Makassar's Urban Poor Knows What They Want

Ilham Arief Surajuddin and Supomo Guntur, candidates for Mayor and Vice Mayor of Makassar 2009-2014 pledged:

• to free Makassar from force eviction and opt for alternative concepts and methods
• to mediate land conflicts and to provide accessible land titling for the poor
  
• to provide accessible and good quality public services
• to protect the poor's livelihood i.e. hawking, pedicab, and waste picking
• to plan with environmental concerns and to allow participation

signed in Makassar, Saturday 18 October 2008

The signed contract is the result from the big effort performed by KPRM, the urban poor organization in Makassar, the capital of Indonesian province of Sulawesi Selatan.

KPRM use the local election process to express their interests. A good example of how the urban poor participate in the local democracy.

"no need to mob the council or the mayor's house, I will voluntarily resign if I let down any Makassar's poor" said Ilham in front of thousands audience on the horse race field in Makassar (18/10).

Perpetually, the urban poor is still a desirable vote bank for politicians in Indonesia. However, a political contract such this is promising, can be use to cure democratically elected politicians from their classic pathology: premature amnesia.

ref: Tribun Timur, www.sulsel.go.id, fajar online

Warung fusion

Last week I found a "Warung" in downtown LA, at 4th St, between Spring and Main streets.

It is a name given to an asian fusion restaurant. The owner explained that he understands that "warung" is a small enterprise, informal, friendly on the street. That's the atmosphere that he wants to recreate.

Informal place in capital-based place making

Gathering- place is a common feature in the most asian communal type of space. We can trace this feature from Austronesian architecture such as mentawai architecture to more-developed one like traditional Javanese and Balinese architecture. these architectures exhibits a distinct character of public place from European one. European organized private and public place in inside and outside manner.

Public place where people is gathered and does informal activity such as chatting, walking, jogging, even maybe picnic are placed outside off residential place. There is always a clear boundary between outside and inside; public and private; informal and formal in European places. Such type of place organization is traditionally uncommon in Asia.

There are some resemblance in a broad sense in japanese, javanese, and Balinese architecture in their spatial organization. These architectures have a different paradigm to define formal and informal place in their way of place-making.

Warung, as indonesian call it, is a traditional informal place where people gathers, having breakfast, chatting, drink coffee and tea or even buying everyday things. These places are scattered and flourished in Indonesia and still persistently exist until today.

Nowadays informal place has become a large capital industry. Starbuck are now everywhere at least in big cities in Java. Starbuck, Coffebean, Gloriajeans, etc are actually replicating, may not be deliberately, warung in terms of its place making concept.

David Hutama
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pendekatandesainarsitektur.blogspot.com

SDI on Time Magazine

clipped from www.time.com Making Over Mumbai But Mumbai's slum dwellers are suspicious that the plan is a way to force them out of the city. And they are not powerless. Despite government reassurances, they worry that the new seven-story apartment blocks will be built on the city's outskirts, far from where they work and where their kids go to school. Even if the new apartments--which the government promises will be a minimum of 225 sq. ft. (21 sq m) each--are built nearby, residents complain, operating factories seven floors up will be impossible. They are ground-level operators who require lots of interaction with other nearby factories and traders. "The idea is not improving the lot of Dharavi," says Jockin Arputham, the feisty president of the National Slum Dwellers Federation. "It's about how to make money out of Dharavi by selling the land."