Designing Colonial Cities:The Making of Modern Town Planning in the Dutch

The Newsletter | No.57 | Summer 2011 (Please note: this text is a slightly altered version of the article published in the printed edition) The Study | 7 Designing colonial cities: the making of modern town planning in the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia 1905-1950 Far-reaching socio-economic changes caused by burgeoning private enterprise, in combination with new insights and demands in terms of hygiene, infrastructure, architecture and town planning; emerging anti-sentiments among growing numbers of indigenous inhabitants; and the direct 1. confrontation of administrators with local issues: together these provided a prolifi c setting for the making of modern town planning in the Dutch East Indies in the fi rst half of the twentieth century. Pauline K.M. van Roosmalen Before 1905 After nearly three centuries of Dutch domination, the 2a. Dutch East Indies – the archipelago that is today called Indonesia – underwent two major changes around the turn of the twentieth century. The fi rst change was the introduction of the Agrarian Act (Agrarische Wet) in 1870. This act enabled private individuals to possess land on a long lease and, as a result, opened up business opportunities. The second change was the enactment of the Decentralisation Act (Decentralisatiewet) in 1903 and the Local Council Ordinance (Locale Radenordonnantie) in 1905. These two acts enabled the government to decentralise the archipelago’s administration to local administrative entities – soon referred to as municipalities. The introduction of the Agrarian Act fundamentally changed the outlook of the colony and its society. Prior to the enactment of the Agrarian Act it was predominantly male Dutch civil servants who set off to the Dutch East Indies. Following the Agrarian Act increasing numbers of businessmen, other professionals, and their wives headed to the archipelago from the Netherlands and other 1: Batavia: European countries. Consequently, as the Dutch/European bird’s-eye sketch Indian community became more diverse in terms of of kampung profession, gender and nationality, the Dutch Indian Taman Sari (1913). community increasingly became a multicultural version Design: Batavia of Dutch/European society in Europe. 2b. Municipality. Given the need to address these rapid socio-economic 2a: Surabaya: and demographic changes, the decision to delegate the existing town administration from the central government to local with projection of Darmo (1914). municipalities appeared to be a prudent one. In reality, Design: Bureau however, decentralisation was anything but easy – as the Maclaine Pont/ municipalities soon discovered. The most important H. Maclaine Pont. obstacle was that the government had left the municipalities severely under-resourced. Consequently, they lacked almost 2b: Surabaya: everything: suffi cient administrative authority, annual building scheme budget, experience, knowledge, labour and materials. Darmo (1914). A serious handicap from a town planning perspective was 3a. 3b. Design: Bureau that the maintenance of public works – formerly the shared Maclaine Pont/ responsibility of the Department of Public Works (Burgerlijke H. Maclaine Pont. Openbare Werken) and Home Aff airs (Binnenlandsch Bestuur) – neighbourhoods had their own distinctive features even modern town planning in Europe at the time: the principle 3a: Semarang: was long overdue in many instances. When the municipalities though the borders of the various ethnic groups were in many of zoning; or in other words the division of a town plan town plan with approached the government to discuss matters or to ask ways permeable in order to ‘allow the mutual penetration into neighbourhoods based on socio-economic strata. The projection of new for input, the response was generally dismissive. of races [...] everywhere the demands of life demanded situation in the Dutch colony was complicated, however, due neighbourhoods individuals to mingle’.2 to administrative and fi nancial constraints which meant that plans (1916). Convinced that it was more effi cient to tackle these setbacks administrators and architects were not at liberty to interfere Design: Bureau collectively than individually, the municipalities established In general, neighbourhoods for Europeans, Indo-Europeans, in kampungs because they were governed by an autonomous Maclaine Pont/ the Association for Local Interests (Vereeniging voor Locale well-to-do Chinese and indigenous dignitaries were vast and indigenous administration. The consequence was that, H.Th. Karsten Belangen - VLB) in 1912. The VLB, its journal Local Interests moderately to sparsely populated. The parcels of land were initially, admin-istrators and architects/planners could only and Semarang (Locale Belangen), and its annual Decentralisation Congress relatively large, the houses luxurious and the gardens lush. address the needs of the non-Indonesian neighbourhoods. Department for Public Works off ered professionals, including architects and town planners, The overall atmosphere was European. Middle class Asians, (Dienst Gemeente- useful and necessary platforms to exchange expertise and Indonesians and Indo-Europeans lived in considerably The fi rst newly-developed residential areas in the werken)/ir A. Plate. knowledge.1 Several congresses and in particular several denser populated areas where the streets were narrower, archipelago, Menteng-Nieuw Gondangdia in Batavia (1910) preliminary advisories written at the request of the congress sometimes unpaved, and the houses smaller and often planned by P.A.J. Moojen and others, is illustrative of this 3b: Semarang: organising committees, were instrumental in the emergence, combined with shops. The atmosphere in neighbourhoods approach. The plan, though clearly designed with notions of De Vogelplein in rationalisation, professionalisation and institutionalisation was either indigenous, Chinese, British-Indian or Arab. planning in terms of vistas, is basically a street plan bordered New Tjandi (1916). of modern town planning in the Dutch East Indies. The predominantly indigenous areas at the lower end of the by plots of land destined for housing and some open, public Design: Bureau socio-economic scale were the kampungs: densely populated spaces. What the designers seem to have overlooked, though, Maclaine Pont/ The emergence of town planning and often unplanned, semi-permanent, predominantly was how the new neighbourhood connected to the existing H.Th. Karsten As was customary in all European colonies around the indigenous settlements where facilities such as running town and how it would aff ect future developments of Batavia. and Semarang Department for world, Dutch Indian society was ethnically diverse and very water, baths, and toilets were often public. To circumvent the municipality’s administrative limitation with Public Works class-conscious: by and large, Europeans, Indo-Europeans, regard to kampungs, Batavia resorted to the construction of (Dienst Gemeente- Indonesians and other Asians socialised and lived in The socio-economic division within ethnic neighbourhoods werken)/ir A. Plate. diff erent social groups. Consequently, social groups and largely coincided with the rationale that characterised Continues on page 8 >> The Newsletter | No.57 | Summer 2011 8 | The Study Designing colonial cities Continued from page 7 >> Consequently, his text ‘Town planning in the Dutch Indies’ towns Medan, Padang and Palembang and the islands (‘Stedenbouw in Indië’), although published in a newspaper of Kalimantan (Borneo), Sulawesi (Celebes), Moluccas and Taman Sari (1913), a new kampung designed to be a model at the time of the congress, more or less sank into oblivion.3 New Guinea. The CPB focused on several areas in particular: the for well planned indigenous neighbourhoods with good Karsten’s text, on the other hand, was presented and discussed capital Batavia, and economically vital towns on Kalimantan and houses and public hygiene facilities. Unfortunately though, at length during the congress and won much acclaim among Sulawesi that were heavily damaged by hostile and allied attacks its designers again overlooked two important aspects: the colleagues and administrators in the colony as well as in due to their relevance for the oil industry. Ironically, it was the social and cultural requirements with regard to, for example, the Netherlands.4 ‘Dutch Indian Town Planning’ (‘Indiese need for a legal framework to execute the reconstruction plans the spatial and hierarchical layout of the area and the individual Stedebouw’), a concise yet comprehensive description of of these towns in East Indonesia that led to the Town Planning houses (the ‘plan’), and the tradition of communal construction Karsten’s ideas and suggestions about town planning, off ered Ordinance fi nally being decreed in August 1948.7 of dwellings (see illustration 1). As a result, particularly of the what administrators and colleagues had spent years waiting fi rst omission, the kampung’s anticipated inhabitants did not for: a handbook on town planning in general and in the Dutch Backed by the Town Planning Ordinance, the CPB was able to move into the houses and in 1917 the Batavia municipality East Indies in particular. With hindsight, one can see how this manoeuvre. The fi rst plan designed under the auspices of the decided to demolish Taman Sari. work laid the foundations for Karsten’s career and reputation bureau was Kebayoran Baru, a satellite town to the south of as the colony’s town planning theorist and designer.5 Batavia (see illustration 6). Designed

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