A Lesson-learned From A Competition

In November 2021, we joined a master plan competition and collaborated with Franciska Windy and Irma Kusumawardani, two of talented designers we have ever been collaborated with. This master plan competition is for Demak city expansion, a city in central Java with population of 1.2 million, just 30 km East of Semarang. The city has a rich history in Islamic-culture, a strong agricultural asset and popular for its Islamic tourism. However, at the same time the city is somewhat lacking a competitive value for its located between two more established city of Semarang and Kudus. How do we establish a strong identity for Demak, how do we envision the future Demak and how do we address the urban challenges of Demak?

Here, I’d like to share regarding what we learn from Demak and how we explore the vision of Smart AgriCity for Demak 2040. Check out some snapshots of the report on the slide above. And as always, comments are welcome!

DEMAK 2.0

A Smart AgriCity for Demak 2040

Setting up the timeline

A project with this scale could take up years to realized. So we started envisioning the master plan by setting up a base timeline for how long this vision would ideally be achieved. By doing this, we set up our working parameters in terms of population and economic growth, climate challenges, infrastructure necessity as well as jobs creation. A 20-years master plan was then chosen as the working timeline also as part of inlining with the long term Development Plan of Demak.

Urban sprawling is not an option

We wanted the future Demak to be compact, human friendly and avoid urban sprawling as seen in other parts in Indonesia due to city expansion. This sets out a clear approach that the city needs to grow vertically and focus only on some parts of the city. A higher building density with a mix of function will become the development model for Demak 2.0.

The Why, How, Where and What

In trying to solve the problems Demak currently have, we asked a few questions to better understand the issue and to help us formulate a vision.

• ‘Why’ does Demak needs to expand and grow? With the annual population growth of 1.28%, Demak is estimated to have a population of almost 1.6 million in 2040. This number is almost similar to current population of Semarang city, albeit larger city boundary. And with additional jobs coming in, the city needs spaces to grow. A well-planned distribution of function is crucial to avoid urban problems such as congestion and sprawling. With this number of growth, we estimated around 7 million m² of space is needed to accommodate this growth. This leads us to the next important question.
• ‘How’ do we accommodate this growth and ‘Where’? As the city boundary expected to be the same in 2040, the development needs to be carefully accommodated within this boundary. We chose 6 elements of smart city (Smart Living, Smart Economy, Smart Society, Smart Mobility, Smart Environment and Smart Governance) as a guideline for how we want the city to be developed. The expansion and development will be focused on three districts of Kecamatan Sayung, kecamatan Mranggen and kecamatan Demak. This was chosen because of these districts currently are the most developed area with population, infrastructure and jobs already pretty established. By focusing the development and expansion in these 3 districts, we encourage a focus and compact growth and avoid unnecessary development in existing agricultural lands.
• ‘What’ are the potential and challenges Demak currently present? For the last 5 yeas, Demak has seen growth in Information and Communication sector that leads among other sectors. Additionally, agricultural sector is still one of the leading sector that puts Demak as the top 4 in Central Java for rice production. However, Demak still has challenges such as significant lack of green open space, increasing drought, flooding as well as minimum public access to critical infrastructure.

Demak 2.0: Smart and Resilient

Demak 2.0 is our proposed vision for the expansion of Demak that based around the concept of Smart AgriCity. Leveraging the potential of agricultural asset and the growth in information and communication sector to create a strong identity for future Demak.

• Smart City. The use of technology and sensors to manage urban resources efficiently and provide services for the citizen of Demak. Application such as autonomous public transport, smart neighbourhood, smart waste management, e-library, online infrastructure monitoring system among others are expected to improve the quality of life in Demak. We also envision how agriculture land can co-exist with the urban settlement by introducing a residential model of AgriCity.
• Economic Resiliency. In attempt to diversify economic generators, Demak 2.0 proposes three new main economic generators for the city which include Agricultural R&D, Tourism and Creative Industry. Leveraging existing agricultural asset, Demak 2.0 will improve the production and distribution of agricultural through smart technology and application. Research and Innovation Center in Agriculture will put Demak as leading city in agricultural advancement in the region. Improving existing tourism infrastructure through adaptively reuse stock site/buildings, improving human resources through training in hospitality sector and introduce new points of interest in the city will drive tourism industry. A district of creative cluster in downtown with facilities such as startup incubator space, co-working space, SME cluster will encourage activities for digital economy.
• Environmental Resiliency. Urban wetland and improvements on the water channel are some of the strategy highlights in solving the flooding issue in Demak. This urban wetland also serve for recreational purposes and provide the city a green and blue open space.
• Food and Energy Resiliency. Vertical farming will be implemented to combat the gradually declining agricultural land in Demak that threaten the food production and distribution chain. Together with improvements in water resources and infrastructures, agricultural resources and food production will be more resilient against risk of natural disaster. Additionally, two strategies of energy resiliency include the use of bio-mass and wind. As part of the circular economy strategy, rice husk from the agricultural land is used as an alternative energy sources. Being located by the Java sea with average wind speed of 7 – 13 km/h, Demak 2.0 also proposes a wind-farming site to produce energy.