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8 - Assessing Flood-Related Vulnerability of the Urban Poor
- Edited by Bing Zhang, Neha Sami, R. Parthasarathy, Paul Rabé, Gregory Bracken
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- Book:
- Future Challenges of Cities in Asia
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 21 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 26 November 2019, pp 183-208
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Summary
Abstract
Urban poverty and floods are the foremost challenges for coastal cities of Southeast Asia. It is often assumed that the poor residents of a flood-affected area are mainly vulnerable. Yet, only few studies have placed flood-experienced people at the center of the vulnerability assessment. This chapter aims to explore who is vulnerable among the flood-affected urban poor and how they define flood-related vulnerability. We found that kampung residents use their flood experiences as a stock of knowledge to differentiate the level of vulnerability. Therefore, we suggest applying a life-world analysis to assess the state of vulnerability of an informal urban settlement and expect to identify the potentiality of the flood-experienced ones to organize transformative adaptation.
Keywords: flood, vulnerability, Jakarta, Indonesia, life-world
Introduction
Urban vulnerability is a conditional state that differs among cities while determining their adaptation pathways. As climate change is debated around the world, the slow onset and rapid changes, especially those occurring in tropical coastal regions, have increased urban vulnerability. This evolving discourse has attracted the attention of scholars from a variety of disciplines. Most of the scholars agree on the importance of knowing the state of climate-related vulnerability in urban development. Fuchs (2010) has predicted that Asia's at-risk urban population will reach 2.4 billion by 2030. Most of the affected people will be the urban poor, living in the most vulnerable locations.
The urban poor are unique in their capacity for producing space for living, such as the kampung2 in Indonesia. Kampung is the informal, traditional, self-organized settlement that still can exist in the modern living space of Indonesian cities (cf. Jellinek 1999; Kenworthy 1997). The hallmarks of the kampung are a densely populated area, inhabited mainly (but not solely) by poor people suffering from limited access to utilities and other public services (Marcussen 1990). In Jakarta, there are an estimated 600 kampung settlements (Kompas 2010). There are 490 pockets of poverty in Jakarta, which are associated with the presence of kampung (UN Habitat 2003). “It is estimated that 20 to 25 percent of Jakarta residents live in kampungs, with an additional four to five per cent squatting illegally along riverbanks, empty lots and floodplains” (UN Habitat 2003). The vulnerability of kampungs has exposed them to climate-related disasters, especially to flooding due to heavy rainfall, the rising sea level, and tidal flooding (Firman et al. 2011).
‘Creative industries’: Economic programme and boundary concept
- Anna-Katharina Hornidge
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- Journal:
- Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 42 / Issue 2 / June 2011
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 12 May 2011, pp. 253-279
- Print publication:
- June 2011
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On 31 December 1985, Singapore left the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), turning against the ‘New International Information Order’ demanded by UNESCO at that time. In October 2007, after 22 years of absence, Singapore rejoined UNESCO, looking for an intensification of cultural and scientific exchange. Taking this example of reviving co-operation between Singapore and UNESCO, this paper assesses the concept of ‘creative industries’ as a boundary concept that allows for increased co-operation between players with generally opposing knowledge concepts — as manifested in their respective knowledge and cultural politics. The paper starts with a conceptual discussion on the crossing of boundaries. This is followed by an assessment of first, UNESCO's and second, Singapore's gradual repositioning towards culture. While UNESCO turned from distinctly separating ‘culture’ and ‘market’ in the 1970s and 1980s to an increased openness for profit-oriented conceptualisations of culture today, Singapore identified the economic potential of culture, creativity and the arts, and therefore the need to foster these as part of its development into a knowledge-based economy. The underlying differences in interests and the orientation of content, expressed by the traditionally opposing conceptualisations of knowledge and culture, are still valid today, yet the concept of ‘creative industries’, adopted by both sides, seems to offer a common meeting ground. It acts clearly as a bridge, and hence a boundary concept, allowing for an intensification of mutual co-operation. This is discussed in the final part of the paper.