Image: Collection of Postcard Images from Cipadu Citizen
Reflection
After the reflective drawing co-design session with Cipadu residents, we finally compiled a collage that provides a broad overview of their aspirations for their future neighbourhood. However, it seems that the images not only reflects their aspirations but also reveals some of the underlying problems that have contributed to a larger issue: the flood.
The flood is merely the visible and significant aspect of the problem. Beneath the surface, there are numerous interconnected and intertwined issues – sociotechnical, economy, and ecology – that have led to the emergence of “wicked problems.” It’s no wonder that floods have move beyond just disasters to become enormous civic struggles, ultimately leading to social resignation (DelSesto, 2022).
On the first intervention, some residents claimed that the youth in Cipadu lacked social awareness, leading to hopelessness in the community. However, when we consider the broader picture (like for real, as depicted in the collage above) the complexity and enormity of the problems portrayed, are incomprehensible to an individual, let alone an entire generation.
This social averse behaviour rooted from the uncertain contemporary world, prompting the urgent need for quick fixes rather than confronting the uncertainty as a solution (Akama et al., 2018). Consequently, the third intervention challenged the residents’ assumptions and also the status quo by gathering civic imagination and exploring how we can transcend the present problem to envision possible futures through Indonesian cosmopolitan localism, a regional-based lifestyle known as ‘gotong royong’ (Irwin, 2015).
In accordance to this, maybe we are not supposed to solve the problems. Because the complexity may be unbearable for an individual task. Why can’t we ‘gotong royong’ to facilitate a civic transition by empowering imagination to be comfortable to face uncertainty, thus, create possible, desirable futures for the Cipadu residents, even more, similar urban villages landscape in Indonesia?
Therefore, How can the philosophy of ‘gotong royong’ spark collective imagination to reimagine regenerative futures in Greater Jakarta’s urban villages?
What? The Pandora Box Found After Co-Design
Image: The Young Participants in The Second Day of Reflective Drawing Co-Design
In the third intervention, which adopted a co-design approach, I invited Cipadu residents from diverse demographics and generations to participate. Interestingly, the majority of those who actively engaged in the reflective drawing session were school-aged youth—often stereotyped as socially withdrawn or indifferent. Their enthusiastic participation, however, contradicted this assumption, revealing a genuine willingness to contribute to community dialogue and the collective envisioning of their neighbourhood’s future.
This participation reflects the living manifestation of gotong royong, the Indonesian value of mutual assistance and shared responsibility. This is where individuals harmonize their efforts towards a shared goal: shaping a better future together through collective imagination.
Image: A Designer Explaining on How To Do Reflective Drawing
While the depth of the participants’ motivations requires further exploration, their willingness to engage amidst uncertainty was deeply meaningful, and hopeful. Alongside them, the experts and designers who participated—many of whom are my professional peers and close friends—brought valuable insights, creativity, and unexpected enthusiasm. The sense of camaraderie and collective spirit that emerged during the sessions embodied the cultural essence of gotong royong, which continues to thrive as an inherent social practice within Indonesian communities.
Moving forward, this research seeks to expand gotong royong beyond its philosophical understanding, positioning it as a methodological framework for designing systemic change within complex, interconnected challenges, or “wicked problems” (Webber, 1973).
In earlier stages, my research primarily focused on design for social innovation. However, the data gathered using multi-level perspective from all three interventions, demonstrated that addressing immediate challenges is not enough.
Image: Layers of Issues Structed using Multi-Level Perspective
What is required is a future-oriented approach that questions, confronts, and reshapes the systemic roots of these challenges. This direction resonates with the principles of Transition Design, a transdisciplinary approach that emphasizes long-term, intentional transformation within social and ecological systems (Irwin, 2015; Costa, 2023), which later become my foundation for this research that required further study.
Why? Design for Transition to Empower Possible Futures Through Gotong Royong
People crave possibility, and indeed, being hopeful is not naïve. In this contemporary era marked by rapid technological change, climate crisis, and growing complexity, hope itself becomes a form of strength and resistance and no longer a vivid daydream. For those living in Indonesia’s urban villages, particularly communities within lower socio-economic groups which most vulnerable to climate change impacts (Huq and Ayers, 2007), hope is essential for survival.
Transition Design builds upon Design for Service and Design for Social Innovation. It advocates for using design as a catalyst to deliberately initiate and guide transformation processes, creating interventions that operate across both short- and long-term timescales (Irwin, 2015). Within this framework, uncertainty is reframed not as a threat but as a generative ground for possibility and growth.
However, for Transition Design to hold real meaning in Indonesia, it must be contextualized and localized. Instead of applying raw frameworks derived from the Global North, this research proposes an cosmopolitan localism (cosmolocalism) of gotong royong, embedding its cultural essence into the Transition Design paradigm (Manzini, 2016). This process allows gotong royong to act not only as a social philosophy but as a generative design method that catalyst uncertainty and complexity into regeneration and collective empowerment.
Moments of crisis often reveal humanity’s capacity for solidarity and cooperation; crisis can strengthen communities through collective care (Bregman, 2021). This mirrors how gotong royong naturally emerges as a shared response to uncertainty, transforming chaos into connection and vulnerability into mutual strength.
In the context of Cipadu, the reflective drawing intervention already demonstrated this dynamic. Residents, particularly the youth, began to visualize possible futures through their own experiences and ideas—embracing the unknown rather than avoiding it. This process exemplifies describe as “designing with not knowing,” where uncertainty itself becomes a generative condition for imagination and transformation (Akama et al., 2018).
Image: Reflective Drawing Session
To make uncertainty a comfortable and empowering process, a shared platform for collective action and imagination is crucial, one that allows people to inspire one another, validate each other’s ideas, and co-create meaning. Such a space must be liberating rather than limiting, enabling communities to envision regenerative futures not as passive recipients of change, but as active designers of their own possibilities.
How Do We Move Forward?
Image: A Child Draw a Landscape
Being reflective alone is not enough to generate concrete solutions, as most of the ideas remain rooted in everyday experiences and simple “what-if” scenarios. Several drawings appeared less reflective in nature, particularly those resembling children’s sketches, such as depictions of houses or mountain landscapes. However, this recurring pattern of drawing a generic “house and mountain” scene, though seemingly simplistic, is itself worth exploring further, as it may reveal deeper symbolic meanings or collective aspirations within the community.
When I asked the children why they chose to draw houses surrounded by nature, most of their answers were strikingly similar: “I want to see more nature in my neighbourhood,” or “This is the kind of neighbourhood I know.” Their responses reveal a longing for greener, more open environments—something absent in their everyday reality. Reflecting on the actual conditions of their neighbourhood, where cramped alleyways and dense informal settlements dominate the landscape, it becomes clear that the natural views they depicted exist more in imagination than in daily life.
It is no longer just less reflective drawing, these depiction of natures in children’s drawing are hopeful imagination that should be reflection to the community and the authority.
These ideas hold the potential to spark deeper conversations, if only we can find ways to transform these aspirations into real possibilities. Yet, this was the stage where I felt the most uncertain. I feel responsible not only to retell their stories or amplify their voices, but also to ensure that I wasn’t merely extracting their hopes and imaginations for the sake of research. I wanted their visions to live beyond the boundaries of this project, to mean something to them as much as to the world that hears them.
This led me to the next crucial question: How can I move forward to share their message and translate their imagination into collective action?
On my third tutorial with my tutor, I carried their drawings to the class with my question on what can I do to echoing their voices. Because, I believe in order to build hope, it is not just trying to find the oasis but also have a clarity on seeing the oasis, or in the other words; showing possibility.
I shared with my tutor how the idea of clarity had recently helped me in an unexpected way. Last week, while at Camden Town Station, I found myself unable to take the escalator. In that moment of hesitation, I noticed an emergency stairway with a sign that read, “This stairway has 92 steps.” I realized I had never seen such a sign before, or perhaps I had simply never paid attention to it. That day, however, I was unusually alert and aware of my surroundings, and this small detail made me reflect on how clarity in communication can provide a sense of reassurance and direction, especially in moments of uncertainty.
Image: Emergency Stairs in Covent Garden Station taken from Google
Therefore, this spark an idea between us on what about making these reflective drawings just like staircases that portray clarity of the future steps that they need to take. Making their drawing as depiction of hopes and possible futures that could lead to many conversations.
Placing imagination at the center of uncertainty doesn’t just help us stay hopeful, it allows us to think in bold and new ways about the future. We can’t face tomorrow using the same patterns and habits that created today’s problems. Imagining possible futures helps us move beyond simply surviving; it encourages us to see a more genuine, positive, and meaningful way to move forward (Lear, 2008). Thus, people need to be able to visualise their dreams, their imaginations, and their possible futures. That’s why the “92 Steps” information works to reduce our anxiety in facing the uncertain future, because we are given clarity.
What If The Future Universe Is Rewritten by The Citizens Themselves?
They already had the imaginations, and they already have their own ideas. Now, let’s frame their dreams into steps that they can create their own.
In the fourth intervention for this research, I will position myself as a designer and strategist who can inspire others to awaken and participate by facilitating their aspirations (McCoy, 2018). Furthermore, I will be the one who recounts their stories, capturing and archiving them through narrative that can evoke possible futures, akin to design fiction.
If the strategy succeeded, this intervention will spark conversation and knocking the door of possible collaboration with experts and professional who can actually capturing the citizens idea. So these flying houses, nature oriented neighbourhood and any other radical ideas by the citizens are not only mere daydream.
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