Jakarta faces mounting challenges of social segregation, environmental threats. While urban development has traditionally prioritised large-scale formal and market-driven growth, the city’s Kampungs have often been overlooked despite their capacity to foster resilient communities, adaptive economies, and strong social networks.

This project explores how the social practices embedded within Jakarta’s Kampungs can change urban planning practices towards a more just and sustainable form. Through fieldwork, spatial analysis, and research-by-design, four Kampungs were studied to identify the social infrastructures and spatial practices that enable communities to adapt to environmental, social, and economic pressures.

The research identifies four core values—Care, Identity, Resilience, and Ecology—as the foundation of life in the studied locations. These values are translated into spatial principles that guide urban transformation: Porous Borders, Chains of Amenities and Socio-Spatial Temporalities, Mobility Networks, and Ecological Corridors. Together, they create conditions for stronger social cohesion, ecological performance, and coexistence between formal and informal urban environments.

The principles are tested through design interventions in dinstinctive but troubling districts in Jakarta: Kapuk Muara and Rawa Terate, which are subjected to segregation, environmental vulnerability, and ecological restoration. The resulting concept, Kampung Metropolis, proposes an alternative way of working for Jakarta that recognises Kampungs not as troubling communities, but as valuable sources of knowledge for creating a more inclusive, resilient, and socially just city. ... Read more

The goal to reach carbon zero by 2050 is pushing the Port of Rotterdam rapidly replace fossil fuel with hydrogen. The transition entails many spatial, environmental and economic changes that impact some neighborhoods more than others; in particular five neighborhoods (Rozenburg, Pernis, Heijplaat, Hoogvliet North and Old Charlois) in and surrounding the port. These already disadvantaged neighborhoods will face more burdens than benefits if the transition, and the gentrification that will follow, is left without intervention.

This study investigates how the energy transition towards hydrogen can be guided to ensure a just socio-economic and spatial transformation for these existing harbor neighborhoods. Through a research-by-design study, a vision is created from the perspective of the selected transition community (harbor neighborhoods), supported by qualitative and quantitative research methods. Subsequently, a strategy is developed that takes into account the
relevant stakeholders and policies necessary to implement the vision. The vision is explained in more detail in the latter part of the report, substantiated by a timeline and its related spatial strategies comprised of four key projects.

The vision of Port Archipelago construed on four guiding themes (energy, housing, connectivity and amenities) successfully accommodates the needs of existing communities and helps them adapt to the social and spatial changes triggered by the hydrogen transition. Urban metabolism and spatial justice are weaved into the vision to fairly distribute the benefits and burdens of the gentrification that is likely to occur in the port. Spatially, the vision will enable the transition community to sustain their identities and everyday lives while at the same time embracing the spatial and environmental transformations of the port. Lastly, the Port Archipelago vision will lead to successful community regeneration by providing opportunities for the harbor neighborhoods to build the capacity to act as active stakeholders in new settings and interact with newcomers of the port. ... Read more