Stories from the field Author: Nyoman Prayoga Comments
Indonesia: Semarang

 

Our future leaders must know about the concept of inclusive urban resilience if they are to help the poor and vulnerable. And this starts at Diponegoro University in Semarang, Indonesia.

ACCCRN and Diponegoro University are collaborating to bring the concept of inclusive urban climate change resilience to its campus.

It is interesting to see how this concept can be applied to urban planning, especially form the perspective of those who will be the occupants of a city in the future. It is also possible to assume that the planning will also consider another value such as interconnectivity with related areas (beyond a city’s boundary). Through this process, it is expected that we will be able to see how the students interpret the concept of inclusive urban resilience from their perspective.

On 19th October 2016, a team from ACCCRN visited the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Diponegoro University in Semarang, and gave a guest lecture on building inclusive urban climate change resilience (UCCR).

The lecture was attended by around 120 students who take the ‘Planning Studio’ class. They will conduct their study in several areas in Semarang Regency this semester and create a development plan based on the findings from their study.

It is interesting to see how the planning process and results will accommodate the inclusivity aspect in UCCR and also the interconnectivity between Semarang Regency and other areas like Semarang city for example.

Through the lecture, ACCCRN emphasized how the development process should consider involvement of various stakeholder groups in the city, those who have influence, and those affected.

Resilience should enable poor, marginalized, and otherwise vulnerable people in emerging cities, to be included and supported in the systems and processes driving urbanization and emerging resilience-building measures. ACCCRN also emphasized interconnection in development because urbanization relies upon, and impacts, environmental, social, economic systems, with ripple effects that affect surrounding communities and their landscape.

Building inclusive UCCR will have outcomes well beyond city boundaries, including periurban areas, watersheds and ecosystems. These factors need to be taken into account to be successfully integrated with broader economic, social and cultural systems and mitigate the harm that is done.

Based on the lecturing activity, the students were asked to differentiate between samples of development practices that are inclusive and those that are not. This will be one of their takeaways before they perform field surveys to collect data and information.

By the end of this semester, it is expected that there will be a case study of planning that integrates the inclusive resilience concept that can be shared regionally through the ACCCRN network.

 


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