Since 2013, city and regional planning students have been engaged in a workshop with Indonesian counterparts in Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia. The workshop exposes students to the complexities and nuances of planning with poor communities in the Global South. The workshop collaborates with a local non-governmental organization, Yayasan Kota Kita, and the fieldwork is anchored in three informal settlements along the Pepe River.

This exhibition highlights the most pressing issues facing these settlements, focusing on poverty, shelter, and water. It also explores a distinctly Indonesian form of kampung urbanization and questions its sustainability. To understand the issues students mapped the settlements; interviewed residents, civil society representatives, and state representatives; and analyzed the built form.

This work has been supported by CRP, AAP, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Southeast Asia Program, the Center for Engaged Learning and Research. and the American Institute for Indonesian Studies.