Prologue

The badminton field, typically for cycle parking during the day, is left empty, with police line tape surrounding it. Its green colour and white lines are vibrantPublic amenities in kampung kota are often maintained at the communal level, where regular maintenance takes place as a part of gotong royong (communal work) programs (Geertz 1981). Along with regular paint, the specific badminton court in this story has a peculiar material culture: using white ceramic tiles in place of painted white lines for a perennial bright colour., emitting a strong smell of paint fumes into the air. Hours earlier, it had been repainted after the heavy scrubbing that went down the evening beforeThe kampung was struck with flooding, one that has become regular and expected. Residents would refer to these as ‘small floods’, as opposed to the yearly, more concerning ‘big flood’ scheduled to come every rainy season..

From a neighbouring house, whose side wall makes up the southern boundary of the field, the scent of freshly fried banana fritters streams out, competing with the strong paint fumes. Framed by an open half-doorKnown in the west as Dutch doors, this typology can be found throughout Indonesia. It is unclear if the Dutch had a direct impact on this particular piece of architecture due to colonisation, but regardless it has been a common feature in many Indonesian homes. According to residents, these doors can act as windows and maintain healthy airflow while still maintaining domestic privacy., a female figure stands in the foreground with her kitchenIn many Indonesian homes, kitchens are often considered private, domestic space to be hidden away from guests. However in kampung kota, due to the high density and close proximity to neighbours, we have seen that many kitchens are in fact quite open. The relationship between private and public spaces operate differently in kampung kota, in which a network of interconnected spaces make way for living in togetherness (Lathif 2020). as the backdrop. She busily fries various fritters but is never too busy to chat with passing neighbours. Some are not passersby but customers paying for food and goods from her living room-turned-shop. She occasionally joins those who lingerThis kind of lingering is what notably fosters a sense of community inside these dense kampungs: spaces are often rendered fluid as public alleyways become private corners for gossip, private houses become public kiosks, communal open spaces become spillages for funerals… in front of her house, chatting away in the alleyway as she gives change, checks supplies, restocks and refills.

The sun has started to set, but the heat has not dissipated even with the soreIn Indonesia, sore is the second half of the afternoon as the sun starts to set. approaching. “AduhAduh is a common interjection in Indonesian, uttered to express annoyance and exasperation. , it will rain again soon,” the grocer concludes after glancing up at the clouds. She moves her hanging laundryPre-rain rituals such as this can provide fascinating insight into how climate affects domestic spaces and habits. into the house before returning to her chat, fanning herself with a brochure.

The Badminton Field

The heatJakarta’s heat averages at 27° Celsius with an average humidity of 70-80%. Coupled with smog and pollution, the heat feels much more oppressive. has been more than enough to dry the morning’s coat of paint. The police line tape that surrounds the field has been undone, and kids flock in busily discussing the order of the evening’s gameIn Indonesia, badminton is a very important sport. There is a specific patriotic charge present in badminton compared to other sports, making it a sport with a strong Indonesian identity. With 800 badminton clubs around the country, badminton is particularly popular amongst kampung kota residents, who often prioritise having badminton fields as opposed to other open spaces like parks. In kampung kota, badminton fields are versatile, as they can be used for other sports, social functions like bazaars, or simply as a makeshift public square for the community. .

The group of neighbours mingling in the alleyway in front of the grocer’s house has grown in size. Located at the southern corner of the badminton field, the grocer’s long bench and plastic stoolsMakeshift public furniture are a hallmark of local informality in Indonesia and likewise attract informal gatherings and communality. make the perfect spot to collectively watch the game from. Along other parts of the alleyway and around the field, neighbours flock out after the day’s work. One brings out with them a few cups of coffee for the neighbours who lounge just outside his doorstep; a pair smokes and inspects the quality of the paint – it is better this time than the lastWith the frequency of floods, maintenance occurs regularly here and has been used as a rough method of timekeeping, in which a repainting session might have been done after a flood, physically marking the event on their walls. ; another claims that the field is ready for use after making sure that the lamp circuit is dry and in working order.

A few hours in, the game ends earlier than it normally would, with a few matches left unplayed as the drizzle turns into heavy rain. The grocer’s intuitionResidents have reported that there is a feeling in the air before particularly heavy rain. This has become a unique indicator for them to start their pre-rain rituals. is right.

The long and consistent rain finally returns into a calm drizzle in the early hours. The grocer opens the top half of her kitchen door wide into the badminton field. Peering out, she can no longer make out the vibrant green coat and white lines of the field. Instead, a shallow pool of brown murky water sits and ripples calmly as the drizzle continues.

With a squint of her eyes, she lets out a sigh of relief– it has not rained enoughApart from sports and other communal activities, perhaps more significantly the badminton field in this kampung has been used as a key physical indicator of flooding. Due to its level, the badminton would always flood first, giving residents enough time to gauge whether or not the night’s rain would flood the kampung–in which case they would have to act fast to brace themselves and prepare their house for the incoming damage–or was simply another monsoon occurrence. for the pool to reach the brim of the field and overflow into the alleyways. She pulled her body in and brushed the rain off her hair.

After sending a short Whatsapp text, she starts mixing the day’s first batch of batter.

The Tower

The grocer is not the only one up and busy in the middle of the drizzly dawn. A couple of houses down, a neighbour rushes out of her first-floor room. She takes care to make as little noise as possible as she stands crouching on the deck access, turning her key before tiptoeing down the staircase and into the alleyway. With her bag covering her head from the drizzle, she skips toward the grocer’s place for her morning coffee.

A hotel cleaner whose shifts typically start early, she is the grocer’s first customer on most days. One of the many people that are relatively new to the kampung, she moved into her kostKost is a rented room common in Indonesia typically rented out to students and young workers. A similar typology to bedsits, kost originated from the Dutch term in de kost meaning “at a cost”, referring to boarders during colonial times who would pay for a boarding close to their workplace. Jakarta’s influx of domestic economic migrants is decades in the making, its promises of a better life attracting workers from all over the country, working blue-collar jobs in large-scale establishments from offices to hotels. Many migrants relocate to kampung for cheap accommodation or to live with relatives already living in the city, which in turn affect kampung housing types, such as rooms rented out as kost. Conversely, this fuels the informal economy of the kampung even more as businesses benefit from young spenders with more disposable income. a few years ago when the hotel opened in the towerThe tower in this story is the Capital Place Jakarta, boasting “90,500sqm of premium office space” and has managed to attract large companies such as British American Tobacco. With 42 floors and standing at around 215 m in height, it is owned by Singapore’s GIC Private Limited, who acquired it from local investment behemoth Rajawali Corpora.. With the last sip of her coffee, a short honk from her arriving motorbike taxi sends her back into motion; she passes her empty cup to the grocer and says goodbye as she puts her raincoat on.

The motorbike sets off for her ten-minute commute to the tower. It begins with a southward travel through the kampung’s dwindling network of alleyways. Along the way, she nods and waves as she greets the neighbours in the alleyways– one enjoying his morning coffee, another cooking breakfast, and some other preparing to open their businesses– all of whom send her off with a “hati-hati!” In Indonesian, hati-hati means “be careful” and is a commonly used valediction close in meaning to the English “safe travels”. “Hati” can also mean heart in the emotional sense or liver in the physiological sense. .

Following a single sharp turn, one of the two remaining bridges that connect the two sides of the river appear ahead of the motorbike. With the sight of the bridge, that of the tower looms high in the sky, impossible to miss even if one tried to. As they head northward along the other side of the river and towards the tower’s rear road, the cleaner keeps her gaze on the place she is headed for:

“It was a faint wash of blue with patches of blinding glaresAt over 200 metres tall, the tower’s glass facades are bound to thermally affect its neighbours. One of the residents have reported being able to feel the heat reflected from the tower, altering the kampung’s microclimate. Planting trees has helped mitigate this. It is interesting to note the various impacts of this tower, be it through its retaining walls vis-a-vis the river or directly from its imposing facades. during yesterday’s commute. This morning, it is a homogenous light grey with blurry figures of its neighbouring towers.”

She finds it rather amusing and has made it a habit to take a mental note of her workplace’s fluctuating appearances. The tower does assume endless iterations of its facades, its looming curtain walls screen a perpetual loop of the city’s reflections: a visual echo of the city. At this very moment, its hazy overcast version hangs high over the motorbike taxi, the river, and the kampung houses on the other side of the river.

A Change in Colour

Other than its obvious rise in level, the river has not changed too much.

Its colourJakarta’s rivers are considered some of the most polluted in the world. Waste of domestic and industrial scales alter the colour of the rivers in various shades of brown to dense black. Despite this, many people living on riverbanks rely on the water for domestic use such as washing and fishing. is still murky brown to the driver driving a lorry full of linen twice a day down the dwindling road by the river and into the hotel’s rear loading bay. It is still murky brown to a tourist overlooking this part of the city from his hotel room and to an office worker walking back to his kost a few doors down from the badminton field. It certainly is still the same murky brown colour to the writers who have visited a couple of times now.

The river has turned into a different colour overnightThis drastic change of colour would happen during particularly heavy rain upriver in the city of Bogor, which would send debris and other particles through Jakarta. A resident reported that he would keep tight communication with his relatives in Bogor to gauge the severity of rains and prepare accordingly downriver. .

It is now a darker greyish brown to a dance teacher putting her son back to sleep in a room whose window opens into the riverside; to a housewife cooking breakfast in a kitchen that partly cantilevers over the water; and to another neighbour waking up to the sound of his pet chickens in their riverside cage.

The river has fluctuated within different hues of brown in the last few hours.

It was a murky brown colour;
then a lighter brown;
later a more reddish brown;
a yellowish but darker brown;
a light greyish brown;
and a darker greyish brown.

Similar to the way one discerns every miniscule feature as they look closely in the mirror, the flux of hues are overlooked by all but perhaps the river itself. And yet, the river has fluctuated just enough for a single discernibleLife in kampung kota relies on these fine-tuned, intuition-driven decision-making. Often overlooked by the government, residents have had to adapt quickly and robustly to drastic fluctuations of their environment without the help of much-needed systems. change – the darker greyish brown is its message to the neighbours, setting them in motion to prepare for a flood that is to come.

Refrigerator on the Table

On the other side of the badminton field and through a smaller alleyway is a house whose back wall lines the riverThe polluted rivers of major cities like Jakarta oftentimes are unpleasant sights that are covered or hidden away. Rivers are effectively open sewers where waste from entire neighbourhoods are dumped. Riverside homes therefore are leftover land, often illegally built on, and are always the first to be hit by floods.. Another figure peered out from the external corridor of her first floor. Standing on her tiptoe, she stretches her neck to get a good look of the badminton field.

Just as she sees the light from the grocer’s kitchen and its rippling reflection on the badminton field, her phone buzzes with incoming Whatsapp text from the grocer. She sends a quick reply and her phone continues to buzz as the other neighbours send their replies into the group chatEffective communication is key to functioning communities, especially ones continually at risk of natural disasters. Good communication can become an issue between life or death. Whatsapp groups then have become key platforms during floods and the events leading up to them..

She puts back the bag she has packed for her morning lesson; she is supposed to teach her class Javanese traditional dance today. Instead, she heads down since she figures it would not take too long before the water reaches her ground floor. Unlike the grocer’s house, hers is always flooded even before the badminton field is filled to the brim.

She unplugs her electronics quickly: the refrigerator that sits comfortably on top of the tableKampung kota homes differ significantly in their interior typologies to other homes. Especially in flood-prone areas, residents have implemented measured alterations to their homes and reduce as much water damage as possible. Simply speaking, kampung kota homes are much more spatially fluid in their need to respond quickly to changing environmental conditions. ; the TV that hangs high just below the ceiling; and the radio that needs moving. Propped up above a stack of bricksSimilar to the spatially fluid strategies mentioned above, residents have raised all their furniture on stilts–out of bricks, wood, or any other found materials–due to frequent flood water entering their homes. This way the cleanup is much easier as none of their furniture has been ruined by the water. on each leg, her other furniture does not need any adjusting.

Disappearing Pockets of Land

While the poolPlay is an important tool in urban resilience. Flooded areas in Jakarta have been reported to be used as water entertainment for residents, most notably children. With frequent flooding becoming a norm, residents have had to adjust expectations and find small joys in precarious situations. that was the badminton field ripples calmly as drops of water hit its surface, the river carries a plethora of different objectsDuring our visit to the kampung after the year’s annual big flood, residents were recovering after a long night of persevering against torrential rain and powerful currents. Apart from actual flood debris, exhausted residents have given up and thrown their own trash into the river, from small plastic tricycles to broken furniture. down its stream. Its flow is slow and calm enough that it does not take effort to identify the objects: a potted plant, plastic stool, and a tricycle among many other things.

Overnight, the river has gradually swollen. It expandsIn parts of the river that has not been normalised, this means riverside houses are always first to flood. These houses stand on stilts, continually at risk of having their foundations eaten away through weathering and falling into the river. in width to accommodate within its meandering body the rainfall as well as the drainage from the alleyways, the houses, and the badminton field.

The few inches of threshold between the dance teacher’s house and the river has disappeared. Occupying the threshold, the river brushes over the back of the house, occasionally inflicting harder strikes. Inside, the greyish brown water surface that has replaced the tiled ground floor rises with every wave and brush.

The river also swells into its other side, yet there is very little space for it to borrow from the northern riverside.

It brushes a wall once again. Only this time, the wall is not that of closely knitted houses that protrude in and out, but of a tall concrete retaining wall that bends and turns closely to the river. The wall has left for the river a one or two-metre-wide fringe in some sections and small pockets of land where the river’s bends are too sharp for the road that sits above the wall.

On the biggest pocket of land, a fruitful mango tree, a row of young papaya treesFrom our own documentation, this patch of land was lined with vegetation, most probably a small venture of urban farming. This type of food resilience in kampung kota has been made more common during the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdown measures pushed some residents to home gardening which included growing their own food like chilis., and a simple structure with a tarpaulin roof appear to emerge from the water. The floating debris barrier that doubles as a footbridge from the southern riverside curves out as it attempts to hold all the debrisThe kampung’s north side is located at the convergence of two streams, bottlenecking the flow of water and debris. A barrier has been set up to control the flow of debris from the eastern stream, while also acting as a bridge to the patch of land previously mentioned. that the river has carried.

A plastic bucket sways left and right mid air as it moves along some ropes in an awkward staggering motion across the river. Every metre or two, it jolts backward before moving forward again. Back and forth between two sides of the river, its swaying and jolting is different every time depending on what it carries across: a laminated menu; some money; an assortment of fritters in a paper bag; nasi rames; a pack of cigarettes; iced tea in a tightly wrapped plastic bag; or some change.

On one side of the river, a wooden canopy protrudes from a house and into the riverside alleyway. Tied to its two front columns is a screen-printed menu with oversized text:

Nasi Rames/Putih/Uduk/Kuning
Ayam Bakar
Sop Daging
Ayam Kremes
Soto Betawi
Gado-gado
Pecel
Teh/Kopi

In front of the house’s entrance door, the eatery owner busily assembles the lunch orders that have come in. With a paper cone on one hand, she quickly fills it with riceThe warung nasi, or rice eatery, is a common type of food establishment found across Indonesia. White rice is sold with various lauk, or side dishes, consisting of vegetables and proteins such as chicken, fish, tofu, and tempe–all commonly-found home cooking. and various side dishes from the trays of food that match the printed menu. Despite her being busy, the eatery’s only remaining table and bench are unfrequented as per usual.

Along with the removal of the footbridge as part of the tower’s enabling workThe riverbanks lining these highrise properties are always reinforced with concrete walls to prevent Jakarta’s incessant floods spilling over. These walls form part of the enabling for these properties, removing the risk of flooding from their properties but pushing the risk to the neighbouring kampung. In the case of Capital Place, the walls serve as part of its service entrance, a vital commodity for the tower to take on luxury tenants and attract luxury customers. For Kampung Poncol, this has made floods worse as now more flood water is spilling into their homes as only one side of the river is normalised., the eatery has since lessened its tables and benches, and grown its font size instead.

On the other side of the river and above the retaining wall, a line of office workersMany blue collar workers rely on these establishments as they are accessible establishments for their affordability and familiar home cooking menus. Even as they are exposed and work within upper middle class institutions along with their cosmopolitan lifestyles, the warung nasi remains a reliable establishment that these workers will always come back to. and hotel staffAccording to some residents we interviewed, some service workers in these highrise buildings are hired from nearby kampung as they live nearby. wait for their turn to shout their order over the river. Over the years, her clientele from across the river has changed and grown– the construction workers at first; joined by the street cleaners following the completion of the road; then the security and hotel staff once the tower is completed; followed by the office workers as businesses begin to move into the tower.

The brass bell attached to the pulley rings– another customer is calling to order their lunch. Stepping out from behind the counter, the owner hastily packs a few bags of previous orders into the bucket. She makes sure the change is at the very bottom of the bucket, followed by the heaviest bag, then the lighter ones on topWhen we spoke to the owner, she spoke of how accidents have happened where the bucket fell off balance and the food along with the money in it would fall into the river. When that happens, she would simply move on as there was nothing she could do. This attitude, pasrah or resignation in Indonesian, is quite common during our visits to the kampung. Residents would talk about how their lives, possessions, and standing in society are always in flux and nothing is guaranteed..

With every one of her hasty steps, she creates small ripples on the flood that still lingers on the riverside alleyways. Ten metres above the retaining wall, the tower is unaffected– it is business as usual both for the tower and her. As she pulls the pulley line, she delivers the food across the river and takes new orders at the same time.

Debris-adorned Banyan Trees

It has been a little less than two days since the long rain. The nimbus has cleared, and the tower assumes a rather hazy yet sunny iteration of its facade. Except for the trails of mud it has left on the alleyways and inside the houses, the river has subsided back into its meandering body, returning into its brown murky colour. The pocket of land from which the papaya seedlings are growing has reappeared, and so has the table on which the refrigerator sits.

The few-inch-wide thresholdThe dance teacher’s house which sits right on the river bank is not only at risk of flood disasters, but is especially at risk of development. Houses such as hers would be demolished to make way for normalisation, robust concrete walls taking their place. This dilemma is a much-discussed issue, as works needed to mitigate city-wide floods will always come at the expense of many vulnerable kampung residents, prompting much negative sentiment against the government. Meanwhile, kampung residents are also often blamed for refusing to comply and are accused of being against progress. between the dance teacher’s house and the water too has reemerged. On it, a network of roots weave in and out of the ground, embellishing the riverside with a seemingly arbitrary radial pattern. Where the strains meet the edge of the riverside, they interweave amongst themselves instead, forming a tangled mass of roots that extends midair and into the river.

Propped up by the confused mass of roots is a large banyan treeTrees growing despite mass development in Jakarta might be a sign of a positive turn towards greening the capital. Yet according to Jakarta’s City Parks and Forest Service the city still lacks around 800,000 trees, with a projected target of 200,000 being planted in 2022., standing still in its quiet monumentality as it assumes its space behind the houses. Yet in its stillness, the banyan is hard at work, especially at times like this. Its canopy spreads out, shielding the busy neighbours from the glaring sunlight the tower reflects, as they scrub mudThe domestic act of scrubbing and maintenance is cast under a grim light within the context of post-flood clean-up. off their houses and alleyways. The trunk holds more weight today than any other day as it holds a few additional laundry lines—the women have been gathering all morning to wash the mound of laundryMany residents would hang their laundry right up near the ceiling or even up on the second storey, most likely to keep it dry from smaller floods. However during the big floods, their laundry would get ruined by the flood water or simply washed away by the river, rendering such strategies useless. submerged in yesterday’s flood. As for the banyan roots, they multitask.

While those entwined within the riverside ground try their best to hold on to every bit of soil that bears them, the roots extending into the river filter through the drainage and rainwater that flow through. Trapped between the meshes is a plethora of debris: bright coloured empty food packaging, a broken terracotta planter, dislocated parts of a yellow tricycle. From across the river and above the tall retaining wall, the banyan roots appear as miniature reclamationsThe haunting image of a banyan tree adorned with debris made up of plastic trash is a visual signifier of the intensity of the flood–the higher up the debris, the higher the flood water. During our visit to the kampung the day after the yearly big flood, the debris in the banyan trees easily demarcated the height of the flood, much like the brown lines on the residents’ house walls. of the riverside, adorned in speckles of colours and objects until the next river cleanup.

Epilogue: Lines on the Wall

“Yesterday,”Temporal perception in Indonesian society is unique, as ‘yesterday’ could mean the day before, a week, or maybe even months past, depending on context. The same also applies for ‘tomorrow’, where the word could refer to an event weeks away. This fluid sense of time could play a role in the mitigation methods against frequent disasters like yearly floods.
“January of 2020, in the early hours of the New Year,”
“and February of 2021,”
the grocer’s husband lists out of his memory as he points at different lines that run horizontally across his side wall.

He squints his eyes as he looks up to the uppermost line. Occasionally, the grocer pops out from the kitchen’s half-door, located on the far right of the wall, adding additional details of date, time, or occurrences that her husband has missed. The wall, painted a dark turquoise up to 4 metres tall and left unpainted or plastered for its remaining height, quickly turns into a two-storey calendarIn the dense living spaces of kampung kota, multiple uses of spaces and materials are common. In the context of disasters, it becomes even more pertinent as residents are forced to derive value where value can be found. . In non-chronological order, the brown blurry lines on the wall code specific times of varying scales, period, and certainties.

He returns to the middle line, January of 2020On the first day of the new year 2020, a massive flood suddenly hit the kampung. Residents reported despite being used to annual floods, they were ill-equipped for this particular one as it came much later than anticipated, and caught no warning signs of it. Additionally, many residents had gone on holiday celebrating the new year with friends and family, leaving their homes vacant and unprepared for the flood. The flood was especially devastating, killing 16 and displacing around 31000 people. It was said to have been the worst since 2007, with water rising as high as 2-storey houses, leaving many residents stranded on rooftops waiting for SAR teams to reach them and who themselves struggled to navigate through the dense housing., and begins his story of the little preparation caused by the New Year’s celebration, the wait in a nearby mosque, the following headache of restoring drenched documentsLegal documents are particularly important for the underserved communities in kampung kota. Residents are legally vulnerable, especially with regards to land ownership and all the documents involved in such processes. One resident reported how they are in a constant state of limbo, receiving yearly visitations by authorities who claim that due to certain legalities, they must be evicted but have given no timeline and so cannot prepare accordingly. Meanwhile, the residents have nowhere else to go.. Stains left by the river water, each line is a palimpsestUsing scars of past floods as a record-keeping mechanism is done out of necessity, creating a complex relationship between water and material. Residents have reported how they have eventually given up on repainting their walls, since it will flood in a year’s time anyways. This push-pull dynamic between maintenance and disaster created a material culture constantly at odds with one another, unable to properly forward. of the many river floods.

Turning his head away from the wall, he looks at us and smiles ‘Resilience’ is often the word used to describe kampung residents as people from the outside look on at their plight and admire them for their strength. This resilience only masks the exasperation of a group left with very little support and options by authorities, having to battle the elements year in and year out..
“This is the place for water after all.”