SENSE OF PLACE IN POST DISASTER PLACE CHANGING AND MAKING CASE STUDY: TOURISM AREA OF LAVA TOUR, MERAPI VOLCANO, SLEMAN

• Main Author: Imran, Sarojini
• Format: Dissertations
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/37385
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Decision making in the reconstruction of places that undergoes considerable physical changes is mostly dominated by safety and development-technical physical aspects. Changes in physical landscape due to disasters or other unexpected events can psychologically affect its inhabitants, especially the people who have inhabited the area for quite long time. Not only they experience the change in the physical landscape due to these unexpected events, but also the decision made for the reconstruction planning often impose bigger changes that affect the inhabitants, which often cause problems. For instance, relocation and site design, despite the best possible design following proper planning principles, rejection still occurs. This shows that planning should not only take into account the tangible physical issues, but also consider the meaning and sense of intangible places which can greatly affect individual’s or group’s satisfaction of place. Other problem of changes in places due to reconstruction planning is generally the design of the place is made typical or tends to have the same design. The new spatial patterns and the forms of building design do not adopt local characteristics resulting in the symptoms of placelessness, a place that loses its traditional characteristics because of modernization effect. The standards used in permanent residential planning for the survivors of disasters are almost identical to the other places that are affected by the same event, even though those places have different characteristics and uniqueness. This will cause problems in maintaining the characteristics of the place, especially in areas that have tourism potentials. Tourism development itself often leads to the dimension of placelessness, a gradual disappearance of characteristics and uniqueness of potential tourist attractions. This study aims to investigate reciprocal simultaneous effect of sense of place due to the changes in place and placemaking conducted by the community. The study is conducted in tourist area affected by major disaster, tourism aspect as an external factor that needs to be raised to explore the relationship between the components of change in place and the component of sense of place. This research uses mixed qualitative-quantitative methodology with a case study at Merapi Lava Tour area, Cangkringan sub-district, Sleman regency, Yogyakarta Special Region province. Primary data is obtained from in-depth interviews, questionnaire and focus group discussions in the form of interview and discussion notes. Primary and secondary data input are selected and extracted to predefined variables so core information is obtained and corroborated with the results of community group discussions and mapping conducted by the community itself. Data validation is performed by source triangulation through the searches of photographs and comments from tourists who had visited the area several years after the disaster occurred. The collected data are then analyzed including analysis of mobility changes, changes in place function and changes in cultural values linked with the components of sense of place which includes activities, place setting and the meaning of place. This data analysis process includes three stages which are performed in cycles as suggested by Miles & Huberman (1984) i.e. data reduction, data displayand conclusion drawing/verification. The result of this study shows a significant influence between sense of place and the changes in placemaking process by the community. The components of cultural values play quite a strong role in influencing changes as well as in maintaining the characteristics of place whether in the settlement, tourism destinations, as business environmentand leisure place or public space. Some senses of place have managed to survive intact, changed to another form which is different from before the disaster; however, there are some places that underwent an antinomic dimension like placelessness due to the change in the sense of place. But, there is no significant change from Topophilia to Topophobia dimension. This research contributes substantively to the existing theory of sense of place in the aspect of changes in place and placemaking, which can be used as practical basis for reconstruction planning, especially to disaster-affected tourist area which is oriented towards humanity aspect and place characteristics. The result of this study is also expected to be used as a reference in the decision making of place setting and changes in place design in disaster recovery planning.