Green Steps

Jakarta. We had read many reports on its crowded streets, its struck roads, its density. Exploring the city is far more stunning. We had been walking through the silencious and clean streets of Singapore, and the contrast with Jakarta was then much more striking: noise, traffic, smells seems stronger. This teeming city and unlimited expansion stunned us.

 

The cityscape varies from huge high-rise buildings in the center to vast slums or informal house neighborhoods. Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, has grown from 150 000 inhabitants in 1900 to more than 28 million in 2010, but the city growth doesn't follow the increasing migration of people.

 

Kampungs: the expression of rural community way of living and the fast city growth

 

We have been warmly welcomed by Annisa Marwati Sumadi, a young architect, and her family, met on couchsurfing. We were living in one of those neighborhood that cannot be described by our European words. The kampungs are a typology of informal residential areas, and refer both to a built typology and a way of living. They are typical of Jakarta's organic development. They are an expression of the poverty issue, the housing increasing demand, but also the need of keeping rural tradition while living in the city. Buildings are very different, from one kampung to another, and within the kampung itself: they can be built either with masonry, raw or recycled materials, and can look more like a slum or a like a richer neighborhood.

 

Kampung refers in bahasa Indonesia to a village. We can feel a very warm atmosphere, closer to a more rural way of living rather than a modern city lifestyle. Everyone in a kampung knows each other and live with the others. The streets are narrow, from 60cm, -enough for a motorcycle-, to 3 meters. The atmosphere is more quiet than the big avenues around the kampung, and very lively at the same time, with children running around us.

 

As the government cannot develop infrastructures quickly enough to face the city growth, the water/waste/energy management is mostly organized in a local informal way. A local representant is informally elected by the head of families. When you want to move in, or start a business in the area, you should firstly meet the representant. He also often manage the distribution and of water or land in the neighborhood. Some inhabitants explain us that this kampung organization is close to their way of living, compared to the new housing complex built nowadays by the government to relocate populations. Those new buildings don't offer the community life which is so strong in kampungs.

 

Menandur: How to raise poor area inhabitants awareness on recycling waste

 

The waste treatment is not widely and efficiently organized in Jakarta. Most of housing trash are just taken and thrown away on each side of the road or railway. The raw and potential recycling materials are often taken by the poorest, to be reused or sold. But the organic waste or plastic bags are just burnt along the railway, adding more smoke to the high air pollution of the city. We have met Ova Candra-Dewi and Feby Kaluara, both working for an NGO to raise people's awareness on sorting waste.

 

Organic waste represents between 51 to 56% of local waste and are never reused. The association helps the development of small compost plants, in existing kampungs, and promote the use of the compost through vertical agriculture. They are working with ibus, who are the housewives of the neighborhood. The aim is thus both to use compost but also raise population awareness on sorting waste through growing vegetables.

 

In order to be able to work with those women, Ova and her team had to firstly talk to the neighborhood chiefs, and fathers of families, respecting kampungs' hierarchy. The project could be then accepted and they were trust by the population.

 

The association launched its first workshop last year, with more than fifteen women. They explained the basic knowledge for verticulture: how to grow crops, how to build one's own vertical installation, and how to sort organic waste. The plants grow in recycled pots: old balls, bottles or rain gutters. Other plant pots designed from rain gutters have been sold in order to finance the operation. It had a great success and similar actions were then informally spread among the neighborhood. A second workshop will then be organized this year.

 

Compost plants are also created.The organic waste is firstly sorted, and put in small piles. To avoid smells or the development of too many insects the installation has to be very clean and neat. Ova worked together with employees to develop the process of composting, in the very warm and humid environment, within the city.

 

The workshop was a moment where both students of the university and slum's housewives could meet for a few days and talk about urban agriculture, waste treatment and more social issues. One could argue that this is only a small action for a big city, and it is not an answer to the lack of waste treatment. However, it is great way of rising a population's awareness on a topic on which the government is unable to discuss with those people, by simply growing and giving them vegetables. More than sorting waste, it also helps the discussion between social classes and education differences. It is a good example showing that bottom-up organisation can be an answer to environment as vernacular and gigantic as Jakarta.

​

​

​

​

More information:

https://www.facebook.com/menandur/?fref=ts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2LK2XWqjO4

http://www.borda-sea.org/basic-needs-services/deswam-decentralized-solid-waste-management.html

 

Portrait: Dr Ova Candra Dewi is Indonesian, and studied both in Indonesia and Germany. She has been working in the waste sector for more than ten years, and she is now working as a Waste Management and Climate Change Strategic Manager for BEST (Bina Ekonomi Sosial Terpadu). She is also a lecturer for the Department of Architecture of the University of Indonesia.

​

Photos credits: Honorine van den Broek, Camille Aubourg, Menandur