IPB University Landscape Expert Proposes Spatial Police to Address Regional Arrangement Chaos
Spatial planning problems in Indonesia are considered to be the root of the nation’s major challenges. This was conveyed by lecturer and Chairmanof the Department of Landscape Architecture at IPB University, Dr Akhmad Arifin Hadi.
He considers that the problems of disasters, the impact of climate change, food security, as well as problems in the agriculture, forestry, marine, and development sectors are ultimately caused by disorder in spatial planning.
“We have already disobeyed our own planning and regulations. The spatial planning prepared by the government is often violated by the community, businessmen, and even government agencies themselves,” he said.
As a form of appreciation for efforts to curb spatial planning, Dr Akhmad highlighted the steps taken by West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi, who is actively curbing unlicensed buildings and land uses that are not in accordance with spatial plans. However, he said that these efforts must be based on a sustainable system.
“I propose the need to establish a “spatial police”, which is a system capable of collecting, synchronizing, analyzing, and presenting spatial data from various agencies, both government and private,” he explained.
According to him, the existence of spatial police is not just a matter of new institutions across agencies and sectors, but about building a system that is able to collect data, plan spatial planning from macro to micro, supervise its implementation, take action against all forms of violations, persuasive spatial education to the public and spatial evaluation.
Dr Arifin added that spatial planning should be based on integrated spatial and non-spatial data. “The data exists, but it is scattered in various agencies and no one has unified it. For example, actual agricultural productivity data is owned by the agriculture office, but not necessarily integrated with spatial data,” he said.
In this case, he said, the spatial police will function to ensure that spatial plans are made based on actual, accurate and valid data, analyzed with appropriate methods, and presented in a form that is easy to understand as the basis for planning decisions.
He said that spatial planning should not stop at documents, but should be synchronized down to the more detailed design stage. “A good design must be able to translate the results of regional planning appropriately so that development runs smoothly. This is what I call vertical data synchronization,” he added.
In practice, the spatial police must ensure that the entire process from spatial planning, detailed spatial plan (RDTR), site plan, to development and management is sustainable.
Even site plan makers must consider zoning, infrastructure, utilization of natural resources, and optimization of local human resources. One of the steps is periodic data reconciliation.
“Site plans submitted to the government in the process of building approval (PBG) made in Computer-Aided Design (CAD) must be uploaded and integrated into the Geographic Information System (GIS) system as a complement to actual data for the continuity of subsequent spatial planning,” explained this IPB University expert in planning and landscape design.
“In addition, it is time for the government to look at data from the results of community participatory mapping in various forms, including data uploaded independently by the community to websites, applications, and social media. all of this is done to obtain actual, accurate and valid data,” he added.
Technically, he believes that synchronization between planning, implementation, and supervision is possible. This is supported by the latest technology such as the integration of CAD, GIS, and 3D modeling which is now geospatial-based.
“By synchronizing macro spatial planning and implementation of micro-scale planning and design, as well as synchronizing with community participatory mapping data, the spatial police system can detect violations and misuse of spatial planning,” he said.
Dr Akhmad also explained that the existence of a spatial police system will maintain the sustainability of spatial enforcement despite changes in leaders or officials. “This system will ensure that spatial supervision and control continue to run consistently,” he said. (dr) (IAAS/RWA).
