2-DAY WORKSHOP (September 6 + 10, 2021)
ROADMAP BOROBUDUR
— a two-day scenario based regional planning workshop
a project by: Dynamic City Foundation + Krill o.r.c.a.
in conjunction with: Gajah Mada University / UNDIP / UTC Sorbonne
supporting partners: Ministry of Transportation / Yogyakarta Heritage Society
Metro Java 2045
Part of the ongoing research and planning project Metro Java 2045, Gajah Mada University + UNDIP, with MARS Architects / Dynamic City Foundation + Krill o.r.c.a. will host a two-day expert workshop exploring the potentials and potential concerns of road oriented rural development.
The objective of the overarching Metro Java 2045 project is to conceive and test a planning model for land use integration in Central Java. The project combines network analyses with geospatial land use analysis to inform a series of community-led strategies for the region’s desakota landscape.
Aiming to bring research to practice, the project explores new development scenarios that can bridge Indonesia’s maturing national planning vision and the reality of dispersed bottom-up urbanisation, through collaborative fieldwork and a virtual planning platform. (www.MetroJava2045.org)
ROADMAP BOROBUDUR — background
Once a virtually autarkic* productive landscape, the desakota has progressively been incorporated within the economic spheres of Java’s urban centres. Notably, post 2008 economic crisis, the arrival of global capital has accelerated* urban-industrial transformations. In part planned*, in part ad hoc and informal, the shifts towards a globally connected, industrialised economy is spawning a new hybrid peri-urban landscape that defies conventional planning strategies. At a time, when the desakota’s qualities of resilience, self-sufficiency, compactness and carbon storage are deemed critical in the fight against climate change, below the radar, its intricate socio-cultural, spatial and ecological cohesion are eroding.
Representing conflicting scales, speeds, and ideologies, a generic, global urbanism is at once crudely juxtaposed, while surreptitiously seeping into desakota networks. Spatial patterns form on the junctions of natural and human resources, vehicle accessibility and cheap land.
They reveal the underlying interdependence between economic principles of exchange and their enabling infrastructures (Lefebvre 1991). The ensuing spatial dynamics, opportunistically forged on the intersection of global and local, planned and unplanned transitions, demand critical examination, advanced geospatial analysis, and most urgently, new planning models that can mediate — and ultimately integrate — disparate socioeconomic realities across scalar hierarchies.
As echoed in Indonesia’s Climate Change Sectoral Roadmap, rural land use is the overriding, yet much overlooked, parameter to this equation. The desakota underscores the need for a process driven urban discipline that can foster a more contiguous, and thus more resilient rural-urban continuum. In short, the desakota signals that the balance between development and preservation cannot be struck through the structures of central planning alone. Instead, new methods are needed that can mediate between top-down and bottom-up drivers of change. The two-day workshop ‘Roadmap Borobudur’ solicits new methods that address the progress / preservation predicament, and deliver new spatial strategies to bridge operational scales. A coordinated bottom-up strategy is the kernel of an effective, tropical planning discipline. As we can observe in the plight of the desakota, this predicament is not only rooted in the tension between global and local determinants, but between theory and practice. Strategies are sought from practitioners that distill drivers of spatial change, as well as present new levers of action available to desakota leadership.
WORKSHOP — assignment
As a participating expert we ask you to reflect on both of the below, polar opposite scenarios, and how to optimize their implementation:
A) Construction of a new expressway connecting Borobudur to Yogyakarta and the YIA-airport (map on the right page).
Scenario A embodies progress, through improved road access, shortening commute times and bringing economic opportunities to local communities, but while invariably also augmenting sprawl.
B) Cancelation of this same expressway.
Scenario B embodies preservation, as natural, cultural, and agricultural ecologies that have sustained local communities for centuries, are not intersected by transit corridors. But alternatives to alleviate poverty of inaccessible, agrarian communities will be needed.
DAY 1 — Monday 6 September 2021, 13.30-17.00
Each participant has a 8 min slot to:
- introduce yourselves (2 min),
- reflect how within your work the progress / preservation predicament is addressed (3 min)
- – how this applies to the given 10x10km Borobudur region (3 min)
- – QnA (2 min).
For reference, consider the following examples:
~ Food security, resilience and eco-tourism are national themes relevant within the Borobudur region. To what extent can these goals be achieved through grassroots planning strategies?
~ What is the potential of the new village level planning mandate?
Can inter-village collaboration be promoted? Villages have taken a different stance towards planning, while some have taken strong initiatives, others maintain a weak role in guiding their development.
~ In a post-pandemic future, urban activities will likely remain more virtual. Can the absence of road construction enhance / pay for more tele-working, e-commerce, e-health, e-education, and other online services? Could data centres make use of renewable resources?
~ Can compact city planning around urban cores and infra-nodes sufficiently absorb future growth, thus decreasing pressure on desakota development? Where is this still viable?
~ Could tracks (high-speed, light-rail, metro, goods trains) replace the need for more highways?
DAY 2 — Friday 10 September 2021, 13.30-17.00
Based on the discussions of day 1, choose between scenario A (construction) and B (cancelation) to present an illustrated vision for the provided 10x10km Borobudur region, for the year 2045.
To develop your vision, a data package is available with detailed land use, road and settlement site maps (10x10km), official statistics, 50 research papers, a density map of Central Java, and demographic projections for 2045 and site pictures. Please use the following format:
Technical format:
Goal: a spatial vision for the 10x10km Borobudur region that pinpoints the local leavers of action
Output: 16:9 PDF, illustrated with maps + diagrams (PDF template available in the data package)
Data package:
- Online environment: ZOOM
- duration: 8 min + QnA
Follow up:
Roadmap Borobudur is part of a extensive series of seminars, organized to explore the many dimensions of the Metro Java 2045.
The team will combine the presentations to form a comprehensive overview that will be made available online and in field workshops.
WORKSHOP — videos and translated transcripts
# Workshop Roadmap Borobudur DAY 1
Resume of Metro Java 2045 Expert Workshop
Monday, 6th September 2021
13.30 – 17.00 Jakarta Time
# Workshop DAY 2 Opening Main Session (1/3)
Resume of Metro Java 2045 Expert Workshop
Friday, 10th September 2021
13.30 – 17.00 Jakarta Time