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Public Housing in Colonial Indonesia 1900–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

James L. Cobban
James L. Cobban
Affiliation:
Ohio University, Athens, Ohio
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Extract

The Provision of housing for the urban poor has been a problem of long standing in the Third World. In some countries efforts at housing supply go beyond events which began forty years ago after World War II when large numbers of people began moving to the cities of Latin Amercia, Africa, and Asia giving rise to uncontrolled urban settlements and causing crowded living conditions in the already built-up areas. In Southeast Asia some colonial governments recognized the housing problem at the beginning of the twentieth century and began programs to ameliorate housing shortages and to improve living conditions for the urban masses. The investigative housing commissions in Singapore beginning in 1907 and the faltering efforts of the Singapore Improvement Trust perhaps are the best known examples. They were the precursors of the Housing and Development Board established in i960 in whose structures live some 85 percent of the Singapore population today. Urban officials in colonial Indonesia, the former Dutch East Indies, also had concerns for the housing of the masses. The Dutch colonial government eventually passed legislation which in a mild way supported housing and- was concerned to some extent with housing construction. For their part, the large cities on Java were more active.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 871 - 896
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

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14 Such autonomy was guaranteed by article 71 of the Indian Constituion of 1854, protected by the authority of the governor general, and restated in the Acts of Incorportation which established the cities.

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17 Ibid., pp. 186–90. The remaining three were the Building Assocation of Semarang City Officials (Bouwvereeniging van Semarangsche Gemeente Ambtenaren) formed in 1902, the Fight Against the Housing Shortage Building Association (Bouwvereeninging ‘De Woningsnoodbestrijding’) formed in 1921, and the Building Company of East Semarang (Bouwmaatschappij Oost Semarang) which sold out to the city in 1924.

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19 Ibid., pp. 201–5.

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32 Ibid., p. 102.

33 Ibid., pp. 102–4.

34 The complete list of these proposals appear in ibid., pp. 317–21. The replies to the survey appear on pp. 105–11.

35 The Batavian Building Regulations 1919 to 1941 has eighty-three pages of building regulations, nineteen pages concerning the designation of building areas and building types (which reflects or determines land use), nine pages concerned with open space around buildings, and forty pages concerned with town planning. Bamboo is mentioned in the definition of temporary housing. Otherwise the document addresses European standards and concepts.

36 Flieringa, , Zorg, pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

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