Kampung 2050 Speculative Narratives, and External Validations.

A Quick Catch Up

From my previous intervention, I developed a way to synthesise the community’s imaginative drawings. My initial plan was to publish these narratives on Instagram as an open archive, an invitation for wider participation. However, I soon realised that being consistently active on social media is far more challenging than simply scrolling through it. Part of this difficulty comes from time constraints, but part of it, maybe because I was tied to my own hesitation as a busy MA student.

But trust me, it is none of them.

This became clearer after listening to Mel Robbins’ audiobook Let Them (2024). She struck me in the head with the idea that the reason we hesitate to post or share our work is often rooted in the fear of being judged, especially by the people closest to us: friends, peers, colleagues. This resonated deeply. Shifting my practice into the realm of urban futures is something I have never done before, and naturally, it made me question whether I was “good enough” to speak on these topics publicly.

But that realisation also pushed me forward. Instead of holding back, I decided to take a leap of faith and allow myself to be challenged beyond what I’m used to.

“Let them judge, and let me invite these experts directly so they can hear and validate my projects”.

But beforehand, I would love to share the context of my data analysation from my previous co-design session.

Kampung 2050: A Universe of Possibilities

The reflective drawings from the previous intervention provided a rich and multifaceted set of data, revealing many community insights and aspirations. However, as I mentioned in my earlier reflection, I felt a responsibility to elevate these voices and share their messages with a wider audience. After discussing with my tutor, Diana Donaldson, and reading Design for Sustainable Futures (Press et al., 2025), I decided to transform these stories into a speculative format, through visual and narrative archives, to spark broader conversations about the future of urban living. Afterwards, an idea of Kampung 2050: Universe of Possibilities came out.

Using design fiction, I synthesised the drawings into four narrative matrices, each representing alternative future scenarios. These scenarios help people imagine and anticipate the kind of future they wish to create, based on two intersecting axes of emerging trends: status quo vs. progressive environment, and human-centred vs. nature-based conditions.

From my previous design talk in Hanover Street for London’s Art+Climate Week, the panel from Datasonica discussed how data can more than just numbers. It can be experiences, visual, auditory, and anything that can inform researchers about the situation. This aligns with Cecilia’s session two weeks ago, which focused on visualizing data. Inspired by this, I conducted an experiment using colour drops to count the number of colours used by participants in Cipadu. This data provided insights into the desired future they envision for their neighbourhood, based on their colour choices. Interestingly, natural colours like blue and green dominated the data, suggesting a strong preference for an eco-friendly future in their community.

These data is formed as an anticipation guideline which hopefully can communicate the desires, needs and aspirations from bottom-up to create a future-proof development by the urban developers.

What makes these narratives especially meaningful is how they demonstrate the role of communication designers as a bridge between communities and experts. Through drawing and co-design, citizens were able to express their visions, and communication designers translated these expressions into clear visual narratives. This project involved collaboration with:

• Graphic designers – Yudhistira, Daffi, Syafira and Qonita teaching how to draw for the co-design session
• Copywriters – Harits for tailoring the speculative visions with new narratives and Seno for handling the co-design session
• Motion designers – Glen for animating the story

This respond to what Lorusso (2022) highlights: communication designers are often trapped in an industry-centric cycle, rather than contributing directly to real-world social challenges. In this project, their skills became essential in connecting citizen imagination with expert interpretation, showing how communication design can support participatory, future-oriented urban development.

One of the communication designers also come to realization in the feedback form by saying: “The activity gave me a new perspective that the community does have problems, but they don’t have solutions. And no one is initiating the process of finding solutions together.”

External Verification

My first feedback was actually coming from Dragons’ Den Session with Kate Matlock and Will Medd. Their feedback suggested that this research has the potential to evolve into a tangible development blueprint for future urban planners, possibly even in collaboration with government stakeholders. They highlighted that the spirit of gotong royong—as revealed throughout the project—could serve as a powerful foundation for a new model of community-led urban development.

However, at this stage, I do not intend for the project to directly support or legitimise government agendas. My primary focus remains on nurturing the community’s agency to imagine and shape their own futures. Nonetheless, the experts’ suggestions opened a pathway for considering how this work could eventually be translated into a longer-term framework for policy dialogue. To begin moving towards that direction, I recognised the need to validate the emerging insights with experts who understand the dynamics of urban development.

As I said, engaging people through social media proved challenging, so I took the initiative to personally invite experts—many of whom are part of my Indonesian network in London. These new community-created narratives then became a conversational artefact for discussions with urban and environmental professionals, whom I invited to collaborate in this idea-proofing session. These collaborators are:

• Service designers – Andrina and Nabila
• Urban designers & planners – Hasna and Madina
• Urban architect – Sarah from Studio Pppooolll
• Urban risk planner – Ihsan

The online co-design session (via Miro and Google Meet) began with a presentation of the project context and aims. Through these conversations, several key insights emerged:

1. Designers as Bridges
Designers and researchers play a crucial intermediary role, acting as facilitators and translators. According to Sarah, the architect, she said this role of communication has been something that can help us facilitate community imagination “as the foundation of the development”. The role of communication designers also can turned informed data from residents expression, into visual ideas. Which she said can help to ensure these ideas retain their nuance when communicated to architects, urban designers, or policymakers. This prevents the community’s aspirations from being oversimplified or detached from their lived realities.

2. Building Trust
Facilitated workshops and open dialogue help cultivate trust between residents and external experts. This interaction provides community members with a safe and supported space to articulate both their concerns and their hopes for the future. This idea is also related to what Ismal Muntaha from JAF said, how acting like a guest with Cipadu residents as a host can immerse further in the conversation.

3. Synthesising as the Entry Point for Development
After aspirations are collected, often as colourful, layered, and sometimes abstract drawings, they are synthesised and categorised. This step makes them more actionable, allowing planners or designers to identify priorities and development opportunities.

4. Providing Experts with Concrete Context
Synthesised insights offer experts a more precise understanding of what the community implicitly wants. For instance, if residents draw high-rise buildings, an ambitious or radical visual expression experts can translate that desire for density into workable solutions, such as resilient green spaces or elevated public shelters that support flood mitigation and evacuation needs.

5. Leveraging Existing Community Strengths
The discussions reinforced how powerful the existing culture of gotong royong (mutual cooperation) is. Experts noted that this social infrastructure can and should be embedded into future development strategies, as it is already a natural mechanism for community gathering, bonding, and resilience.

6. Reinforcing Ownership and Local Identity
Documenting muatan lokal (local stories), family histories, and imaginative drawings strengthens the residents’ sense of ownership over their environment. These archives can serve as cultural anchors—or even political leverage—if future tensions arise around evictions or land rights.

7. Navigating Welfare and Political Realities
Some residents initially seek quick or monetary solutions due to economic precarity, which shapes how they imagine the future. The experts validated that the process offers a counterbalance by proposing phased, long-term strategies. Structuring outcomes into intervals (e.g., every three years) aligns them with political cycles and increases the likelihood of continuity across changes in government leadership.

8. Recommended Separation
Nabila from service design suggested that separating the user base by demographics is generally preferred because different demographics have different experiences. Andrina also added, this separation allows researchers to track and understand whose aspirations are represented. From their feedback, I acknowledged this feedback and indicated an intention to categorise drawings per demography, recognizing that different generations have different stories.

9. Building A Space Where Nature and People Can Gathered
Urban designers and an architect strongly recommended considering building a nature-based space like a park, where people can gather and engage in community activities together. Sarah mentioned that her studio has a blueprint of RPTRA (Ruang Publik Terpadu Ramah Anak) that could be helpful in initiating the construction of a park. Based on their observations during the proof-of-concept phase, they observed a strong desire for community gatherings in the area, as evidenced by the value placed on social interactions. Parks and public spaces, such as RPTRA, are crucial because they serve as essential community gathering points for people of all ages.

Image: External Verification with Cipadu Residents and Local Officers

I recently realized that I missed the most crucial step after contextualizing and shaping this research: reaching out to the residents. To enhance the ethicality of this research, I did contact them, even though I had already submitted my evaluative report.

However, I understand that it’s better to be late than never, as the residents are invaluable collaborators in this project. I may have inadvertently forgotten to include this aspect in my evaluative report as well.

Dear residents of Cipadu, I want to express my sincere gratitude for your invaluable collaboration!

Due to this oversight, I have reached out to the Cipadu Residents group to conduct external verification with me using Miro and Speculative Future Videos that I uploaded on YouTube.

Time differences actually the hardest part on doing participatory action research, but I managed to make times with the people in Cipadu during the weekend by prioritising and valuing their time before me.

The people who were joining the online conversation are:

1. Nur Hayati – Cipadu resident
2. Asla Laila – Cipadu Senior Officers
3. Ade Ruhiyat – Cipadu RW 05 Community Leasers

Hence, the conversation we had was really interesting. They were fascinated with how the residents’ drawing are moving now, making more clarity on how to imagine the future.

The four scenarios and underlying research were presented to a panel of external experts, including urban planners, developers, and architects, for verification and feedback on feasibility. Here are the key takeaways:

1. The stakeholders implicitly concluded that the most viable and impactful starting point is to focus on realizing the Social Future /Gotong Royong by strengthening and formalizing the practice of gotong-royong.
2. They argued that a strong, collaborative social foundation is the essential precursor to achieving more complex and capital-intensive goals, such as the widely desired “Eco-Future.”
3. The panel’s most critical recommendation was the creation and activation of a dedicated public space (“tempat berkumpul”). Such a space is seen as a physical catalyst for strengthening gotong-royong, serving as a central point for community interaction, idea sharing, organizing events, and reinforcing a shared identity and purpose. Especially, when Mrs. Laila mentioned that they will soon have a community space called GKB in Kavling Setiabudi, Cipadu for people to gather.
4. It will serve as the physical embodiment of the expert-recommended gathering space, providing a tangible venue for community-building activities.
5. Community stakeholders in the discussion expressed full agreement with the expert analysis, confirming that rebuilding the community’s spirit is the foundational priority.
6. There was a strong consensus that focusing on the “software” (people, mindset, social systems) must precede focusing on the “hardware” (physical infrastructure). As articulated by Bu Asla, “pondasi dulu kita kencengin orang-orang yang dulu kita kita kencengin…” (“First, we must strengthen the foundation; we must strengthen the people first…”).
7. And the key strategic pillar is to target youth as the primary agents of long-term change.
8. The goal is to provide motivation, role models, and a sense of agency to a generation perceived as being particularly vulnerable to resignation.

Next Steps

After the discussion, they pointed out for Berimajinaria to make use of their new space to initiate youth activities, which in summary

1. Community Screening: The animated videos depicting the four futures will be screened for residents, particularly the children who participated, at the new space.
2. Feedback and Visioning: The screening will be used as a tool to spark imagination, facilitate community discussion, and gather feedback on a preferred collective vision.
3. Playful Education: The GKB will become a hub for ongoing programs that are both engaging and educational (“belajar tapi playful”). These activities will address key community issues like environmentalism (e.g., waste management via the bank sampah) and social cohesion.
4. Knowledge Hub: The space will be used to invite external practitioners, academics, and designers to transfer knowledge and skills directly to the community.

The long-term success of transforming Cipadu rooted on several critical factors identified during the discussion.

• Combating Resignation: The central strategic challenge is overcoming the prevailing sense of hopelessness. All project activities must be intentionally designed to inspire hope and build positive momentum.

• Consistency and Long-Term Vision: Stakeholders recognize that this is not a short-term project. It requires consistent effort and maintaining momentum over a long period. The “Cipadu 2050” framework provides the necessary 25-year horizon for this ambitious and essential transformation.

Reflection

This whole journey on finding the way in order for people to be able to envision and later design the sustainable future has been a wind whirling path for me. But I do believe in the statement of Daoism by “we made the path by walking.” Regardless how slow or steep the roads are, they are still making a way out of something.

As a reflection I summmed up the external verification onto this table:

Theme	Experts’ Feedback	Researcher Reflection	Cipadu Residents’ Feedback
Demographic Separation vs. Holistic Synthesis	Service design experts recommended separating users by demographics because different groups experience the kampung differently. Without this, it is unclear whose aspirations dominate the dataset.	Initially, I synthesised the drawings collectively to show diversity. But I now recognise the importance of categorising them by demographic groups to capture intergenerational differences.	They want to focus on nurturing the youth, as this might be a potential long term momentum to build future generation.
Playful Methods vs. Analytical Depth	Experts found the playful, drawing-based approach effective for engaging all ages. However, they noted that more structure is needed to analyse complex data meaningfully.	The method succeeded in encouraging participation, but requires an additional analytical layer. Future iterations will integrate demographic coding to deepen insights. But I also think interpretation can also be useful to trigger conversation and attract more empathy.	They realized the impact of drawing workshop is more than just ‘people’s activity’. But also a way to motivate and inspire residents to envision the future.
Community Expression vs. Expert Interpretation	Urban designers and architects saw the narratives as a strong communication bridge between community visions and expert understanding, especially when mediated by communication designers.	This proven how the role of communication designers can facilitate the space and conversation. And that can ease the development that rooted in bottom-up hierarchy.	The residents feel the need of more activity with communication designers to provie ‘role models’
Bottom-Up Aspirations vs. Development Realities	Urban experts appreciated the imaginative futures but emphasised the need to align aspirations with realistic planning frameworks and infrastructural constraints.	This highlights the tension between creativity and feasibility. Future outputs should show clearer links between imagination, feasibility assessment, and implementation pathways.	The top-down plan was often similar with bottom-up aspirations. However, it requires more involvement from the residents to share their voice.

Bibliography:

Lorusso, S. (2023) What design can’t do: essays on design and disillusion. First edition. Eindhoven: Set Margins’ (Set margins, #26).

Press, J. and Celi, M. (2024) Designing Sustainable Futures: How to Imagine, Create, and Lead the Transition to a Better World. 1st ed. New York: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003451693.