Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 3, 2016 | 85 Planning Implementation for Mitigating Loss of Green Areas in Peripheral Urbanized Areas of Greater Jakarta: Case Study of Tangerang Selatan Dyah Fatma* Atsushi Deguchi* Abstract Uncontrolled growth in Greater Jakarta has reduced the green area in Jakarta’s neighboring municipalities. Projected population growth and associated growth in housing will cause further loss of green areas. Spatial planning laws in these municipalities and the application of a national target for urban green areas in each city have been implemented in an attempt to mitigate the loss of green areas. However, further loss of green areas since these laws were issued shows that there are underlying problems in their enactment. Tangerang Selatan has been nominated as a new center for residential, service and trading activities, which provides an opportunity for policy change to mitigate the loss of urban green space in peripheral municipalities. This paper aims to mitigate further loss of green areas in Tangerang Selatan by identifying the underlying problems for green area provision in Tangerang Selatan through analysis of the current regulations and their implementation in different types of development. Findings indicated that achieving sufficient urban green area is a challenge in Tangerang Selatan due to insufficient planning and monitoring capabilities. However, it is found that private sector has the potential for collaboration in green area provision. Keywords: Land use, Uncontrolled growth, Green coverage ratio, Mitigation of green area loss, Indonesia 1. Introduction 1.1 Background Greater Jakarta, which is also known as Jabodetabek, has experienced rapid growth since Indonesia opened up for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the 1970s22) 24). Economic growth in Jakarta following FDI triggered a population increase in the city and between 1970 and 1990, Jakarta converted approximately 60% of its unbuilt area into built area61). The implementation of a policy to extend urban growth to the east and west of Jakarta in 1976 caused the city to expand into its surrounding municipalities56). Jakarta’s urban area expanded outwards to the Depok and Bogor regions in the south, Bekasi region in the east, and Tangerang region in the west (Figure 1) forming what is known as Greater Jakarta. Before the expansion, these municipalities used to be agricultural areas27). As the municipalities at Jakarta’s periphery transformed from rural to suburban and started to show signs of early post-suburbanization28), green coverage in these municipalities declined. Development in Jakarta’s periphery following FDI was dominated by residential development. By 1996, development permits for residential areas released by the government covered 16% of the total Greater Jakarta area59). *Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo Email: [email protected] (C) 2016 City Planning Institute of Japan http://dx.doi.org/10.14398/urpr.3.85 Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 3, 2016 | 86 Figure-1 Municipalities in Greater Jakarta Table-1 Urbanized municipalities of Greater Jakarta Area Population in GRDP from Municipality Green Coverage (km2) 2010 Agriculture Jakarta 662.33 8,523,157 *1 10.38% *6 0.08% *11 Bekasi 210.49 2,334,871 *2 3.70% *7 0.16% *12 Depok 200.29 1,736,565 *3 3.82% *8 2.52% *13 46.00% *9 Tangerang 164.54 1,798,601 *4 (including privately 0.16% *14 owned green area) Tangerang Selatan 147.19 1,290,322 *5 18.00% *10 0.86% *15 *1:3), *2:7), *3:10) *4:14), *5:12), *6:28), *7:57), *8:48), *9:50), *10:2), *11:4), *12:9), *13:11), *14:15), *15:13) This study defines green areas according to the definition included in Indonesian Spatial Planning Law (2007), whereby green areas are defined as a plot intended for vegetation. It includes, but is not limited to, urban forest, agriculture, and parks. This definition distinguishes green areas from green coverage, whereby green coverage includes land plots that are designated for other uses, including built areas that have not yet been developed. 1) Uncontrolled Growth in Greater Jakarta Uncontrolled growth that happens in Greater Jakarta is often compared with sprawl in the United States of America (USA), as both show leapfrog development, often along road infrastructure 23). Despite these similarities, sprawl in the USA has grown under similar planning and building codes, which explains the similarities between sprawl in different places across the USA23). Growth in the periphery of Jakarta has followed two patterns: new areas developed by private developers that share similarities with their US counterparts; and organic expansion within and outside the settlement areas that preexisted the urbanization process 45). 2) Urbanized Area of Greater Jakarta At the beginning of Jakarta’s expansion, growth was in the form of urban patches among rural areas at the urban fringe, a trend known as desakota 43). Through the constant pressure of urbanization, these municipalities gradually lost their rural land. The loss of rural characteristics is reflected in the Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) of the municipalities directly adjacent to Jakarta, which shows a low percentage of income from the agricultural sector Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 3, 2016 | 87 (Table-1). These municipalities also have changed their status into kota (city, or urban municipality, as referred to in this paper) from kabupaten (regency, or rural administrative area or rural municipality as referred to in this paper), following the increase in their population Ease of access and availability of infrastructure in these urban municipalities has increased the tendency for further development. Based on the assumption that a change of land cover is irreversible29), provision of green open space is more feasible by reassigning available unbuilt land. 3) Previous Spatial Planning Policies A number of spatial planning policies to control urbanization and land use change have been applied in Greater Jakarta. A study for the masterplan of Jakarta was first done in 1965, and a masterplan was issued which included the urbanized area of the municipalities surrounding Jakarta54). In 1976, an authority for Greater Jakarta was formed 54) 56, and a plan to expand new development of industry and housing towards the west and east was enacted in 198156). These policies initiated rapid urbanization in Greater Jakarta and had caused a sharp decrease of green coverage. Following the Earth Summit in 1992 and awareness of the impacts of global warming, the government of Indonesia issued a law on spatial planning which mandated municipality and provincial governments to provide spatial planning for their respective 26). In 2007, the law was revised to require a national target for green areas of 20% public green areas and 10% privately owned green areas in urban municipalities. Incentives and disincentives were included as part of the controlling instrument. However, despite the enactment of the national plan, the percentage of green coverage in Greater Jakarta urban areas is already below the targeted number (Table-1). Previous reports show that the main impediment to the national-level policy implementation lies in the condition of local-level government where executive power lies47). Following decentralization, the municipality-level government gained autonomous power for spatial planning, which includes green area provision60) 34), in its area as long as this did not contradict national level regulations. Thus this research will focus on municipality-level green area provision. 1.2 Purpose and Objective This research aims to mitigate loss of green areas in Tangerang Selatan by identifying potential improvements to the current implementation of green area provisions at the municipality-level, by analyzing the local regulation of green area provision and by identifying how the municipality-level regulation is implemented in different types of development in Tangerang Selatan. To achieve this, the research will address the following objectives: 1) Document the chronological changes in peripheral cities around Jakarta using Tangerang Selatan as case study, through historical study of urbanization and changes of land cover in Tangerang Selatan. There is no official data from Tangerang Selatan regarding available green area or land use in the municipality. Thus, it is essential to estimate unbuilt for assessing the feasibility of green area provision in Tangerang Selatan considering change from unbuilt to built area is irreversible. 2) Identify issues for the implementation of land use regulations in Tangerang Selatan. 3) Propose improvements for the implementation of land use regulations in peripheral cities of Greater Jakarta to mitigate the loss of green areas. Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 3, 2016 | 88 1.3 Previous Studies 1) Need for Green Areas in Urban Areas Growth in Greater Jakarta happens in the form of low-density housing, which shows a tendency for uncontrolled growth. This type of growth has been suggested to negatively affect environmental qualities owing to a decrease of green areas. Green coverage has been shown to have benefits for rainwater infiltration and run-off mitigation16), better air quality32), potential for carbon sequestration53), and ecosystem services33). Unbuilt areas also have the potential for recreational benefits18). Considering these values for green areas, it is important to mitigate the loss of green areas in the urbanized municipalities of Greater Jakarta, while aiming for better green area planning. 2) Impacts of Uncontrolled Growth in Greater Jakarta Previous research in Greater Jakarta on land cover change has shown the negative impacts of growth on the metropolitan area. For example, the urbanization process in Greater Jakarta has had negative impacts on its regional resilience and sustainability31). The growth of population and built-area in Greater Jakarta has contributed to land subsidence and land inundation through greater ground water consumption and less recharge area19). Issues of the heat island effect42) and insufficient public open space have also been felt in the Greater Jakarta area26).