Project

Semarang is facing multiple interconnected water-related challenges. Urbanization as well as climate change increasingly exposes the city to flooding from both the sea- and mountain side. Long term groundwater extraction creates land subsidence and exhausts the available fresh water resources.
Currently a wide array of measures has been employed though big in scale, they don’t address the causes of increased flooding, water scarcity and land subsidence, issues which will continue to grow if not addressed.
During this process we have defined five concepts, of which the first three have been further developed as part of the collaborative and comprehensive approach with the ‘One Resilient Semarang’ team.

Concepts can only be viable, if they are developed together with local stakeholders, and if their implementation can be financed.
The MLA+ consortium developed and staged a series of interactive gaming workshop. As sign of success, the organisation was then taken on by the local government.
The final step of this stage of work, focussed on implementation and bankability. The team assessed the impact of the proposals on SDGs.

The report, together with the work for the cities Chennai (India), Khulna (Bangladesh) is currently considered by several national and global development banks for implementation financing.

>>>> Main project features<<<<
Development of an analysis on water challenges and opportunities and its intersection with urban growth in Semarang. 'Cascading Semarang' proposes five conceptual solutions to tackle local water issues. For each solution, the team proposed a pilot area to test the conceptual design. The team worked with stakeholders to identify and link existing challenges to available technologies, strategies, and funding sources for social and cultural resilience.

Client

The Netherlands Enterprise Agency RVO

Program

spatial concept for Semarang

Stages

Aug 2018-Apr 2019

Team

Partners
Stichting Deltares, FABRICations, Witteveen+Bos Indonesia, UNDIP, UNISSULA, IDN Liveable Cities, and special liaison Roy Kraft van Ermel.

Awards

2020 Dutch Design Award, " Best Commissioning" category
2023 UN Habitat Compendium Urban-Rural Linkages