The University of Sydney, School of Architecture, Design and Planning is hosting on Symposium on Informal Urbanism in the Asia-Pacific region on 25 September 2018. The event will discuss the work of researchers in Australia and overseas in relation to urban informality, bottom-up approaches and the New Urban Agenda. The program is available here.

Sonia Roitman, from UQ Planning, will be presenting on the work done by Kalijawi, a community-based organisation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The title of the presentation is ‘Bottom-up strategies for a more inclusive city: Women driving positive and fast change in Yogyakarta, Indonesia’.

This paper reflects on the positive and fast change created by Kalijawi, a community-based organisation formed by women who live in informal settlements in Yogyakarta, Indonesia since its creation in 2012. These women (and their families) are ‘deprived’ and marginalised citizens who live in urban areas prone to floods that lack basic services and secure land tenure. Kalijawi has successfully developed advocacy strategies to become more visible in the discussion on the city they want to live in and practices to influence change through effective collaborative and participatory work. Being a female group, they challenge the male-dominated Indonesian governance structure. Their work contributes to a more inclusive city and to localise the New Urban Agenda emphasising the need to consider a continuum of land rights and the importance of creating local knowledge through community profiles, community mapping and poverty assessments. However, their bottom-up approach requires support and collaboration from the government, which is a hard and long process of forging mutual understandings. The analysis focuses on both the organisation as a new urban actor and their practices that move between ‘invited’ and ‘invented spaces of action’ contributing to ‘insurgent planning’.