property law and inheri-tance law Ofen you see property standing vacant because theoffspring o the owners canrsquot agree what to do with it So someparents will say letrsquos avoid this wersquoll build a big house andall the children wil l have a place to live with t heir amily hereOther amilies will decide that they should use disposable in-
Scapegoat 266
come to develop businesses What Irsquom saying is that just be-cause contiguous residence spaces may look very different and
Tere are very diverse narratives at work Te thing is thatall o these initiatives in terms o the built environment alsodetermine what other people can do as well So yoursquove madeyour move yoursquove consolidated or divided plots but you can
also lose some control over the property For example a com-mon occurrence 983092983088 years ago was that the State with the aid othe developers would lay out a kind o neighbourhood in a gridand people would acquire plots one by one on the street Butbehind them there would be backyards that residents wouldsell on an unoffi cial land market or someone else to developand live there But once that gets started you begin to see thewhole area 1047297lling in and it becomes completely densi1047297ed in asense the owners o the original plots completely lost controlover what the area was meant to be
Jakartarsquos heterogeneity is the outcome o very particularkinds o household stories but also because the built envi-
ronment exerts its own particular effect it has its own agencythat limits what others can or cannot do in any particular in-stance What you have produced then is a very complicatedbuilt environment that doesnrsquot necessarily hang together allthat well Tere are always problems there are always thingsthat are breaking down there are always con1047298icts but in a waythat is the very occasion which allows or different kinds o ac-tors to deal with each other in ways they otherwise wouldnrsquot
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1215
267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1315
269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1415
271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1515
273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1215
267
Te act that things donrsquot 1047297t together all that well is the verygame which allows people who wouldnrsquot normally deal with
each other to do so and out o that comes a history whichgets really nuts Tis begins to produce even more kinds othings more projects which donrsquot work But one thi ng thatis historically interesting about these neighbourhoods is thatailure has been all right ailure is not something that has
ET What is the role o water and access to water in this region
and more speci1047297cally since we are here looking at water andinundation in Jakarta does a politics o anticipation come backhere in relation to water Can water characterize some o thesedisjunctive encounters o people interacting with people theynormally would not Tat is does the improbable mixing odifferent types o people relate to water as a daily experience
AS Irsquom not so sure I mean t he impact o 1047298ooding o water has cre-
ated a kind o corridor o dead neighbourhoods neighbourhoods
that are basicallyhellipover And i you look at where there have beenattempts to invest to renovate to try new things to develop newuses or existing acets o the built environment and inrastruc-ture they tend to take place in areas that are relatively removedrom 1047298ooding But i you look at areas in which 1047298ooding does oc-cur and you walk block by block you can see that there has beenalmost nothing done or many years which is very unusual whenyou look at the overall picture in Jakarta So these have becomealmost like dead spaces and their uture disposition is unclear
Currency 268
AB Dead spaces in what sense
AS In the sense o the trajectory o a general decline When you
go through much o Jakarta there is always something goingon some kind o modest construction taking place Tere isalways someone trying out a new business or there are always
ways in which people are trying to reconcile commercial andresidential usage within the same space providing residentswith a kind o dynamism and also using it as a way to developnew commerce And this is how you get this sense o rebuild-
ing remaking a kind o sustainability In these areas thesedead spaces you donrsquot 1047297nd any o thatmdashno initiatives no at-tempt to remake or improve upon You just hold on to whatyou have or as long as you can and you cope with the 1047298oodingthat occurs which is terrible to deal with but you canrsquot sellyour property or very much because no one wants to buy orrelocate there
But that said water politics are going to be an increasinglyimportant issue because even though most new developmentsbuild their own water inrastructuremdashthey are not on the ur-ban grid so they dig their own wellsmdashthey contribute to an
accelerated rate o subsidence o the geomorphic base o thecity as it is Where you are working in North Jakarta this sub-sidence is up to 983089983093 cm per year in some places You begin to seethe implications o this all across the city where house aferhouse has major cracks as a result
Te water supply itsel is also becoming more tenuous sothere is a greater competition over it I mean you have theproblem as in many other cities that new kinds o industriesare being located on the periphery and who undertakes the
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1315
269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1415
271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1515
273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1315
269
extension o the grid Well in part it is being paid or by sell-ing these new industrial plants low-yield prices or a high-yield
Te World Bank has approved a kind o loan which willsupposedly und a long-term project along the Ciliwung Riverto improve 1047298ow and drainagemdashand will require the removalo some 983090983088983088983088983088983088 residents983089983088 Tis has been in the works ora long time but it hasnrsquot yet started A lot o the activism inJakarta has occurred along the Ciliwung R iver ofen as parto environmental recti1047297cation programs in terms o tryingto institutionalize the residents there as ldquotenders o the riverrdquoNow all o that activity will be dismissed and it will be a bigpolitical issue because where will all these residents go Everyrelocation program Jakarta has undertaken has been a huge
mess Tere is a major complex that sits on the coast to theeast o the city which is 983095983093 vacant intended or relocatedresidents but no one wants to live there So on many differentkinds o ronts water will be an increasingly political issuewhether it is water in terms o 1047298ooding or just basic access towater No one drinks the water in Jakarta Te water has beenthoroughly compromised or many years It is an expense thatall households have to pay to have drink ing water
It is a very long and complicated story that is the way
Scapegoat 270
Jakarta privatized the water system and the way it has calcu-lated the cost o providing it etc Karen Bakker has done ex-
cellent work on the water politics o the city a whole series oarticles on the history o the way that water came to be a kindo political right and the way the urban Indonesian middleclass was shaped in Jakarta was through the availing o waterto a particular style o household Part o the disciplining o
LB We are looking at the city as a site o hypercomplexity with
all these related problems and so many con1047298icting solutionsIn your perspective do you think the government with its top-down programs can actually work Or is it more speci1047297callyan issue o organizing bottom-up solutions despite what thegovernment is trying to do
AS I donrsquot think you can do anything in this city in the long run
without some kind o deal between property developers and thegovernment among the class o young very smart people who
have ound success through business or worked in governmentministries and who now want to do something more with thecity Tis is a group o 1047297nanciers who are now in their 983092983088s and983093983088s with a growing concern or Jakarta Besides the governorthe only people who are elected are vil lage councils which haveabsolutely no job description though they are supposed to bethe advocates o the particularities o their district But I donrsquotthink you can do anything in this city without 1047297nding a wayto make a deal or a series o deals among very different kinds
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1415
271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1515
273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1415
271 Currency
o actors In order to make a deal you have to experiment withdifferent ways o trying to translate very different realities into
a language in which these different actors are willin g to listen toeach other At this point they absolutely live in separate worldsthey have no basis or talking to each other and they donrsquot seethe need So there is going to be a protracted period o timewhere different actors need to deploy their expertise in low-pressure initiatives that give people the opportunity to rehearse
some ways o dealing with each other Te only venues in whichthis currently takes place are some large religious organizationsor ethnic organizations like the Betawi the so-called originalinhabitants who sold off their property and are now trying toplay a political game to recuperate their power using their ethni-city as an instrument to create links between very different
kinds o actorsmdashreligious political and entrepreneurial Otherthan that there are not many venues that bring these actorstogether It is a process that will take a long period o time Butpeople have to stop being critical in a way we can criticize thedevelopment machine and neoliberal economic policies romnow until orever but we have to try to concentrate our effortson ways to invite very different kinds o people to contributeby making them eel good wanted and important It may notalways work it may not even work or the most part but unless
JARED HEMMING Is that due to the long history o colonialism
up to Suharto where in the end people are more or less ldquoun-practicedrdquo in democracy
272
AS I think it a lso happens in very so-called ldquopolitically advancedrdquo
cities It happens even in Satildeo Paulo which has a long contract
that provides a very speci1047297c series o rights to the city or allresidents But practically a lot o what people are able to do getshijacked by the middle class and e ven though you have policieswhich mandate that there has to be consensus by all people in aparticular area the problem still becomes how do people talkto each other Tey 1047297nd it difficult even when they are sitti ng in
the same room they are a million miles away Tey donrsquot havean operative series o projects by which they are able to com-ortably work together In some sense you have to take it outo the politically mandated process that says you must collabo-rate It is an important ramework but in terms o the nuts andbolts o collaboration you have to have a kind o investment in
primarily economic activities where people who are looking tomake money see a lot o different ways to do so and part o thatinvolves olding in people who have historically been marginal-ized either in terms o employment or in terms o some kind ocontribution So it requires much more creativity about how tomake money and you have to develop municipal policies thatenable these kinds o exceptions to take place For example herethere is the problem o the return o the middle-class to the citybecause they donrsquot want to be stuck in traffic or 1047297ve hours a day
and this is an important constituency or demanding account-ability and transparency But the danger is this will potentiallydisrupt certain other economic practices or ways o remakingthem that have not been easy to legislate or codiy But o course
these long-term dilemmas are not speci1047297c to Jakarta
ALLEN GILLERS Do you think that might be where architec-
turersquos agency lies in terms o trying to invent and experimentwith ways o getting people to talk to each other
AS It could behellip itrsquos a design problem as well I mean i the built
environment is a plurality o materialized effort undertaken bydifferent kinds o actors the subsequent physical environmentis either conducive to certain kinds o speech or interactions orit inhibits them So in some sense i architects see themselves
as thinking about the design o the built environment then thatcharge that task also has to include the k inds o sentiments andefforts that produced the built environment in the 1047297rst placemdashas well as the various potentialities t hat are possible rom thosewho affiliate with occupy or use it So in part itrsquos a design is suebut a political issue as well Tis is the politics o design howcan you conceive o spaces o transaction that acilitate the pos-sibilities o enhanced translatability in terms o peoplesrsquo variedsentiments perspectives affects and ways o seeing things
in Jakarta
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1515
273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design
8102019 Abdoumaliq S- Water Politics and Design in Jakarta (Interview-2013)
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullabdoumaliq-s-water-politics-and-design-in-jakarta-interview-2013 1515
273
983137983139983147983150983151983159983148983141983140983143983141983149983141983150983156983155
Te research or this book was undertaken in the context o the joint designresearch workshop Designing for Hypercomplexity Jakarta rom 983089 Mayndash983089983092June 983090983088983089983090 Proessor Meredith Miller and Dr Etienne urpin o the aubmanCollege o Architecture and Urban Planning University o Michigan andProessor Adam Bobbette o Hong Kong Universityrsquos Faculty o Architecturecoordinated an international studio collaboration between UMich 983144983147983157 and
students and colleagues including Ms Herlily Diane Wildsmith and KemasRidwan Kurniawan rom the Faculty o Engineering Universitas IndonesiaTe workshop involved over 983091983094 students rom three countries two researchcoordinators dozens o research affi liates and three weeks o site-based collab-orative research and design in Jakarta with 1047297ve coordinating aculty membersrom different design backgrounds Tis was the 1047297rst course in a collaborativethree-year studymdash Archite cture + Adaptati on De sign for Hy percom plex ity mdasho the compound effects o coastal and river inundation extreme pollutionintense urbanization and water scarcity in Southeast Asian megacities
Scapegoat 274
983141983150983140983150983151983156983141983155
983089 AbdouMaliq Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar Movements at aCrossroads (New York Routledge 983090983088983089983088)
983090 Kampungs are one o Jakartarsquos basic urban units sometimes reerred toas urban villages and ofen described as reproducing rural Indonesian
village st ructures Tough t his is not always t he case their compositionis very diverse
983091 Joko Widodo commonly known as Jokowi was elected as governor oJakarta on 983090983088 September 983090983088983089983090 ollowing his deeat o the incumbentgovernor Fauzi Bowo in a runoff election
983092 Orde Baru or ldquoTe New Orderrdquo was the name given to Suhartorsquos regime983093 A late nineteenth-centu ry Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued or
the elimination o the State by means o control by the people See Mikhail
Bakunin Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press98308910486331048633983088)
983094 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar983095 See Abidin Kusno ldquoRunaway City Jakarta Bay the Pioneer and the Last
Frontierrdquo in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 983089983090 no 983092 (983090983088983089983089) 983093983089983093ndash9830939830919830881048632 983142983138983154 or the Forum Betawi Rempug Forkabi or the Forum Komunikasi
Anak Betawi 983142983138983154 and Forkabi are large competing organizations whoemerged in Jakarta in the post-Suharto reformasi era
1048633 See Simone City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
983089983088 For the World Bank rsquos Jakarta Urgent Flood Mitigation Project visithttpwwwworldbankorgprojectsP983089983089983089983088983091983092jakarta-urgent-1047298ood-mitigation-projectlang=en
983089983089 See Karen Bakker ldquorickle Down Private sector participation and
the pro-poor water supply debate in Jakarta Indonesiardquo in Geoforum 9830911048632 (983090983088983088983095) 1048632983093983093ndash10486329830941048632 and Karen Bakker Michelle Kooy Nur EndahSho1047297ani and Ernst-Jan Martijn ldquoDisconnected Poverty Water Supplyand Development in Jakarta Indonesiardquo 983157983150983140983152 Human DevelopmentReport (98309098308806)
Water Politics and Design