From Autonomous Village to ‘Informal Slum’: Kampong Development and State Control in Bandung (1930–1960)

Abstract

© gustaaf reerink, ���5 | doi �0.��63/9789004�807�4_009This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License.1 The research conducted for this paper was part of a PhD project on Tenure Security for the Urban Poor in Post-New Order Indonesia, which is funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (knaw) and an earlier version was published in my PhD thesis (Reerink 2011). I am grateful to the Treub Society for Research in the Tropics, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (nwo), the Adat Law Foundation and the Leiden University Fund, which gave financial support for my fieldwork in Bandung. I also wish to thank Dr Selly Riawanti, Denny Riezki Pratama and Anindya Praharsacitta for their valuable assistance in the research conducted for this chapter. Finally, my gratitude extends to the informants in Taman Sari and other kelurahan for their willingness to provide data and the kampong communities in these kelurahan for receiving me. Naturally, I take full responsibility for the content of this chapter. 2 The concept 'kampong' has different meanings, depending on the area in Indonesia in which and by whom it is used (Krausse 1975:31-35). In West Java the word means low-income, urban or rural settlement (Silas 1983:214). A kelurahan is the lowest administrative unit in Bandung, usually consisting of several kampongs.

From panchuran to waterleiding: clean water solutions in Colonial Bandung, West Java, Dutch East Indies (1898‒1934)

“…European employees and professionals came to Bandung to build a new life. At the same time, there was a process of moving indigenous residents from villages to find jobs and live in cities (Reerink, 2015). By 1890, the population was already much larger: 16,656 Indigenous, 991 Arab, and Chinese, and 467 European (Himpoenan Soedara, 1936, p. 6).…”

“…As was typical in colonial cities, the development and management of urban infrastructure, including hygiene and clean water supply, were often determined according to a relatively small group of Europeans' interests (Bandoeng, 1929). On the other hand, indigenous people in Kampongs have their standard of living and local government, which is often difficult for the municipality to intervene directly (Reerink, 2015).…”