The Seedbeds of Active Citizenship? Community Gardens in Kampung Tugu Selatan, Jakarta

• Main Author: Prathiwi Widyatmi, Putri
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Pazifische Studien e.V. 2015-09-01
• Series: Pacific Geographies
• Subjects: community gardens; social innovation; citizenship
• Online Access: http://www.pacific-geographies.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/06/PG44_Prathiwi_Widyatmi_Putri.pdf

This article seeks to contribute to the scholarly documentation on Jakarta's spatial transformation. It does so by discussing one of the kampungs, settlements that could be seen as marginalised due to a loose association between the communities and urban citizenship. In kampungs, the idea of ‘state’ as the key actor to ensure universal and equal access to basic infrastructure services has eroded. This article situates such settlements under the terminology of 'grey settlements,' following Yiftachel's 'gray spaces' (2009). The grey settlements of Jakarta have been disintegrated from the formal infrastructure provision system, but to a certain extent they have also been integrated with many state-led political institutional processes. Such ambiguity brings advantages and disadvantages to different actors. This article specifically looks at the collective efforts to develop community gardens despite limited infrastructure conditions. The case study exemplifies the phenomena in which good initiatives emerge from crises. Such phenomena also call for a new conceptualisation of citizenship.