Urban Asias – Essays on Futurity Past and Present

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PLANNING, DESIGN, AND MAINTENANCE OF JAKARTA’S FUTURE SANITATION INFRASTRUCTURES
1997 The closing of the Second JUDP.
2012 Attempts to construct a city-wide sanitation infrastructure are restarted. Financed
by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the “Reassessment of 1991
Master Plan and New Sewerage Master Plan” are published.
2014
Loan agreement between Indonesia and Japan is signed, which includes city-wide
sewerage system development.
2016
The state’s master plan of infrastructural development for domestic wastewater
management is published.
What are the futures of Jakarta’s sanitation infrastructure? That is a
question I regularly ask during conversations with people in and from Jakarta.
None of them ever envisages a centralized wastewater treatment plan and
city-wide sewerage network being completed anytime soon. Sanitation is
going to continue to be on-site and different forms of devices below houses
and roads are likely to be there to stay for the near future. The most viable
option perhaps is to live together with those tanks while infrastructural development
is expanding throughout and beyond the city. This commitment
entails forms of care: maintenance and repair. To that end, in what follows,
I examine three practices—planning, design, and maintenance—that shape
urban infrastructures, modulate different streams and forms of future making,
and enact the city in multiple versions. Researching at the intersection
between science and technology studies (STS) and anthropology, I work
through three propositions: planning as situated activity, design as translation,
and maintenance as art of caring. The final section of my essay adds
some concluding cautions for further reflection, to invite readers to rethink
and re-enact sanitation infrastructures, and thus participate in future-making
by other means.
Planning as Situated Activity
Planning the sanitation infrastructure of Jakarta is a delicate, if not
frustrating task. It is a mega-scale undertaking that will rip apart the whole
existing underground infrastructure, disrupt above ground infrastructure,
and intersect with other megaprojects, particularly the city’s sea wall and
the construction of new islands through reclamation.3 Similarly the history