Public needs to take part in city planning

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.