Public needs to take part in city planning

By Hayati Sari Hasibuan

JAKARTA (JP): The Jakarta provincial legislative council endorsed a new bylaw on city planning on July 28, 1999, stipulating stricter control of land use to ensure adequate green areas in the capital. The bylaw also stipulates city planning should be evaluated every five years.

Under the new bylaw, the city administration will regulate the expansion of green areas from 7.2 percent of the city's current total area of 650-square kilometers, to 13.94 percent by 2010. The bylaw will introduce no other significant changes.

The bylaw was based on the projection of 12.5 million city residents by 2010, compared to 9.7 million at present. Under the new city plan, which consists of 13 chapters and 100 articles, development will be concentrated in East, West and North Jakarta, with South Jakarta maintained as a water-catchment area.

Development in North Jakarta will be focused on turning the Thousand Islands into major tourist and marine attractions, improving the fishery sector and preserving the area's mangrove forests. A previously planned reclamation project in the Jakarta Bay will also be continued.

In West Jakarta, development will focus on business and commercial centers. An industrial center will be the specific target of development in East Jakarta. Development in Central Jakarta will focus on a center for government offices and economic enterprises.

Urbanization and urban development are inevitable prices of economic and social development. In fact, cities are the prime movers of economic development. The question is can we manage the urban development and urbanization? Can we make them prime movers in national development? What can we do to organize urban development in the future?

In Indonesia, the past style of managing urban development, which relied heavily on the government, will no longer be suitable. In the near future, the public and private sectors will play a bigger role, because they are the actual agents of urban development. However, a model for development management that involves the private sector and communities in Indonesia is yet to be established.

The role of the government in urban development should be changed from one of authority to administrator and enabler. And public participation should be increased to direct and decide the development of the city. The public should be given the authority to offer input, opinions and comments in the process of designing the city plan.

For the next step, the public's input will be formulated by a planner -- who has the capability and skill to design a city plan -- into an integrated city plan. In this way, the city plan will guarantee extensive public participation and consultation, and therefore will preserve public ownership and security of tenure. This will mean less displacement and greater social equity.

In the past, public participation in designing the city plan was extremely limited. City planners -- with all of the constraints placed on them -- tried to predict and analyze the dynamic movement of millions of people, with no regard to a mechanism to enable the public to provide input. With almost zero public participation, the previous city plan was no longer usable because of its incompatibility with the people's aspirations.

The next stage is public participation in monitoring and guarding the consistency of the implementation of the city plan. For proof that the implementation of a city plan without any public participation could lead to violations, one only has to look to the past.

In the past, the city administration made it possible for people to change the city plan for the sake of business, so public facilities were eventually owned by certain groups of people only. This explains how green areas became shopping complexes or apartments, for example, or how lakes and swamps were converted to housing complexes.

In the past, people who violated the city plan were not strictly punished due to collusion and corruption between city officials and developers. Only property developers and high- ranking city officials knew the details of the city plan, providing a great opportunity for both officials and businesspeople to settle violations out of court.

In the past, it was not only the public who found it difficult to access information on the plan, but also city counselors. And the administration never revealed its evaluation of the plan. For that reason, we have no data on the number of violations of the city plan. However, through public scrutiny, such practices will be tightly controlled in the future.

Hopefully, extensive public participation would put an end to breaches of the plan. It is impossible to place the burden of controlling all development activities entirely on the administration.

Three points are necessary to ensure public participation:

* Dissemination of information

The city plan must be prepared and its details publicized as quickly as possible to avoid the possibility of violations, which were rampant in the past. If the public has access to such detailed information, they can more properly function as a control against violations. Transparency is the most crucial step in achieving a consistent city plan.

The administration should publicize the detailed plan in the mass media, booklets or some other form of publication to be freely distributed to the public. By doing so, it would be hoped the control mechanism would work properly.

The spirit of transparency was, indeed, stipulated in the newly endorsed city planning bylaw. The bylaw clearly regulates that a city plan should be displayed publicly in every district and subdistrict to provide the information to all people who need or want it. The administration could also disseminate this information through books sold at bookstores.

* Public participation and consultation in planning, designing and implementing projects

The previous city plan lacked credibility due to the absence of public participation in any stage of planning. When the pressure for development was high as a result of dynamic changes in the population, the regulations could not accommodate these changes because of the lack of public participation as a primary source of information. Changes in development occur so quickly, both the public and the administration should work hand-in-hand to achieve good city planning regulations, and ensure the implementation of these regulations to create a nice city for everyone.

In this era of reform, it is the right time for the administration to prepare accountable regulations, because there is a marked increase in people's awareness of urban development and related issues which affect us all. We should also be aware that development always moves faster than regulations.

With the role of the government in urban development changing from one of authority, to administrator and enabler, the city's governmental role and technical capacity in urban management should be improved, especially in land development, funding and budgeting, infrastructure development, environmental management, and public service. Thus, what is needed is a municipal development which provides the basic improvement of public services. It should also be emphasized that the implementation of urban development should be decentralized. The local government and local communities should have a greater freedom to set priorities for urban development in their respective areas. One way to do that is for them to empower the people.

* Grievance redress mechanism

To protect public rights there must be some mechanism which enables people to air their complaints, criticisms and opinions relating to the city plan, especially if the plan causes misery to the people. A sophisticated judicial system which is effective and impartial must be established.

In the past there were numerous complaints about demolitions, unfair compensation and the rejection of certain projects. And administration officials openly practiced discrimination in solving these problems. So the question is who really owns this city? Does it belong merely to the wealthy and powerful people, leaving ordinary people suffering in hardship?

We hope such grievances can be aired in the future in a fair manner and under a good judicial system. To a large extent, therefore, the next administration will have to do much more than simply implement the city plan as they did in the past. And one of their main tasks will be to encourage public participation.

The writer is an alumnus of the Department of Regional and City Planning at the Bandung Institute of Technology.