THREE MEN AND A BOAT: INITIATING FIELD AND DESIGN STRATEGIES FOR RIVERS IN MEGA-URBAN REGIONS

Abstract

Rapid urban transitions result in changes which often lead to a number of human-environment conflicts. Landscapes that are a product of this urbanity increasingly face unprecedented challenges brought by these changes. These have led researchers to depend on the prominent contribution of spatial sciences as a medium to prepare information for the general public. As such, the product of ubiquitous sensing is the dominant form of media which constructs our landscapes today.

Two questions are investigated through extensive fieldwork within a riverine landscape in Jakarta, Indonesia. First, how can landscape architects equip themselves to engage with the mega-urban region? I propose that designers should become surveyors of the mega-urban environment. By using sensing instruments to document and understand the environment, they are able to to produce high fidelity and precise local observations of complex urban sites that can be used in design. Second, how can the precise local observations of landscape architects contribute knowledge to multidisciplinary work? This question is broken down into two contexts. Within the context of the work of the landscape ecology module, four contributions are discussed: a) generation of a digital design toolkit to use the observations to augment design; b) communication of corridor scale design-led scenarios using local information; c) improvement of design relevance through the integration of social and spatial information; d) enhancement of the mapping techniques which are used by communities to understand their everyday environments. External to the landscape ecology module, one contribution is discussed: the disclosure of temporal urban processes.

The contributions of this dissertation are twofold: first, the location of landscape architecture within the mega-urban context; and second, the contextualisation of its value to multidisciplinary work. These contributions are manifested through the excellent and crucial test case, Jakarta, as a mega-urban city. In conclusion, the larger realisation of the research is that its value is demonstrated by its contribution to how others can re-understand their own fields. Only through this grounded approach, which positions one’s work relative to the work of others, can we tackle the mega-urban issues at hand.