26.09.09 My imigination for the future of Surabaya

It is the fact that our neighbor countries such Malaysia, Singapore or even Vietnam have undergone very rapid changes in term of their city development.

However, kinda sad when I mirror this situation with Indonesia, especially Surabaya (its 2nd biggest city). When many big cities in the region are competing to be the best, while we are probably not.

In term of Urban Design, Surabaya needs to explore more possibilities to enhance its image, such as in the following:

• providing more accessible parks, community garden in neighborhoods.

• enhancing the pedestrian access, disabled access, parents with baby stroller.
• preserving biodiversity of the city, such as local birds, which are rarely found these days, are they extinct already?..where's the frog when raining, morning birds, etc..

However, I still appreciate several impressive achievement in the Surabaya Public Park development by redesigning and installing free public wifi. In fact, Surabaya become the pilot project of smaller Indonesian cities for city vegetation design, as it won several government awards due to its awesome designed parks.

There are couple things that we should have such as drinkable water tap in the park, pedestrian traffic light for crossing the street as I experience here in Sydney, garbage management by separating organic, non organic/ recyclable wastes.

Moreover, we should have a singular model of Surabaya Architecture. we should have one strong character that speak our personality loudly. So, what's Surabaya Architecture?

According to me, Surabaya Architecture is the fusion of Traditional Javanese Architecture and Modern contemporary design, which covers the materials selection or space arrangements.

Why Architecture is so important?... all well-known cities around the world have their own characteristics which are reflected by its composing buildings. Let's take a look in Paris, Rome, Kyoto, Madrid, etc..Can you find out the similar line of those cities?.. it's the architecture that become their cultural symbol and contribute to the tourism developments.

No matter how hard the Surabaya tourism board, if they don't have something to 'sell', tourists won't back for second time, they may see it is enough to experience Indonesia once, nothing more!..

Back to Architecture and Urban Design, we should position ourselves as part of regional developments, which means that everything that we wanna build should be based on regional standard. For example, if we wanna build a theater or museums, we should see whether other people will see it nice or if it meets the standards regionally or even Internationally.

Internationally??? yup it should be. If we reflect Surabaya in term of population, we are as big as Sydney, but are we well-known enough in the global role?..I don't think so, please do not make the developing countries issues as the excuse.

The problem is that we do not want to address how strategic our position in the world map. We should emphasis that it is good opportunities. I believe that by improving the bureaucracy we could do more. For example, positioning Surabaya as air-hub in the region scale to Australia and pasific islands..why not? we can take this position before other Indonesian cities do it. The good example now is that Bangkok, KL or S'pore are the hub of international flight destination to regional cities. If Bali is near with us, why we do not take this advantage?.. and add other eco-tourism as part of endorser, like Mount Bromo.

We have to strengthen the position of Surabaya as business city in Indonesia. we can say that people coming this city is only for business purpose, convention, shopping.

If this so, how we make them feel convenience then, that the question?

• Improve the infrastructure; build the rapid transport from airport to station gubeng.
• Make Station Gubeng as the central station of Surabaya, redesign it by competition so the result will be signature building for Surabaya, the new landmark, as it is strategic location in the of Surabaya Business District. I know it needs lot of money, but according to independent survey, we are the 2nd richest city in Indonesia, so where the hell money goes?
• Build internal CBD bus network and car-parking building in the outskirt, so it will encourage the use of public transport. Make sure that the bus network will prefer membership and prepaid payment with card identification to avoid crime in public transport.
• If the government really want to relocate the CBD. then prepare the infrastucture, by connecting the airport to the new CBD by toll highway. So the concept will be triangle; old CBD (pemuda)-new CBD (Surabaya Barat)-Juanda Airport.
• No doubt that our people love sheltered or shaded place, since living in tropical is very hot especially during mid-days. Therefore, plant more trees and sails on the traffic light, which are dedicated for motorbikers and bicyclers.
• Enhance the internet connection, if Surabaya really want to strengthen and grow its business assets, because internet is the blood of modern activities.
  
• Allocate new places for industries, especially in the border to other neighboring towns, such as Gresik or Sidoarjo. The reason is to enhance the employment and the growth of GDP. More importantly is connecting the industry areas with seaport by integrated road infrastructure.
  
• It's the time to implement green building standard in Surabaya, as the benchmark of building appraisal in municipality and part of mandatory building code.

The idea of returning the tax to public by providing more public amenities is fair for us. Now, should we wait them to implement it to us? or we want to struggle it to happen?

*pic taken from www.skyscrapercity.com

Thanks for reading, contents will be reviewed soon.
Randwick, 2.27am