5 Minutes read

by Fildzah Husna Amalina

Cities are continually evolving systems, constantly adapting and responding to the dynamic needs of the inhabitants. For the fifteen years that Kota Kita has worked to promote citizen participation in urban development in Indonesia, learning alongside cities has meant embracing this complexity, recognizing that participatory urban development is not a one-off step but a continuous, iterative process.

In 2010, we began with a fundamental question: how can we create more space for communities, especially those most often excluded, to meaningfully participate in shaping their cities? This question sparked our early work to democratize urban planning processes that were often distant, technical, and inaccessible to the people most affected by them. Our first project, Solo Kota Kita, was not just about inviting people into planning processes but also ensuring their participation was not tokenistic, grounded in agency, and informed decision-making. 

It’s been nearly fifteen years since Solo Kota Kita, and cities in Indonesia have significantly transformed. Today, cities sit at the frontlines of our most urgent challenges—from coastal flooding and climate impacts to housing precarity and unequal access to urban benefits. Deep interlinkages between climate change, inequality, and shifting urban governance landscapes further highlight the increasing complexity that comes with creating a safe and comfortable urban environment for all its inhabitants. 

As the issues facing cities transform, so have our questions: How do we now position our work in promoting citizen participation within this seemingly vast and evolving landscape of urban problems? How have organizations like ours and other community-led initiatives filled the gaps left by fragmented development and advocated for more inclusive, relevant urban solutions?

Learning through practice

Participatory research and methodologies: challenging how we understand our cities

Knowledge about cities is political. It is shaped by who gets to ask the questions, who collects the data, and whose experiences are counted. Through action research initiatives and knowledge co-production with communities, we challenged how urban problems are understood by centering community voices and lived experiences. Using different tools and methodologies—such as visuals, arts, play, storytelling, and other creative means—our approach sought to simultaneously capture overlooked urban realities and strengthen the agency of the communities we work with. 

For instance, when developing the disability-inclusive city profiles in Solo and Banjarmasin, we worked with organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) and volunteers to ensure that all persons with disabilities were mapped and their needs were captured. The research findings filled critical data gaps at the time, supporting local governments and civil society organizations to deliver more targeted interventions, from social assistance during COVID-19 and opening access to political participation through elections to building inclusive public spaces, to promoting mobility solutions that empower persons with disabilities.

Co-designing with communities: shaping together cities we aspire to have 

Community-centric design has been a central practice at Kota Kita, advancing the idea that design should be a collective process, not merely the domain of technical experts. This approach creates space for community aspirations to be accommodated in the design processes. By doing so, we aim to capture the nuanced needs often overlooked in conventional processes of public infrastructure provision and inform more inclusive urban interventions.

In Solo, for example, we worked with residents of social housing along the Kali Pepe riverbank to design an inclusive public space that not only responded to their immediate needs but also considered how it could reconnect with the larger river ecosystem and make use of nearby underutilized spaces. These practices have fostered meaningful exchanges among residents, practitioners, and local stakeholders, offering lessons on designing infrastructure that addresses specific contexts and urban challenges. They reaffirm that communities will continue to be key sites for ensuring that the changes we promote reflect the cities we collectively aspire to build.

Campaign and advocacy: creating spaces for different narratives of urban futures

Changing cities also requires changing the stories we tell about them. Campaigns and advocacy have been integral to our work, as we believe in creating a space for communities to articulate alternative visions of an ideal city, in contrast to dominant narratives that often reflect the interests of selected groups. 

The Urban Social Forum has been a platform for imagining alternative urban futures by bringing together activists, community leaders, researchers, and everyday citizens across Indonesia. Through the slogan “Another City is Possible!” the forum challenges paradigms and opens space for diverse voices to frame new urban agendas around justice, inclusion, and environmental sustainability. In another initiative like KREASI Repaint the City, we worked with young people with hearing impairments, artists, and community groups in Solo to reclaim and reimagine public spaces—amplifying youth perspectives and experimenting with public art as a tool for participatory urbanism. These initiatives show that while shifting urban narratives is a long process, cultivating dynamic spaces for collective imagination and expression is vital and must be nurtured.

Changing facades, continuous learning 

If we have learned one thing over the past fifteen years, cities are never stagnant, and neither is the work of building inclusive ones. The complexity of urban challenges demands an ecosystem that centers on collective learning and co-creation across different actors. So, we need to keep asking critical questions and embrace the process of learning with cities. We need broader, deeper, and more diverse collaborations that involve local communities, civil society organizations, local governments, academics, practitioners, and private sector actors willing to co-create solutions across conventional boundaries. 

This reflection is thus written as both a reminder and a renewed commitment for Kota Kita to continue learning and experimenting alongside cities. We look forward to gaining new insights, deepening our partnerships, and working hand-in-hand with diverse urban communities to build more equitable, sustainable, and just cities—a city for all.