Beyond Resilience: translocal planning pedagogies from coastal/delta cities of Asia

Project Objectives

This SMUS Teaching Research Course (February-October 2024) was a scientific collaboration between Diponegoro University (Indonesia) and IIT Kharagpur (India). It aimed at comprehending urban resilience in the cities of Semarang (Indonesia) and Kolkata (India) beyond mainstream technology-dependent ‘green solutions’ and disaster mitigation strategies, but rather reimagining cities as “living systems infrastructures”.

This interactive, interdisciplinary, and immersive course, included cross-fertilized approaches integrating natural sciences and engineering domains with social sciences to facilitate comprehensive understandings of complex socio-ecological spaces.

It combined classroom activities with field visits to peri-urban areas affected by climate change enabling participants to explore the wickedness of more-than-urban settings and the intricacies of co-knowledge production on community resilience.

You can download the Report here:

Interdisciplinary & Integrative Classrooms

“These sessions encouraged us to approach resilience as a phenomenon rather than through the procedural lens typical of urban and regional planning.” – Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wiwandari Handayani

The classroom lectures in Indonesia and India included both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, with students exploring the concepts of urban planning, socio-ecological resilience, environmental humanities and transdisciplinary methods. At UNDIP, Indonesia, the courses engaged with students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, where with the former, it focuses on community-based urban and rural resilience, specific to regional characteristics and disturbances and with the latter, it specializes on climate change and planning, addressing the challenges climate change brings to planning.

Dr. Jenia Mukherjee and Dr. Shreyashi Bhattacharya shared their research with the students at UNDIP, on the complex urban deltascape of Kolkata, with the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) as their urban case site. They discussed the region’s colonial ecological history and impact of unplanned urbanization on the city’s vital ecosystems and simultaneous community activism and policy planning, that showcased the vital equilibrium necessary between urban and the nature. They also briefly discussed the impact of anthropocene on the Indian Sundarbans, the complex ‘riskscape’ of the delta, sharing vital inter-connections with Kolkata.

Figure 1. Lecture by Dr. Jenia Mukherjee at UNDIP

Prof. Wiwandari Handayani and Dr. Rukuh Setiadi engaged with the engineering students at IIT Kharagpur, India, who were enrolled in the courses Environmental Humanities and Science and Humanism. They presented the topics “Resilience from Below: Building Inclusive Cities” and “The Role of Planning Nature-Based Solutions to Address Climate Change Challenges in Coastal Cities.” In these lectures, Prof. Wiwandari and Dr. Rukuh highlighted resilience practices and nature-based solutions in Indonesia from the perspective of urban planning. One example discussed was the utilization of local wisdom as an approach to engage communities and ensure sustainability. In another class, Prof. Wiwandari and Dr. Rukuh provided a more detailed explanation of these concepts, particularly focusing on practices of local wisdom, such as the subak system in Bali. These discussions deepened the understanding that knowledge is not only theoretical but also embedded in the cultural values upheld by local communities. This knowledge serves as a potential solution to the challenges faced by society and is particularly valuable for promoting sustainable outcomes, as it is directly derived from the community. However, the project implementation mainly targets undergraduate students. They were introduced to the intricate relationship between urban ecosystems and resilience from the humanities and social sciences perspective, emphasizing the balance between nature and urbanization, especially relevant to Indonesia’s northern coastal cities like Semarang and Pekalongan.

Figure 2. Lecture by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wiwandari Handayani at IIT Kharagpur

Out in The Field: Trailing into Geomorphology

In Indonesia, the team focused on three key study locations along the northern coast: Jakarta (Muara Angke), Pekalongan (Wonokerto), and Gresik (Ujung Pangkah). Each site provided diverse exposures that deepened the understanding of urban planning, humanities, and their complex interactions with the environment. Muara Angke, located in Pluit Sub district, Penjaringan District, North Jakarta, is one of the coastal resilient kampung amid Jakarta’s rapid development. The fishing settlements in this area reflect the dense coastal community life with its infrastructure and environmental challenges, while TPI Muara Angke serves as an economic hub where marine catches are traded. Meanwhile, floating houses in this region, emerge as a solution to the limited availability of decent housing and the issue of tidal flooding.

Figure 3. Map of Field Visit Location in the Northern Coast of Java Island, Indonesia

Wonokerto, located in Pekalongan Regency, is a sub-district situated in the northern part, directly bordering the Java Sea. It is one of the coastal areas severely impacted by climate change. The team, along with undergraduate and postgraduate students from UNDIP, observed the impacts of land subsidence and erosion in Wonokerto and the adaptations made by the local community.

Figure 4. Field Visit to Wonokerto, Pekalongan, Indonesia

The final case site of Indonesia was Ujung Pangkah, a delta formed at the mouth of the Bengawan Solo River. As one of the largest deltas in East Java, this area is an important habitat for coastal wetland ecosystems. The main estuary of Ujung Pangkah consists of three coastal villages: Pangkah Wetan, Pangkah Kulon, and Banyuurip. The team focused on the mangrove areas, which play a crucial role in protecting the coastline from abrasion and maintaining the stability of the local ecosystem.

In India, the Indonesian team visited two major case sites, the East Kolkata Wetlands a peri-urban ecosystem of the city and Kumirmari island in the Gosaba block of Indian Sundarbans. Both sites reflected the intricacies and interconnections of urban-nature, socio-cultural and infrastructure-community resilience in a risky deltascape. The visits to the East Kolkata Wetlands explored the historicity of colonial hydrology in crafting the vital ecosystem and its interdependency with the city, the role of canal infrastructures in the everydayness of the wetlands and its vitality in Kolkata’s survival. The visit to Kumirmari village, which is one of the remotest islands amidst the dense mangrove delta of Indian Sundarbans, exposed the team to the ongoing inland fishing experiments in the island, which is co-conducted by the inhabitants and IIT researchers, as a traditional form of social resilience against concurrent embankment breaches by cyclones and floods. The team stayed in the village premises, partook in mapping of community ponds, critical development of questionnaires, stakeholder engagement and planning for future strategies with the local inhabitants. The team also witnessed the community’s ‘artivism’, where the inhabitants disseminated their agency through pala gaan, a traditional Bengali artform of music and poetry, showcasing their research engagement to a wider audience.

Figure 4. Field work in Kumirmari, Indian Sundarbans