Healing the City of Solo by the Javanese-3R: Resik-Rejo-Rejekeni

Abstract

Entering to the third millennium, the cities in Indonesia are generally plagued by many serious problems, either from the natural environment, built environment or social environment. Sooner or later, these serious problems will finally become an urban disaster, either of urban natural disaster, urban built disaster or urban social disaster. To prevent the more severe disasters in the future, these issues must be covered by the healing. This paper describes the author's practical experience in healing the city of Solo, conducted jointly by the stakeholders, either from the government (Mayor, BAPPEDA, DTRK, BBWS, DPU), the NGO (Ngreksa Lepen, SCCN, YUF), the academics (UNS, UMS, ATMI) or the citizens. Based on the previous research, Solo is more vulnerable from urban social disaster than of urban natural disaster (flood, pollution, landslides) or urban built disaster (fires, collapse, squatter). According to the results of the previous research, there were three main factors causes of urban social disaster: (1) leadership crisis; (2) hypocrite culture; and (3) economic disparity. The concentration of this healing is focused on the last aspect (the economic disparity), since the two other aspects have been successfully carried out by Jokowi as the previous Mayor. The treatment of economic disparity is stepping through the creative economy in the region of ancient rivers in the city of Solo. The efforts of the creative economy in the river region, however, are able to provide a great added value. Therefore, the five main rivers in Solo will be managed with a variety of creative economy efforts. Through the participatory development models with the riversides residents, there was built the concept of Javanese-3R: Resik-Rejo-Rejekeni. The concept of ‘resik’ (healthy) is to create the river be clean again in the short term (less than 5 years); the concept of ‘rejo’ (worthy) is to create the river be beneficial in the moderate term (5-10 years); while the concept of ‘rejekeni’ (wealthy) is to create the river be scene of new jobs for riversides residents in the long term (after 10 years).