Kampungs in Marunda are located in low areas; many parts of the settlements are reclamated lands, or with grounds that were created on the sea (mostly using dumped garbage). Older settlements were built in an approach of ‘living with water’, with elevated houses constructed above the water and with fish ponds to provide livelihoods and protein.
About the Project
It was a beautiful project for some reasons. Marunda Urban Resilience in Action (MURIA) was born as a collaboration between Karina Jogjakarta and Bina Swadaya Konsultan. These two organisations have solid reputations in working with communities. The experienced staff, however, initially doubted their own capacity for working in an urban context, as their previous projects in the context of climate change were in rural areas. But it was proved that their knowledge and experience were highly valuable, rarely expressed within the usual practice of Jakarta’s spatial planning tradition.
Instead of focusing on housing, the project highlighted the problems of livelihood. In fact this opened up more possibilities in approaching the built environment. Many activities of the project were community-led appraisal and enumeration, for the organisations to understand the community capacities in facing climate change. Urban farming was decided as a key solution to improve the living conditions of poor households.
Prathiwi was asked to help the project as an urban planner, to help provide a spatial visioning that was used as one of many other tools in creating a multi-stakeholder development platform.
Prathiwi Putri 