Prof. Stephen Cairns, delivered a presentation entitled “Urban and Regional Planning with Available Data: The Ur Scape Case Study” at the PWK FTUI webinar. This webinar is part of the Open House for the Urban and Regional Planning Study Program (PWK) of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Indonesia (FTUI) to welcome the admission of new PWK FTUI students in 2022/2023. Prof. Stephen Cairns is Director of FCL Global, Singapore, and Principal Investigator of Agropolitan Territories of Monsoon Asia.
In his presentation, he explained the challenges of regions and cities in urbanization. “There are several problems that arise in urbanization. First, urbanization is now accelerating coupled with increasing population growth. This ongoing urbanization has led to an increase in the need for housing. This has led to urban building density or densification, which is the second challenge for urban areas. Density “There are also ecological problems that arise. Not only that, the movement of people from villages to cities has resulted in a decline in the population in rural areas,” said Prof. Stephen.
Then, he provides solutions related to urban area planning to overcome existing problems. First, change the direction of population movement centered on the city. With urbanization to other areas, population distribution and a decrease in building density will occur. In addition, he added suggestions for planning urban areas by sharing designs, pilot projects of several types, and development paths. He emphasized on the development of settlements by a form of natural resource management that is not defined by political and administrative boundaries but is limited by geographical boundaries, human communities, and ecological systems.
Finally, he explained that the application of agropolitan can solve problems in urban areas. Agropolitan areas can be used as an alternative solution in developing rural areas without forgetting urban areas. Agropolitan is a growth center development strategy with the concept of balance and synergy between the center and the surrounding area, especially by paying attention to the spatial configuration, and economic activity, and optimizing the impact of development. The development of agropolitan areas in each region means building agricultural-based regional economic growth points, with the hope that one growing point will be able to dynamize and stimulate the growth and development of other growing points and so on.
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Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia