Cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in Jakarta's informal settlements

The rise of Urban Heat Island (UHI) is harming people across megacities in the world. In Jakarta, the informal settlements are most affected due to the lack of adequate infrastructure to deal with the heat. The heat problem in the informal settlements was primarily exacerbated by overcrowding and a...

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Main Authors: Salsabila, Safira, Amir, Sulfikar, Nastiti, Anindrya
Other Authors: School of Social Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2023
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171312
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1713122023-10-22T15:30:21Z Cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in Jakarta's informal settlements Salsabila, Safira Amir, Sulfikar Nastiti, Anindrya School of Social Sciences Social sciences::Geography Jakarta Informal Settlements The rise of Urban Heat Island (UHI) is harming people across megacities in the world. In Jakarta, the informal settlements are most affected due to the lack of adequate infrastructure to deal with the heat. The heat problem in the informal settlements was primarily exacerbated by overcrowding and a lack of access to cooling infrastructures. In this paper, we observe how residents of the informal settlements take on a cooling practice collectively. Our study is situated in five urban kampongs located in the most populated sub-districts (kelurahan) in Jakarta. Nine months of ethnographic fieldwork were conducted to unpack the residents' endeavor to mitigate the heat problem. To explicate the process and the role of these cooling facilities, we use the notion of social practice comprising three fundamental elements: competence, material, and meaning. “Social practice” aptly characterizes how the residents in each kampong worked together to build cooling places that also function as communal spaces. Our research discovered that despite limited resources and technical competence, each kampong recognized the necessity of communal spaces to maintain their cooling practices. These measures enabled them to engage in cooling practices while building social relationships through chilling outdoors. By demonstrating the capacity of residents in the informal settlements for constructing vernacular forms of cooling infrastructure, this paper offers a pluralistic view of heat mitigation in megacities of the Global South. Ministry of Education (MOE) Published version This work was supported by the U.K.’s Economic and Social Research Council as part of The Global Challenges Research Fund (grant number ES/T008091/1). Sulfikar Amir received financial support from Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier-1 Grant #RG53/19. 2023-10-18T08:26:33Z 2023-10-18T08:26:33Z 2023 Journal Article Salsabila, S., Amir, S. & Nastiti, A. (2023). Cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in Jakarta's informal settlements. Habitat International, 140, 102924-. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102924 0197-3975 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171312 10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102924 2-s2.0-85171151223 140 102924 en RG53/19 Habitat International © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/4.0/). application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Social sciences::Geography
Jakarta
Informal Settlements
spellingShingle Social sciences::Geography
Jakarta
Informal Settlements
Salsabila, Safira
Amir, Sulfikar
Nastiti, Anindrya
Cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in Jakarta's informal settlements
description The rise of Urban Heat Island (UHI) is harming people across megacities in the world. In Jakarta, the informal settlements are most affected due to the lack of adequate infrastructure to deal with the heat. The heat problem in the informal settlements was primarily exacerbated by overcrowding and a lack of access to cooling infrastructures. In this paper, we observe how residents of the informal settlements take on a cooling practice collectively. Our study is situated in five urban kampongs located in the most populated sub-districts (kelurahan) in Jakarta. Nine months of ethnographic fieldwork were conducted to unpack the residents' endeavor to mitigate the heat problem. To explicate the process and the role of these cooling facilities, we use the notion of social practice comprising three fundamental elements: competence, material, and meaning. “Social practice” aptly characterizes how the residents in each kampong worked together to build cooling places that also function as communal spaces. Our research discovered that despite limited resources and technical competence, each kampong recognized the necessity of communal spaces to maintain their cooling practices. These measures enabled them to engage in cooling practices while building social relationships through chilling outdoors. By demonstrating the capacity of residents in the informal settlements for constructing vernacular forms of cooling infrastructure, this paper offers a pluralistic view of heat mitigation in megacities of the Global South.
author2 School of Social Sciences
author_facet School of Social Sciences
Salsabila, Safira
Amir, Sulfikar
Nastiti, Anindrya
format Article
author Salsabila, Safira
Amir, Sulfikar
Nastiti, Anindrya
author_sort Salsabila, Safira
title Cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in Jakarta's informal settlements
title_short Cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in Jakarta's informal settlements
title_full Cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in Jakarta's informal settlements
title_fullStr Cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in Jakarta's informal settlements
title_full_unstemmed Cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in Jakarta's informal settlements
title_sort cooling as social practice: heat mitigation and the making of communal space in jakarta's informal settlements
publishDate 2023
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171312
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